:: The Car Lot ::

Friday, October 07, 2005

Its been a while since we got married and for the last few months we've wanted only 2 things in our life. To get our visa to start a small clinic overseas with my parents in New Guinea where I grew up, and to have a child. My mum called last week and our company has been approved and it won't take long for the approval of the medical board and for the visa to be completed. Leslie has been delayed 2 weeks now. For the last couple of months we've been preparing to leave. The physical preparations are easy, other aspects are not so easy for leslie. I have dealt with separation since before I could properly remember. My mum and dad left me behind to study prep and grade 1 in Paranaque. When they moved to Rabaul which had an international primary school, they took me to join my younger brother Joey to study there. I called them auntie and uncle, because that's what my older cousins whom I stayed with called them. I can't remember when I started calling them mum and dad again, but I think it's because I never actually thought of them as being anything less than my parents. I spent 6 normal years with them until they sent me to manila to study high school at Ateneo. How hard was it to adjust? When i came from manila i couldn't speak english fluently, then back in manila all I really knew how to speak was english, and with a british accent and being unfashionable, "baduy!" in Ateneo. Well it was tough. And the dorm. I really didn't care though, all i could think of was my family and that come friday afternoon, my aunt would fetch me and I'd be home in Paranaque again. My grades were so bad I had to get second honors just to make 75. After crying for 2 quarters Brother Dunne asked me to try attending mass at the high school chapel at 7 every morning. I found peace there, enough anyway to get the average I needed to stay in school. I put my second honors card on my desk after brother Dunne had taken out all the regular honor students along with me to Shakey's. He was kidding if I had really done it, it would be my last time. The other brainiacs did their best not to talk to me, once again I didn't belong, way out of my league. As I sat at my desk after dinner one of the real honor students came into my room and noticed my card, "proud na proud" was all he said as he walked away. I was proud, not because of how smart I was, if you don't know that for yourself then maybe you're not as smart as you think, but of how I had a life again. When I woke up the next morning at 6 to go to church early, my honor card was missing. I never saw it again. My parents never saw it. I never looked for it because it was just a piece of paper. My friend Dennis got a third honors card and he said his mum back in Iloilo got it framed and put a small spotlight on it in their living room or something. I knew what he was trying to say, but it just wasn't important to me. I wanted to make it to second year high, and that was it.

Dr. Jayson Arellano Left the Car Lot @ 10:23 AM

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