TO WHERE YOU ARE


We have a friend who's been here in America for the past several years. He left his wife back home to keep up the business he started there. She comes every so often to visit him and be with him and goes back again. But I guess it's been a while and this arrangement is starting to make less sense to him than it did before.

About the time we moved in, he has also started to look for his own apartment so he could move out of his Mom's house. This he did in preparation for when his wife comes in December, so they could have their own place. He fixed it up all by himself, bought whatever stuff he thought they would need. Personally, it pains me to see a man go through something like that without a woman to help him. I don't know... when it comes to these things, I just know that women do it better and men would almost always be at a loss... would almost always be helpless. I know that is so old school, but still.

I remember when Papa and I first came to Singapore and he had to go ahead of me because I wanted to wait until my youngest sister gave birth. When I came and saw what he did to what would be our apartment for a year, I knew that he tried to do the best he could, the best that he knew. Of course I needed to clean it better and put things where they better belonged but it was good, considering. And I was so touched by his beaming pride at what he came up with. I don't know why I am so touched by this kind of things... they're like feel-good movies. Most of the time, they don't even have to make sense.

Anyway, his wife won't come. I mean, she will but she wants to go back. I can only guess why she would choose to do that. I am not privy to the details of their life. And at the same time, I'm wondering how that makes our friend feel. I wonder what signals or message he's getting out of this. Like... she'd rather be somewhere else than be with him? Or... that she'd rather be doing something else than build a life with him, make memories with him.

I'm sorry if I sound judgmental. I do not mean to be. I guess I am lucky that for Papa and I, being together has always been paramount in whatever decision we had to make. Like we're here now in anticipation of my being able to work here. He had to find a way to be with me when that happens. So he turned things around and found work before I did, making things even more easy for me.

Sometimes, in my idle moments, I ponder on what life would be like if I had to go on and live it without Papa, God forbid. It's a lot of different things all at once... it's scary, and lonely. It's unconceivable, almost pointless. It just couldn't be.

When you've been living a life with someone for fourteen years, when you've been loved one way for fourteen years, you learn to think and feel and do things in a certain manner that wouldn't be easy to shed off, like shedding off a soiled dress. And whatever situation you may find yourself in, there would always be that something in your life from which you would draw forth comfort and strength... something that will always tell you, 'It's alright. It will be alright.' Your body gets to know spaces and curves and textures and scents very intimately that it will not be able to bring itself to yield to anything other than those that has become as familiar as its own skin... it will warm to no other. You go to certain places and it will feel painfully strange leaving just one set of footprints on the path. Each morning you wake up will not be the mornings you've known from long ago, from a different life.

How can one unlearn all that?

If I could, I would like to ask that of his wife... how does she let one moment pass that she isn't where he is?

How does one move alone in a life meant for two?