Almost there. I’ve passed the stage 1 REM. Then a long train of thoughts come racing. The battle begins. The more I try, the harder it is to fall asleep. The mind is on the streets, eyes on the ceiling, lights dancing. I am missing the past and one old place. My mother’s place where I had no or very little recollection. Yet vivid. It pains me almost instantly when it comes to mind. I had not spent life there yet it played a pivotal role in the creation of my memories. The house is more or less half a century older than me, now in a ramshackle state. Countless storms had passed, the people never doubled. Mother must have had lived a lonely life, or should I say boring. She had never narrated how she was as a kid, as a teenager, or someone before becoming a mother. She is extremely reticent and very undemonstrative, like a character that’s not around. Sometimes I think she’s both like a mother and a stranger to me, and that’s what is special about her. I’m never gonna ask, but if she happens to read this, she’d most likely get me into a tete a tete. She is very reserved. I assume she grew up in an enigmatic family. But i know it was their unbreakable bond per se that mattered. I am trying to preserve the little fragments of them. My grandpa bedridden, the taciturn uncle who was around at a great infrequency, and my mother’s younger sister who would always sew matching clothes for me. There were gardens left and right. Flowers here and there. Melons, papayas, bananas, mangoes, sugar apple and vegetables of all sorts. Rice paddies. No neighbors in close proximity. Did I ever live there? Did my grandparents from both sides ever bond? I don’t know.
Years ago when we went to the cemetery to light candles, I had an important discovery. The grandpa died in 1996, the maternal grandmother and my mother's older sister died in 1993, six days apart. Based on the stories I’ve heard of my Aunt (not from my mother but from some neighbors who would tell long ago stories of other people’s lives LOL), she was very brainy. She was also obsessive compulsive. Then she went mad. You know what i mean? Like mentally ill. How absurd. I feel like i've never met the granny on the other hand.
Slowly, the disconnected pieces fit together little by little. There were 3 deaths once upon my childhood. One rainy night we had to be at 'i don't know whose' wake. We were residing at the paternal family by then. Father had to piggyback my older brother, I riding on his neck, Harry in his arms. It was dark and cold on the way, and the sound of his heavy steps against the ankle-deep rain was one of my memories. The elders were there. One was doing a ritual or a prayer or i don't know what on earth, in a foreign language, probably Latin. While doing so, the candles floated in the air. What kind of sorcery! Was it just my playful imagination? Or I construed it was witchcraft LOL. I had no sense of fear. But when I think of that bizarre experience now, it’s enough to make me tachycardic.
Once upon my mother's duty as a wife, she brought me and the younger brothers to a kilometer far health center for vaccination. We had to walk. Harry and I parading, closely following her steps, Carlo in her arms (fast asleep?). It was rainy as far as I remember. Slippery. Muddy. We had to cross a small brook with a couple of bamboo logs that served as a footbridge. Out of nowhere she dropped Carlo. Yes, in the brook. The umbrella half dipped in the water and Carlo's head nowhere in sight. I don't know if we ever completed the vaccine 😔.
Meanwhile, the brain is still wrestling. Wide awake. Or am I half dreaming? Somber thoughts and heavy feeling, but like a friendly weight. Thoughts that take you somewhere familiar to make you feel secure and assure you that you're not devoid of memories. Coz they are too good to be forgotten. I see myself from afar, doing things all over again. Like Déjà vu. Then the sudden sharp pain that wakes you up from out-of-body experience.
Just few hours to the alarm so I might as well not sleep at all. It’s this quiescent state again when the adrenaline kicks in with a sudden bog down in return. Saturdays in particular, break you free only to make you feel exhausted, almost sick. Probably it's the sudden spike of nicotine, or a hungover, or the high cholesterol or caffeine overdose. I would always say I have no intention of burdening myself with tasks needed to be done beyond the working hours. There's no desire to exert one bit more than I absolutely had to, coz it’s all futile. But anywhere that's not a workplace is like a very unproductive place. Workplace has become a life place. Now the system is an 8-hour work plus 5 to 6 hours volunteerism. And so the guilt is paid.
If I was home in PH, I’d probably be rummaging through anything I could get my hands on to. Boxes of things we have nowhere to place...Christmas décor, photo albums, vases, curtains, cutlery, condiment bottles, screw drivers, etc. At home I could be an unorthodox me, sleeping like a log or wandering like a restless owl.
If I was in that old place, I’d definitely take my time, I’d watch the world go by. I'd appreciate how nothing pretty much exceptional happens, coz I love what’s slow and warm. I love where i could be myself.
