Triple ripple!

By Jing Villamil

 

THERE is this line of thought, that one’s destiny had long been “writ”; that to one’s half-a-heart is one’s fitting half somewhere. That, if one failed to link with “the One” in this lifetime, wait! One might be luckier in the next lifetime. Or in one of the series of lives after. Just keep rolling with these constant rebirths!

So, does it mean pfft goes the magic – the concept of the heart’s choice? Not really. It just means there are lines and spokes of other thoughts, aligning intersecting, bundling, bungling! But believe what you may, this is indisputable: your heart and your hypothalamus may have had free choice of your spouse, but of your in-laws, you have none. It is take “the One”, take “All” relativities attached, their positivities and negativities alike!

When you marry him/her, you marry his/her family. As this story goes:

They are both actors on stage. But they are also college instructors; he in Mass Communications, she in Mathematics. They met while still studying in college. And they tied the knot as soon as she started to show. A bump!

But she did not stop showing. She had bumps year after year. After which years, a burst of girls sprouting soft plump arms and legs and gorgeously thick curly hair. And like their Dad and Mom, with shrills turning to gloriously full voices to fill a room without using microphones! That loud eh?! And cute bouncy selves to tear the eyes and wear out the smiles on their parents’ faces! They needed help.

Dad instructs his students with the skills and the art of communicating, but he is struck dumb by the what-the? and the how-did? and the why-ey? of a toilet bowl gushing out rather than sucking in, decapitated heads and limbs and torsos of Barbies and Kens swimming in dizzy circles. And Mom with numbers continuously ticking in her head, is most times somehow somewhere lost in mid-stride. She really must trim the counting down to manageable 3s: 3 bottles different colour each, 3 plates cups spoons forks, 3 ditzy sets of everything Korean to wear, 3 separate orders online of pink/white Lego toys to build and hammer to bits, and so on, so soon.

Their combined income could afford only one kasambahay. Each one ended their first week grovelling on the floor before the three glorious-ities, hands in prayerful clasp, mumbling crying begging “Di ko na kaya!” (Can’t take this!) Meaning “Di ko na kayo kaya!” (Can’t take you girls anymore!)

But, then, the gods timely intervened, and the couple got the help they deserved. Her father runs a Martial Arts Academy, with her two brothers as part-time instructors; they have security jobs, other clandestine interests. She is the youngest, the only girl. They spoil her terribly, but they waited for their in-law to sound the SOS. When he did, they came running, almost leaping: the father, the two sons. Shaved head, full-bodied, arms and legs rippling with muscles; but so light on their feet. And surprise, their baritone voices constantly humming wording working out with the Phantom! Of the Opera. And really, not so Miserables with the effort. They bring him home!

Last time I heard, Dad and Mom come home at days’ end, with expectant smiles. Ay, the word “expectant” pala is strictly taboo thereabout! The door opens to three bald giants cooking feeding waltzing around three gloriously glowingly clean babies, eyes and mouth in perfectly rounded delighted O!

Upon seeing the two, the three giants break into Sister Sledge’s song: “We are family!”

This story is not a product of a dream. Nor it is an extremely idealistic episode, probably unsustainable. But it is too true; my Alto had joined their baritones more than once!

Smile then! I really shouldn’t make you cry everytime.

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