Monday, September 06, 2004
like rats on wodent wheels
last night, my sis and i were having another of our life-sucks conversations. and again,we hit another painful realization how and why life...in more ways that one... sucks. we realized that in our present generation, people live to make a living and definitely not the other way around.
maybe it was the mommies in us talking. maybe because we are a couple of working moms who want to take care of our kids more than anything else. maybe because it pains us to have no choice but to give our kids whatever our job has left of our waking time ... say 3 ... 4 hours tops. maybe because we realized how short childhood is and that we can't be there to witness everything. or maybe because we grew up the same way our kids are growing now.
i recalled how at age 11, i still cried in silence whenever my mom leaves for work and i am left alone. she has not left the gate and i already missed her. it has been like that for as long as i can remember. it did taught me how to be independent. to fix my own lunch. to prepare my stuff for school. but i have always longed. always.
my sis told me how excited she was when my mom suprisingly picked her up in school. we recalled how safe we felt when we saw her at the school grounds looking for us during the July 1991 earthquake. we were both proud and excited and happy when she did those unexpected visits.
it seemed we can never get enough of her. till now, the atmosphere at home is just warm during school break not because it's summer but because she's around...24 hours of her day.
so what makes life unfair? it's not being able do what our hearts wanted to do all along. it's working our butts off to send our kids to good schools who when their time come would be working their butts off too. man, it's an endlesss cycle of studying then working that you sometimes wonder, is this really it???
take Sam's case, she's three years old and is already in the cycle. the cycle that become more complicated and more dangerous as time pass.
and what makes it more unfair is that we have no choice. it's so much easy to say, "I don't care about money. i'll just do what I want to do. write. or teach maybe. or better yet, just be a mother to my kid." but no, oh no. it won't be that easy the same way it will never be easy to see your kid not being able to have the things she wants because you did what you wanted to do. because whether we admit it or not, money indeed makes the world go 'round, especially in these trying times.
and as our conversation ended and painful conclusions realized...we both took a glimpse of our kids enjoying cartoon network...and just...sighed...
babyburn at 4:32 PM