My Dad left for one of his M'sia holidays yesterday
The effect of his absence was not lost on my Mum and i as we had the television remote all to ourselves and a quiet dinner together. We look vulnerable in our little flat last night, like a couple of girls at a pjamas party. I'm closer to the truth than i think, for i'm more like my Mum than i imagine. I have her small bright eyes, her sense of humour, her sensitivity and insecurities. Growing up i never saw much of her in me. I only saw a thin, pale, long-haired girl when i looked in the mirror. But now, when i speak to the children i help to babysit, i realise it's her voice i hear. I borrow her stories, i improvise on her jokes. I repeat the threats i heard as a child. I am her. And i'm beginning to understand what it must be like to be my mother.
I used to belive that the first budding romance, every girl's spring lover, will be the one to teach me how to love. I've never stopped to think that my Mum, of all people, will be the one to educate me instead. For she loved my Dad with the same measure from the time she married him after he was newly divorced, when she was living together in the same flat with my Dad's first family, when he was in debt, when they were sleeping separately, when she was laughing at Taiwanese variety shows with him, when she was holding his hand in Jurong Point last week. She never remembered the wrongs he done, only the times he tried to make things right.
Love is a choice, something we can will away. Turn off. On. High and less. Whoever told you that you can't choose who you love is lying to you. Because your head gets involved. If someone cheats on you, lies to you, doesn't value you anymore, you tell yourself you have to stop loving them. Your head gets involved and turns it off. Your intellect wins. If it didn't, you would stay and be unhappier with each passing moment. Choice is too often a double edged sword. When i hear that people say that they love so and so more each day, i wonder -- you mean you didn't think it was possible in the first place to have room for growth? If there were no other word for love, if it was just 'feel' instead, then really, what we're saying is "I feel more for you now," which means you used to feel less. It's proof that our feelings can wane. We can love intensely and calmly, and that means, we can fall out of it. We can grow to change our minds; we can love less. That's what "I love you more each day" means.
I don't wish to love more. Because more implies time or circumstance can make love fuller, that it can blossom if you do or say the right things. I don't think it works that way. At least, i hope it doesn't.
I used to belive that the first budding romance, every girl's spring lover, will be the one to teach me how to love. I've never stopped to think that my Mum, of all people, will be the one to educate me instead. For she loved my Dad with the same measure from the time she married him after he was newly divorced, when she was living together in the same flat with my Dad's first family, when he was in debt, when they were sleeping separately, when she was laughing at Taiwanese variety shows with him, when she was holding his hand in Jurong Point last week. She never remembered the wrongs he done, only the times he tried to make things right.
Love is a choice, something we can will away. Turn off. On. High and less. Whoever told you that you can't choose who you love is lying to you. Because your head gets involved. If someone cheats on you, lies to you, doesn't value you anymore, you tell yourself you have to stop loving them. Your head gets involved and turns it off. Your intellect wins. If it didn't, you would stay and be unhappier with each passing moment. Choice is too often a double edged sword. When i hear that people say that they love so and so more each day, i wonder -- you mean you didn't think it was possible in the first place to have room for growth? If there were no other word for love, if it was just 'feel' instead, then really, what we're saying is "I feel more for you now," which means you used to feel less. It's proof that our feelings can wane. We can love intensely and calmly, and that means, we can fall out of it. We can grow to change our minds; we can love less. That's what "I love you more each day" means.
I don't wish to love more. Because more implies time or circumstance can make love fuller, that it can blossom if you do or say the right things. I don't think it works that way. At least, i hope it doesn't.
Labels: introspection
