2006-12-12
In which I find a cure for loneliness
The last few days have remedied my loneliness by leaving me truly alone - or as alone as one can be in a world where virtual becomes reality and reality virtually non-existent.
With a CCA hiatus, phone buddies going from sizzling to smouldering to quite, quite cold, and my 101 friends flying all over the world for this-and-that, I got tired of waiting for the intervals in their schedules and decided to take some time off for myself. What sealed it was the visit from my cousins in Australia, who got my siblings packed and shipped away to various sleepover points. So over the last few nights, I couldn't help but realize my bedroom was really quite big. (We have a habit, forged by our still-existent fear of the dark/bogeyman/ghosts/cupboards, of piling into the same room. The Parent-Safe reason: we love each other. The official reason: safety in numbers. The real reason: so I can feed my siblings to the bogeyman when he visits and pray he'll be too full for a third helping. But then again, I'm pretty sure that's the reason why there's safety in numbers anyhow.)
But I will always think of the past three or so days with absolute fondness, and archive them in the shelves where Plato's forms have been neatly folded in the dust. They shall be my blueprints of a real holiday.
My parents must have noticed the sudden dip in my social activity, and decided that the last-three-days-or-so presented the perfect opportunity to coddle their darling princess for a while. Not a harsh word was spoken, and I can't deny that however amused I was, their undivided attention was very, very nice.
The mornings were spent living out my mom's fantasies of giving our home a make-over (finally), watching her take measurements of the oddest corners of the house in her lone but very contented waltz. We were received at noon by my dad, who always seemed to pull time for us like a magician pulls rabbits out of a hat, and we would embark on a gay journey in search The World's Best Lunch, which we could never quite decide on. They never guessed that watching them ponder the makansutra between jokes and affectionate gestures already made the lunches the best things in the universe.
We went shopping - which convinced me that the godsend was truly divine - and between my mom and I, we bought a pair of shoes from every shoe shop we stopped at (her weakness, my delight). The world, I suppose, saw blatant materialism. But I saw only my mother looking thoughtfully at my soft, uncalloused feet trying on their maiden pair of heels, saying "Yes, I suppose it's time you became a woman".
My memory has compressed it all into a photo montage, of images of my dad sipping out of his china coffee cup, a little man doing a little stretch; my mother brimming with telltale excitment during the execution of her christmas conspiracies, my dad pretending not to know we bought him a lava lamp while his back was turned; my dad picking out outrageous clothings from boutiques to tease me - then threatening Muslim conversion the moment I pick out an item that that doesn't have a turtleneck; my parents collectively preparing to pay for everything I spend more than 2 minutes eyeing (I never exploit their generousity, by the way. Never).
And then there were the nights, where they upped their nightly checks from one to three (inversely proportional to the number of children in the room. it seems), trying the door as softly as possible but always succeeding in waking me up.
For all the things I wanted to say about the heaven that transpired, I don't know what words to use now.
But I know for certain, that then, I found out what it was like to love.
And I'm sorry it took the material world to prove how delightfully simple and plain it was.nothing ever happens at 4:09 p.m.