Holes

I wrote this post a few weeks ago while on hiatus in Tagaytay. I thought better about posting it then -- never say (or especially blog, but thank God for the edit function) anything in anger as you're likely to regret it later. Well, things've since calmed down and I'm finally posting it with some omissions to avoid casting judgment on the involved. Thanks to my mom for her counsel.

But it's here so I'll always remember these truisms about the burden of parenthood Nike and I now bear. So many things can go awry in the course of our lifetime together, Noah's, Nike's and mine, even with the best of our intentions. Relationships, however beautiful, can be so fragile.

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February 19, 2010. T House, Tagaytay - It's almost midnight and my son's in bed with his mom. I just checked, Noah is in Nike's gentle embrace…except one of them's snoring as both are knocked out from today's escapist exertions. Still, what a blissful sight!

And here I am right outside the room, thinking, smoking, taking in the cool air of Tagaytay on this, our weekend retreat from the past days' melodramatic maelstrom. The hot tea's run out (and dammit, no beer!) and the cool air is just beginning to calm my thoughts on the searing cycle of damage and denial that led us here.

It’s heartbreaking to be sure. But I can’t and won’t share the details if I have any hope of mending this. Oh, but I know it ain’t up to me. I’m only just a guy standing by his girl.

But I am a parent now, so suffice it for me to put down the valuable lessons this episode has reminded me:

• A mother or father’s sacrifice to put food on the table will never absolve or negate any kind of neglect or abuse.

• As with love and all things good, children learn hate and all things evil from their parents.

• When a parent fails to FULLY love a child, the poor kid likely assumes there is something wrong with him or herself and then they grow up with a negative self-image.

• That no matter how far people go in life, no matter what they achieve, they will never really be free of any damage done – consciously or otherwise – by their parents. These holes they'll never really be able to fill. And these holes...do not a whole person make.

• It gets harder to forgive and forget if the cycle keeps repeating itself, if there is no honest dialogue enabled by humility and an acceptance of how life has turned out.

• Even lions and lionesses must protect their cubs from themselves. If they can't, someone else should. Someone else will.

Hh. Singing John Mayer's 'Daughters' in my head right now.

And I really, really, really need a beer.