Bird-Lover

Don't you think it's amazing how little our very own parents know about us, but where it essentially counts, they're the best people who understands us thoroughly in and out?

I'm not making a sweeping generalization. But most parents really don't keep the same close connection with their children when they hit adolescence. I think they get fixated on their kids' childhood when they still had a hold on what they think or do. I suspect that my mother still thinks that my penmanship remains cartoony with large loops (It is most certainly not like that anymore, I'd like to inform you all.). Or my dad still thinks that I am deathly afraid of walking alone in the streets. He never forgot the time I ran back home when he asked me to buy suha all by myself for the first time (I was around ten.).

What are things about you that your own parents don't know about? I bet there's a whole lot. I once wrote a short story about my friend, Ryan, based on something he told his mother. (I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning this here.) He said that she would never understand him because she doesn't even know what books he reads. Some people will think that knowing the books is not a big deal. But it is. It's just a matter of realizing that certain books can change someone's outlook in life.

My writing is something my family doesn't know about, or just know superficially. But this matter is something that deserves its own different story. Its own different novel, for crying out loud. I have so many unresolved issues with this, which I hope I'd get over someday. I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, I was trying to get to my point (and I do have one, despite the deceptive aimless meandering) that sometimes it doesn't matter that much if your parents don't know anymore what music you listen to, or who your new friends are, or what your views on suicide and religion are.

There's this cosmic energy, if you will, that binds us with our parents that never fails to inform them the essentials of our own beings. Our happiness, our sadness, our anger, our frustrations, our peace of mind. They're our personal resident psychics in this world and lifetime, that even without solicited consultation, they will be able to point out how you are and more importantly, who you are.

How did this epiphany hit me? It was New Year's Eve, I think, when I was reading an old children's encyclopedia off my aunt's bookshelves. The whole two-inch thick volume was all about the evolution and appreciation of visual art written as an instructional material to children and young teens. It has always been an absorbing read ever since I was a kid and I invariably browsed through it each time we came over their house. I didn't notice that my mother was keenly observing me until she interrupted my reading. She had this pensive look on her face.

She told me in our family's patented hodge-podge English-Tagalog-Visayan mode of communication, which I'm going to simplify here for readability: "Bom, you have a pure spirit. You don't know any midpoints or in-betweens. When you're happy, you heartily laugh out loud. But when you're angry, you're not afraid to show it, too. When you read, you get so absorbed in it. Just like in everything else you do, the world around you ceases to matter."

And of course, that merited the most graceful response from me: a snort.

That's what's amazing about it. She could sum me up into something so simple that it's almost right. Who else but one's own mother can cut through delusional complexities of one's self and just trim it down to the most rudimentary things? How did she come up with these things, anyway? To think that these profound insightful assessment came from the same person who not so long ago sharply turned to me in mid-conversation and in a shocked voice asked me, "You're allergic to alcohol?! How did you even know you are?" (Another different story, people. And no, she wasn't referring to ethyl or isopropyl alcohol.)

Alas, I am not the deep, multifaceted, angsty, misunderstood individual I thought I was all along. Apparently, according to my own mother, I'm pure of spirit. Whatever that means.