One last cry

It's tradition. My mother and I would have our photo taken on these stairs every few years. It's been about 10 years since the last one (but thankfully, neither of us has aged much!). Time for a new photo! Digital naman!

Between talking about checking accounts and Big Moves (my own and theirs), Mumsy suddenly blurted out, “Ang lapit na! Two months na lang!” I just kind of brushed it off with a little laugh and changed the subject.

I used to be a big sentimental mess—last days of school, graduations, last days in another country…these were things that easily made me cry. I wondered how other people managed to deal with goodbyes without so much as a tear. Eventually, I learned to keep my emotions in check. I knew my heart was breaking—even just a little—whenever I would leave behind a part of my life, but I learned not to dwell on it, and to look towards the future instead.

And that’s why I changed the subject. Because if I hadn’t, I would’ve totally lost it (and so would she) at that little bakery where we were having a snack. How could I not feel my heart break, thinking about saying goodbye to my home for over two decades? The name I’ve had all my life? The woman I laughed with and cried with and fought with, day in and day out; my “partner in prayer and sanity” during my family’s turbulent, soap opera years?

If there’s anything that could make me come out of my relatively successful emotional repression, it’s my mother. This woman—who supported me, provided for me, put up with my sungit mode, who taught me the meaning of “unconditional love”—deserves a bawlfest of epic proportions.