Big little big things

It’s been a month since I’ve last blogged. It’s been two months since I’ve last driven myself to Bicol. It’s been three years since I’ve last been to any beach. It’s been eight years since a husband has come home to me, to our bed, drunk at 4 a.m. and reeking of beer and some other woman. But remarkably enough, the current man in my life coming home to me a little tipsy this Saturday night at nine and murmuring about wanting to take something named “Honey Moon Tea” had a completely unexpected effect on me. It just warmed my heart and made me chuckle.

These days I’m taking things easy. Even at work, where things are hectic and schedules are tight, I still manage to keep things light and airy. Perhaps because of all the testosterone around me coming from armed and camouflaged men, I instinctively make it a point to be the feminine balance. Perhaps because I’ve also grown a little older, and thus don’t expect people, men, or the world to be perfect anymore. Or perhaps after all this time, I've finally realized what I really wanted.

The dust has mostly settled, and things have fallen into their new places, largely because they were set there by me with a new plan, a new look, a new direction in mind. It’s amazing what difference the fresh new presence of simple, everyday objects can make in a life. Now there are two chairs in front of my desk, where there used to be just one. There is another Macintosh laptop beside mine and it plays folk and country music, and uses my broadband mainly to practice sending emails with attachments, mostly to me. There are more cables to clutter my workspace. The four of the six pillows that used to keep me company in bed have now been relegated to the back of my closet because I don’t need them anymore. There are now five different shampoo bottles in my shower for one male scalp that needs to use a different brand everyday in order not to get dandruff. There are two toothbrushes beside the sink. My apartment at night now resonates with a low snoring that makes me sleep better than a mug of hot chocolate and a few pages of Henry James can.

And with these little changes and additions comes the negotiation with memories both good and bad. They have to be placed somewhere in the background now because their time is over. Remembering my difficulty with the memories when I first tried to do this years ago, I gathered my strength and steeled and braced myself for a difficult battle between my past and my future. At first I thought I had to beg, plead, cry, shout, cajole, bargain, threaten, drive a hard bargain like before, just to put these loud, vicious, livid, heated, gnashing memories where I want them, but this time it turned out to be quite easy. Almost out of their own volition they have slipped down smoothly, effortlessly, into the cool and moist depths of my sensibilities, leaving me free and unencumbered to move on. And that’s the thing about memories. They know when to let go of you. They know when you’ve learned your lessons. They know when you’re okay.

The tipsy man has now fallen asleep on my bed, and I can hear his snoring from here. Boys will be boys. Men will always drink. But this one drinks just with his troops in the camp about once or twice a month and is home at the stroke of nine in the evening and, though tipsy, makes it a point to be still lucid enough to tell me about his day, listen to my stories of my own day, drink “Honey Moon Tea,” and make love to me before he falls asleep listening to Asin with his large, heavy arm on top of me. There is a world of difference there. And the old memories are perfectly calm, perfectly silent.