The Soul

The eyes are the mirror of the soul, they say. But when the soul overflows, it taints the entire face, the entire body. People’s lives are engraved on their face. Was life kind and gentle or filled with sorrow? Was love and kindness the main sentiment or sadness and loneliness? A face will tell it all. It cannot hide its spirit.

A week or so ago, I received mail from my mother. She had purchased a digital camera and took a few pictures of herself which she sent to me. I assume she chose the best ones, those that she really liked. When I opened the envelop and retrieved the content, my heart sunk. There was so much pain and loneliness. I didn’t know who was that person looking straight at me. The image of that poor old woman seemed so different from the one who still haunts me. She is a stranger now. So much has been missed. I will never know who she was, who she is. I almost cried. I almost cried because I felt nothing; pity perhaps, sadness but not love. Where did the love go?

There was a time when she was not so old, so lonely, when she was young, alive, joyous sometimes, there was a time when she was my mom. And I needed her so much. I needed her to love me. Is it some twisted revenge of the heart I am experiencing now? I don’t think so. I think I just dried out, waiting.

I wish I could do something to appease her life as she is getting older. I wish I could take upon some of her discomfort. But I also know that I am the only person she would never accept any kind of relief from. She would like for me to offer, only to be able to reject it, to reject me. She will never be able to embrace anything from me. I was the chosen one. The one she chose not to love.

Still, it pains me to see how her life was lived. I hope whatever lesson she was meant to learn was learnt and that next time her life may be softer. I hope in spite of all the pain she caused, she will be free to move on without repay. If there is a judgment day where one sits and review the good and the bad of the ending life, I want her to know that as hard as I tried, I never stopped wishing she could love me, but understood that she simply could not and forgave her.

The Idiot

I went to Starbucks to get a coffee. I desperately needed one to get me through the afternoon. Work was totally uninspiring. With a – few - minutes to spare, I sat down and browsed through the sex-advice column of the local newspaper. I am a fan. I find it absolutely fascinating what people will come up with. Sometimes it’s sad though. People really are quite isolated, especially when they are in real kinky stuff living in farmland somewhere in some conservative town. Other times it seems that people simply need someone to talk to.

Anyhow, as absorbed as I was with the story of that girl who was looking for a way to leave her boyfriend for his sister, I started eavesdropping on the conversation going on at the next table. The guy was recalling with gruesome details, for the benefit of his buddies, an accident he had at work. From what I gathered, he was a house painter. According to him, while attempting to paint an unreachable part of the sunroof, he had removed his boots, and jumped on a tiny ledge to prove to his work buddies that – he – could do it. The glitch seemed to occur when he fell off the ridge and landed thirty five feet below, barefoot on a concrete block, breaking a leg and shattering his wrist. He apparently failed to notice the extent of his injuries until someone pointed to him that his femur was protruding awkwardly from his trouser pants and he was covered in blood. He had been on disability ever since, baffling the Inspector as to how he could possibly have lost his shoes in the fall. Since then, he had lost the use of his right hand and after several surgeries, still walked with a bad limp. The real funny thing was that now every time he walks through a metal detector at the airport, the alarm rings. Since he can no longer do that job for a living, he was considering going back to school. He wanted to become an electrician…

Snapshot

Throughout the Winter Games, I exchanged mails and pictures of my everyday Olympic endeavors with my dad who has a computer. My mother, on the other hand, decided on the day of her retirement that she would never, ever deal with a computer ever again. To this day, she has been true to her words and thus, isolating herself every day more from the rest of humanity. Nowadays, it is very hard to maintain close contact with someone living in a different time zone or lifestyle. Harder still when the motivation just really isn’t there. Calling her suggest impeding on hours of prime time, usually during weekends. This wouldn’t be so bad if the exchange would not systematically be pervaded with contempt. Before John, these phone calls would torment me for hours afterward. Now, not so much, I space them better, so she doesn’t really have a choice but to be on a better behavior, knowing that it may otherwise take months before she hears from me again.

Unfortunately for her, my mother is her own worst enemy, and always will be. There is really no point in punishing her for wrongdoings when she is so much better at it than I could ever be myself. She has been torturing herself every minutes of her miserable life. It’s quite sad, really.

Still, at some point, my mother clued into the fact that the Olympic Games were going on and asked if I could send her some pictures I took during that time. Well, I knew I would be exposing myself to utmost scrutiny so I chose carefully an array of subjects from crowds, landscapes to me and my friends, and picked only the best ones. Nothing good would come out of it, from either end, but I obliged. I had thirty or so printed and shipped to her.

It must have been last week when she left me a voice mail. She had received the pictures and wanted to discuss them. I figured since I would have to call on Easter, I might just as well wait and be ride of it all at once. I was prepared for the worst. I have long ceased to expect anything else.

She was thrilled, the pictures were beautiful, the landscapes marvelous, the crowds as impressive as on TV and as for me, my new hair cut made me look like a cancer patient in remission…

“Gee mom, no wonder you don’t have any friends if you talk to people like that”

“I never talk to people like that!”

“Humph…”