MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/27 June) – I’ve hardly seen the sun this week. The rains would come even at midday, leaving a dreary sensation that blends with the stillness of our village.
But it’s not actually the clouds that cover the sun that has caused this gloomy feeling. Nor is it the sun I’m missing. Each time I sit at my desk amid the silence around like I’m doing now, I become aware that the weather isn’t to blame. I’m alone the whole day on weekdays, except during lunchtime when Alexandria, the youngest who is still in high school, would come home.
Her mother eats lunch in her office. Sometimes her job takes her to other towns.
Alexandria is the only child left with us. Her brother Aries is staying with Lola and Auntie in the old house, although he sometimes joins us for meals. Athena, who will hopefully finish her civil engineering course this school year, is in Musuan, and only comes home on weekends. Anthea is in MSU-IIT, trying her wits in chemical engineering. Most likely, she’ll only be home during long breaks.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, we can often keep in touch despite the distance. And there’s always this folder in my PC that holds the digital memories of their younger years when they were around most of the time. Still, there’s no substitute for their physical presence that sometimes I’d wish they were small children again and totally dependent on us.
Baisha, Warming and JB keep me company in the absence of the children. I can talk to them but they can’t do the same; they can only bark and wag their tails to acknowledge my calls. At least, aside from serving as my security, their barking at strangers and other dogs that pass by reminds me that there’s a world out there. Nothing compares though to the music of the children’s laughter; their mirth gives warmth, their smile brings radiance on gloomy days.
But while it may help to long for those times that have passed us by, we can’t go on clinging to our hopeless romantic selves. We can’t be melancholic fools forever. Mortals as we are, we have to accept that every time the sun sets a part of us also dies. There’s no escaping the law of entropy. (MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. H. Marcos C. Mordeno can be reached at hmcmordeno@gmail.com.)