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| Sophie lying down on a bed of paper roses |
Tonight I am sitting in the middle of my living room – or
perhaps a room that looks like it had been lived in quite well until recently.
Right now, partially empty with boxes ready to go and forsaken things strewn
across its floors, my soon to be ex-living room looks like a limbo room.
Remember my old post Missing My Old Cave (An Ode to Merville)? Well, the inevitable has happened. Through the assistance of my
continuously amazing and supportive in-laws, we were able to purchase a lovely,
humble little piece of real estate we can really and truly call our own. As our
first payment has already come through and our lease in our current home
expires by the end of the month, the last few days have been spent either
hauling our things to our new apartment or giving things away.
But tonight, I can write. Perhaps not the saddest lines as
the poet Pablo Neruda did, but still sad, wistful, and poignant ones all the
same. For I shall greatly, deeply miss this house.
As I gaze around this quiet, lonely, limbo room, I remember
so many things. I remember my first reaction to Pipo’s breaking the news that
he had decided to rent the house some two months before the wedding. “WHAAAAT?
WE’RE MOVING TO QUEZON CITTTTTTTTYYYYYY?” (It may as well have been Greenwich
for this overzealous Merville girl.) I recall entering it for the first time
and cringing at the strange, orange and green cabinets and walls, and listening
to my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s reassurances that they would have it fixed in
time for our wedding. I remember entering it once more a few weeks before the
wedding and gazing at the pretty white walls, the drop lights on the side, the
lovely beige painted-on tree at the corner, and the soft mint green blinds on
the windows, and feeling a quiet happiness not just for how pretty it had
become, but because I felt as if I was truly known by my in-laws. It was as if
they were able to look deep into my heart, see my hopes and desires for my
first home, and make it look almost exactly as I had dreamed. That day, I felt truly
known, and even more loved by my new family.
This living room, and this house, has been witness to so
many things – my and Pipo’s first attempts at a home cooked meal (both with
pretty good results, if I may say), our first argument (and succeeding ones) as
husband and wife, the beginning of Sophie’s home schooling journey, her reading
through an entire book for the first time, presentations of short dances and plays
she directed (and forced me, her father, and any Tita sleeping over to perform
in). Perhaps one of my most favourite
memories was when the three of us were stuck inside the master bedroom because
the door refused to budge. We had bolted the front door so it was useless
asking my in-laws for help. Seeing then that there was nothing else to be done,
Pipo climbed up our wall, squeezed himself through the window connecting our
room to Sophie’s, back flipped onto Sophie’s bed and kicked open the door from
the outside. In this house, I realized that I hadn’t just married an
ultrastrong kalabaw, but that I had in fact married Spiderman.
We only lived a little over a year in this sweet little
house, but for the love and laughter we shared, the tears we wept, the memories
we keep, its feels as if it were more. If we measure it in love, we have lived
lifetimes, epochs, eras in this home.
Looking back, I find that there is always something that
stands out for each home I remember. For Daffodil Lane in Staten Island, I remember
Rebecca, my first best friend. In Windham Loop, I remember thrilling,
independent walks home with my brother from the bus stop, where Mom would be
waiting for us on the balcony of our third floor apartment, ready to drop the
key into our eager hands. For Tokyo St, Merville, I remember the sweetest, most
fun girlhood ever spent with my crazy wonderful, salt-of-the earth friends. In
Bella Villa, I remember Sophie’s early childhood years, her learning to walk,
and her speaking the most sacred word I have ever heard in my lifetime, Mama. For this house, I will remember this as the
place where Pipo, Sophie, and I first and truly became a family. It is where I
became a wife, and discovered what it was to be the light and love of a
household. If Tokyo was the house of my girlhood, this was the first house of
my womanhood.
It almost is unbearable thinking of this living room, this
house, empty and void of everything that made it our home. I don’t know if I
shall be able to say goodbye to it then. But in one of the amazing books by my
favourite author L.M. Montgomery, her heroine (whether it was Anne of Green
Gables or Emily of New Moon, I can’t remember) dreamily wonders whether the
spirits of those who lived in a house will continue to affect it and its ‘disposition’
because of how they had lived. If this were true, this house will not be a
forlorn house because we have lived in it. It would be filled with echoes of
laughter, footsteps, leaps, and words and moments of love.
And that is how I choose to leave you. I leave knowing that
you are not truly empty, because we leave a part of ourselves with you.
Goodbye, House.
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