Far and Away

I spoke to Kitty today for an hour after a long time. She is in far away Sydney with her friends and her music and has lived away from home for three years to go to University. This business about sending children away to school is all f***** up! I don't know why we do it. I raised them to be mentally and emotionally prepared to be sent off for schooling abroad without anticipating what the damage would be on me and the rest of the family who are left to deal with the vacuum. It is one of the most painful things--this physical separation from a child and yes, its edges dull in time and life does become sustainable, but the ache stays deep in the pit of the stomach always.

It builds character some say; others claim it teaches children independence, resourcefulness, courage, humility, and many other abstract and high-faluting concepts that sound like crap to me right now when all I feel like doing is asking her to pack up and fly home.

I keep telling my two older girls to go ahead and forge their own lives and their own futures away from home. I keep saying, "I don't want you to be like these generic twenty-somethings who all look alike with their straight shoulder-length hair, tank tops, mini skirts, and flip flops, hanging on to the arm of their parents saying 'Hi Tito, Tita' sporting a perpetual smirk, constantly in coversation about the latest fashion, working in the family business, being driven around by their drivers, tended to by their yayas." I tell them that all I want is for them to live fierce and to live strong and to be able to say "I lived a full life," when they get to their sixties.

But I want to take it all back!

Our children sent overseas don't necessarily have better education; we have U.P., La Salle, Ateneo, etc. right here. But it just might be the fact that once one has survived living away from the comforts of home, from the safety of family, from the familiar and predictable, exposed to threats of danger and alienation, one is automatically assumed to be of a higher maturity level. And rightfully so!

But, dang! Do I really care right now?