The EYES

Dear Mouse, I saw the eyes. They were sad. The boy approached my friend seated next to me. He called him daddy. Realizing that he was not, the boy asked "where is my daddy". I know his mother. I always bump into her whenever our common friend has family occasions to celebrate. For the last two years, I have been wondering how come she does not relocate the family to the city where she is working. It was money issue. No more question. The boy followed me to the car when I went out to the restaurant to get the gift for the new Christian. He asked the same question while running around the car to avoid his mom who dashed outside to bring him back to their table. For a few seconds, I stopped her and asked where is the father. People in denial of a problem would always skirt the issue by responding negatively or by rationalization. I can see that something is wrong with the kid. He grew up with the father taking care of him while the mother was away earning a living in another State. Now, his parents are separated. It was abrupt according to my friend. The boy was just whisked away from the doting jobless father. I know someone who talked to his parents like an adult when the separation was emotionally unbearable. According to him, he was just six then and his classmates were teasing him as Putok sa buho( fatherless).His parents relented. A couple of professionals, they knew that there was no more love that bound them except for the love to the boy who wanted to grow up in a two-parent household. Despite the absence of a cat-and dog-squabble, their lives were miserable but then they lived together in one roof not necessarily in the same bedroom until the boy grew up to understand that there is no perfect marriage. My friend realized how selfish he was. He witnessed that it was a torture for both his parents to acknowledge the reality that they were drifting apart and they had come to dead end of their relationship. But rationalizing that he was a kid then who did not care about other feelings except for his own, he thought that his demand was just right. Now that he is married and have two young kids, he is too careful not to subject them to the same anguish . The marriage is not solid as a rock. There are a couple of times when he ponders on separating from the wife. Just the thought of his son asking him the same request he did years ago makes it unbearable to toy the idea of repeating the cycle. Good, if the kid can articulate to the parents what he wanted. For one who cannot, like the kid I met in the Christening, the pain will remain in the his eyes, hoping that the next person that the will see in the sea of faces is his father. The CAT Dear CAT, Here is a kleenix. Don't drench me with your tears. I might short circuit and start talking to myself too. The Mouse