Holy hell, here’s my first go at posting about love. This is gonna be written in stream of consciousness (at least what my stream of consciousness is like)
You know the teenage years when your parents suddenly become distant objects. And that is actually built up from your younger years when you didn’t like certain things but you were too small to say NO to your parents. Suddenly you hit 14 or 15 and hey, you’re halfway to adult hood, your teachers make you feel important and you’d like to stamp some authority at home.
Oh yea, the rebellious years. The nights I spent arguing with my dad to the last point until he just mutters “you’ll learn next time” and goes away. (That was like every other night).
I’d be honest, family was like bottom priority. I did the duties of the only child, especially an only child to two handicapped parents. Helped around, did the chores, got extra jobs, be the arms and legs of them. Anything willingly? Not really. It was like a chore to complete and if it did not resurface, even better.
But you know how they always say – “You’ll be different after 20”. Hell yes, they’re right.
I always dreaded family outings. Because Mom would get all whipped up in a frenzy about being on time. Dad will want to take 101 photographs at each turn. And I was like the main engine of 2 wheelchairs that had two really noisy occupants (that were on a normal semi argumentative state, they like doing it for fun). Worse, their jokes were out of my age range and so were mine to them. So I did my duties in outings.
Things changed.
We had an outing just a few days back. Jack’s Place, Omni Theatre, Botanical Gardens. Nothing exciting except this time I was the cameraman. This time I played half the role my dad used to. Well, I realised that it wasn’t how fun the place was (Botanical Gardens pretty boring, even the flowers are dully colored) but how fun the people wanted it to be. My mom as usual, loves to be negative. But this time, I helped my dad out with the “make-things-fun” portion. That changed things. We got my mom to do sporting shots in the park and even though we never covered the whole park and I was sweaty like a pig pushing 2 wheelchairs uphill/downhill/etc, everyone had fun. I look back at the photos and there it was, valuable time spent well.
I got home that night and told my dad, “Hey, we should do this more often.” Never thought I’d ever say this.
I think May Day finally changed my view about my family.
It’s not how much you have or how good the situation is, its how much you are willing to give and sacrifice wholeheartedly that matters. And I think, that’s the very basic foundations of love that has brought many families and relationships thus far.