As promised…

It has been a semi-frustrating blog week…

Semi-frustrating because  1) my internet connection has been acting up since saturday evening (see Limited Connectivity entry), and 2) my chance and definitely unintentional brush with icky porn the other day (see Blogging etiquette post). 

Sometimes the universe just throws things at you that you are not prepared for.  Good that I had topics to write about, but it can be pretty exhausting to be angry — or frustrated. 

Today I am keeping my cool.  For along with the frustrating times come moments, too, that warm our hearts. 

Here is something that is light and easy…

This morning as I dropped off my son in school, I lingered a little longer and from the back seat of my car I watched as he walked to the school gate, then enter the school premises, and eventually disappeared going up the stairs to his classroom.  Somehow I couldn’t dismiss that tug in my chest as I watched him walk away.                                           

I remember the first time my son entered big school.  He was only 5 then. He wasn’t the clingy “Mom, please don’t leave me!!!” nor the whiny “I don’t want to go to school!!!” type.  Nor was he the one who cries silent tears — tears that will surely melt a mom’s heart and make her want to whisk her child away (like school was a bad place or something!).  No, my son held his own… He made me bring him to his classroom, he let me leave guiltlessly when it was time to leave, yet made me promise to be there at dismissal time.  And I was there as promised.

He is in 5th grade now.   I still drop him off  in the morning… but by now I am just allowed to either stay in the car or bring him to the gate (“Mom, that is so not cool!!”).  Watching him this morning, I can’t help but ask myself until when do I intend to do this?  I mean, at some point I will have to learn to let go, right?

Letting go is not easy.  Sometimes we wish we can forever hold our children in our hands so they are always protected.  But we also know that by letting them go, we let them learn… we let them experience life… and we let them grow.  Because if we hold on too tight, we will stifle their growth.  There are things that they simply have to learn on their own.

But we know that whatever happens, we will be there to catch them should they fall. Perhaps what is important is that they have the knowledge and the security that whatever happens, when they need us, we will be there to pick them up…

Every dismissal.  As promised.   

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photo via weheartit.com

Bittersweet love

i saw this advertisement in a newspaper about an essay writing contest.  the ad said to write about your personal experience on a given category.  i said to myself, why don’t i submit something?  i love to write… and i know i have had quite a number of memorable experiences… so why don’t i write about them?  — and hopefully win an overnight stay at a really expensive resort?  

not a bad idea, huh?! and so i sat down and wrote. 

the category i chose was Love.  I wrote about a love experience…  something that happened more than a decade ago.  for some reason, as i was writing and reliving the event, it felt like i was transported back in time.  somehow, i could still remember every detail of the story… well, almost every detail.  

it felt like the whole thing happened just last year, or maybe two years ago… not as far off as 16 years back.

i often get that feeling.  whenever i write about MY experiences, or things that happened directly to me, I can recall almost every little detail.  more so, i remember the feeling, as well.  i smile when i relive the good moments, and i still feel some tinge of hurt when i remember the painful ones.  sometimes though, mere words are not enough to describe the feeling.  it’s like it is there but you cannot grasp it in its entirety.  yet you can feel… and the feeling sticks to you.

though i know that people normally would just like to remember the good times, i let myself recall the bad times, too.     it is because of the undesirable things that i have been through that i am who and what i am today.  it is because of the heart aches and the disappointments and the pain i felt at some point in time, that i turned out to be emotionally strong.  it is because i cried buckets of tears over some people in my past life that i don’t get easily hurt or offended now.  and the irony of it all, it’s because i experienced losing love that i learned how to better appreciate and value a new love found.

as i was writing, i realized how much i have changed and grown… from that young, hopeful twenty year old whose love story i was writing about, to the thirty something present me.  truly i am no longer the naive girl that i was back then.  i have come to accept how some things are just not meant to be.  i have come to understand why there are hellos as well as goodbyes. 

people enter our lives for different reasons.   the people who make us really, deliriously happy can also be the very ones who will give us intense pain.  yet this shouldn’t stop us from letting people in.  because regardless of how short or long a person chooses to be in our lives, our experiences with them teach us various lessons.  at the very least, we get to feel something because someone shared a moment with us.

 some people stay for a while, some don’t stay long enough.  but then again, there are also the ones who choose to just stay. 

moving on

Sometimes the only way to begin moving forward…

…is by simply letting go.

 

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(photo credit: weheartit.com)