Lightnings and Yellow Roses

I don’t know why I am filled with an overwhelming sense of affection for my parents right now. I live alone, about an hour’s drive away from them, but we talk over text or phone almost everyday. They are ever present in my life, and maybe sometimes I take them for granted.

For the longest time, Valentine’s Day was our family date. My dad and mom will take us all out and have a family dinner. And dad, unfailingly will have yellow roses for my mom. And my mom will unfailingly have that glow about her. Yellow is my mom’s favorite color.

I guess I had a pretty normal childhood, with normal parents — of course I didn’t always think so. But my parents are extraordinarily, passionately in-love with each other. I think it’s easier to love your kids. To focus on them, and (try to) make sure they function well and don’t turn out to be assholes. It’s kind of default. But to love someone by choice, THAT much, to stay together when everything seemed to be falling apart, to laugh together through the weirdest jokes nobody else gets, and to still have the hots for each other at 60++ years old — that’s something. Don’t get me wrong, they had EPIC fights. Just ask my cousins. That’s everything. My mom once told me that the best way for a man to be a father is to love his wife. And that my father did and still does to this very day. If my parents had nothing else to leave us, that would be enough. The thought that love like theirs is possible, it does exist, that it is work, but it is what makes everything worthwhile.

Maybe that’s why despite all the heartaches and stupidity that I have put my self through when it comes to relationships, I still go on believing that it could happen to me. As in. Kung anu-ano na pinagdaanan ko sa ngalan ng pag-ibig…Leche. But, again, you can never can tell. Namana ko din kakikayan at kagagahan at confidence ng nanay ko, so hindi pa ako nawawalan ng pag-asa. Lightning can strike.