in love You give the rain
in love You bring the sun
in love You teach us pain
in love You show Your Son
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monday night i called and it wasn’t convenient to talk, so after a few cursory whatchadoing whereareyounow whoareyouwith, we said bye and hung up. the surprising thing was how alright i felt, and as i thought about that sudden outburst a few nights before, i realise too that it helped me find stillness in this week of silence. thinking back, i realised when i read those simple words that i believed him, and that i knew it all along, but i wondered how he knew i wanted some reassurance.
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how do i talk about it when every time i’m there everything comes in a whirl and threatens to overwhelm, but soon after i’m here again, it’s almost as if nothing happened. that in itself is already blessed forgetfulness…and there’s nothing at all to forgive. this morning i woke and started going through the motions of the day, when i felt tiredness creeping up on me and thought to myself that i felt like going home. but how do i do that, when home was supposed to be exactly where i was?
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lie after lie after lie. don’t tell her this, don’t tell him that, don’t say that we, don’t let them know…what can i say to them, do for them, when everywhere i look i see a face hardened with pain, and realise that it is a hurt caused by every other face there that shows the same pain? how can this be a family — the epitome of togetherness — when it is the very thing that tears each of us apart?
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she tries so hard. all her life she’s been trying, and fighting, and hurting. everything she does she does after she thinks for every other person she calls her family. so many things she doesn’t say, thinking to bear that burden alone. and after all these years, after all these years……
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his hearing is getting worse and worse. it has never been poor, but suddenly, after a few weeks that i hardly saw him, it had deteriorated. he has not needed to really listen for a long time. there’s no one to talk to, no one to hear, besides his old wife whose hearing has always been poor. and there are things he says that he doesn’t want her to hear, knows she can’t hear, and there are things he wants to say that no one is there to hear. maybe he has also stopped believing in me. stopped waiting for me to go home. one day he said that when we’re used enough to life outside, we won’t need to go home anymore. there is something about his expression that has changed. even the way his face lights up when we enter his room is different, like it’s betraying itself by self-reflexivity. he’s hanging on, for something i don’t know he is holding out, and willing himself to go on living, even though it’s hard to be old, even though he feels like a burden, even though he finds no friend but those in his imagination, those he sings to/with…every moment of little happiness can mean so much, and be remembered for so long.
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that night she called my handphone, and i wondered why she didn’t call the house. but the moment i picked up i only heard her crying, and then i knew why. she never said anything, but she cried hard for a while, and then, choking on her own words, she asked me to help her say bye.
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when people know that i’m going back and forth, they ask two possible questions. to those who ask me why i bother going back, i tell them indignantly that my family is there. it surprises me they would ask at all. to those who ask me why i don’t stay there longer, i tell them indignantly that my life is here. it also surprises me that they would ask that way.
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i don’t remember when it was that i began feeling like i needed to protect her, help her, look out for her. even though she had always been the one doing that for me. sometimes i think i know all about her, but at times, like that time so recently, i find out i don’t. there was an important part of her life that i’d missed out on completely, and the person she became after that is someone i was still getting to know for a while. yesterday she was back to the person i’d remember her to be, like that time she came home with me. she’s the happy one, the one to say funny things, the one who’d make us laugh, the one who never tried to figure out if the glass was half full or half empty — it just is, what the heck. she’s the pretty one, the strong one, the adaptable one, the lucky one, the growing one. she’s the special one. the one we all love, almost fiercely.
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he was always silent. sometimes i don’t even know how to paint a picture of him in my own mind. at times i catch glimpses of him that i recognise in myself, and those times i feel like there is some sort of unspoken, unplanned alliance between us. once or twice i’ve mentioned that in writing, but there was never any recognition of that, nor anything to tell me if he thought the same way. i caught myself feeling the least in his eyes among us three, and then it occurred to me how i’ve been feeling this way the past ten years or so, and it doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore. in fact, i don’t even know for sure if i still believe that. when we saw her in and waved goodbye, everyone was prepared to leave. but he suddenly walked towards where she’d gone in, and he stood with his hands hanging over the bar, looking down at where she was getting her passport scanned. he waved, and she waved back with her boarding pass, pulling her luggage with the other hand. we went over and she waved again, without stopping, like she did when she went down the escalator. as she passed the customs she gestured for us to go back, knowing we had a three hour drive ahead. and in the midst of all the waving, us almost a hundred metres away from her, i realised that his hand was not waving anymore. he stuck out a thumbs-up, bending down over the railings, hoping she’d see this last gesture of well wishes, of silent hope that she’d be safe and flourish, of everything he had meant but never always said. i’ve never seen him show a thumbs-up in that way before. i hoped she saw it too — a special sign to her of her father’s love.
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i remember asking her when i was younger, how she used to bathe me when i was a baby. she took me up, already too big for her to carry, and she balanced me over her lap and said, that’s how. i remember how soft and cool her tummy was, and how i’d bury my face in it during the commercials, when i was a kid. that was when she still watched tv with us. now i see her struggle with the pots and pans, see her walk in and out with an umbrella, see her try to keep tabs on all her assets, and i don’t seem to know her. but i know when she asks me when i’m leaving again, and she wants to cook, and share with me what she can still cook. i know when she puts down a bowl of just-a-little-something for me that that was the best part of the entire pot she has cooked, and i know she will do that for me, even if no one else might believe this of her. after all, they’ve never been her grandchild.
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through the years, i’ve had to find something to help me feel safe. at the same time i’ve also had to have someone that i can help, something to let me know there’s a reason to breathe and live and wake up each day. i trace all these in my life, up to where i am, and i wonder how things will continue. my soft toys and santa led to laura and little house on the prairie, then to music and disney, and finally to growth and God Himself. the people have also changed, moved on, kept in touch, slowly distanced but in a comfortable way. how will he be, as time moves on unrelentingly?
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sometimes i wonder if it’s selfish to let other people be the reason i live.
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He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
-Ecclesiastes 3:11
