The Dowggie Blog

There are those who see me as soft-hearted.

I’ve also been accused of having a hard, cold heart.

The truth lies somewhere in between, I suppose.

There are parts of my heart which I’ve learned over the years to harden into ice. Those icy-heart-sicles have been tucked away deep in a locked refrigerator inside a closet within a cobwebbed attic I almost never look into for fear of what I might see.

14 years ago I constructed said refrigerator within said closet within said attic.

I did that just so I could keep functioning on a day-to-day basis. The fridge was constructed to keep the heart-sicles icy. The closet was made to keep the fridge safe from prying eyes. Fridge and closet were tucked deep into attic to keep them secure.
These admittedly silly constructs were created out of a sense of self-preservation. It was all I knew to do. Mea culpa.

I distanced myself in part because I sought to spare an innocent from strife. It seemed to me that benign neglect was a safer sin than staying and thereby engendering inevitable strife.

Yes, it was cowardly. Mea maxima culpa.

The only thing I can say in my defense is this: I asked her to come with me, to believe as I did. To believe in me. To believe in what we might accomplish together.

Flawed though the perception may have been, it seemed to me that she chose the safer course. Her choice is one I’ve always respected. I understand perfectly why she chose as she did.

We then lived apart.

When our son was born, the very air in the room – heated to searing temperature by the high intensity lasers of his maternal grandmother’s gaze – seemed hell-bent on squeezing me out.

In the year that followed, I tried several times to visit. 

I was clearly unwelcome.

There was a birthday of his when we had all agreed to have him come over to my family’s house for lunch. The lechon manok had been ordered, paid for. Before cabbing over to her house, I spoke to her on the phone and was told that we had gotten a grandparental green light. I proceeded to her house only to be told that her parents had forbidden what was supposed to have been a done deal. It was never clear to me where, how and why that day’s signals had become crossed.

The above incidents are the tip of that iceberg. The rest shall be left unsaid.

Now, however, it seems that certain skeletons in the closet within the attic have been fiddling with the fridge. Said skeletons seem to have taken the icy-heart-sicles out. Said skeletons seem to be licking vigorously.

Perhaps the time has come for the ice to melt.

May the puddles of melted icy-heart-sicle douse the raging flame in my son’s heart.

I know it may be too much to ask but I can only hope that hope is allowed.

Pasasaambat.

(captain, please take the wheel)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 10:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.