Meeting Myself in Fifteen Years

I started taking classes at the library to curb boredom. I don't like being idle so I figured the best way to make use of my time is to take advantage of a free service. Besides, one can only take so much TV in a day.

So one day while I was surfing the library website, I found a list of classes offered at different branches. It had everything from Computer Classes to Arts & Crafts to Meet the Author guest visits. I signed up.

Yesterday was three levels of MS Excel. My love affair with spreadsheets and all things mathematical has been in need of serious rekindling, or beginning, to be more exact. I arrived early and sat outside the classroom and met a nice middle-aged woman who had also signed up for all three levels. She had an accent that sounded like she was from the Caribbean.

During the break, we walked out together, intending to eat at separate places, but she changed her mind and went with me to Burger King. While waiting in line to order, she got a phone call that sounded like it was from a loved one. I was right. It was her daughter.

She went on to say that they're very close, that she's a single parent, that her daughter just married and moved to the West Coast, that they moved to Orlando twenty-three years ago from the Caribbean, and that she is now adjusting to life without her daughter.

We spent the rest of lunch making small talk about our other countries, our daughters, and the things we're looking forward to in 2008.

I couldn't help but think that some day, I too will be in an empty house and on the phone with Kyera who is off living her own life somewhere.

I hope there will be more classes at the library by then. And maybe a young single mom who's trying to find her way around a new life that I can share lunch with.

The One About the Ballerina

K just got promoted to the Advanced Class at her Ballet School. I am so proud of her! What makes this such a tremendous accomplishment is the fact that she just started taking class last September 4, 2006.

I enrolled her when she was three but she hated it and gave up after a lesson. She asked to enroll again at the age of eight and lasted six weeks and one recital.

So when she asked me for lessons at the age of sixteen, I was hesitant. But wanting to be supportive, I had her do research on whether it was not too late for her to start.

She was told it wasn't and enrolled the first Monday of September.

K turned 17 last December and we gave her pointe shoes. Her father and I split the cost.

This week, she started with the Advanced Class and is loving every painful minute of it - the 500 crunches, the daily pointe class, the tandem stretching. She is obsessed with ballet. Always in dance forums and ballet sites online, and doing anything she can to get better, better, better.

Which is why I need to be sure that where we end up in the US will have a great ballet school for her to keep doing what she lives, breathes and eats (or not) for. I could not bear the thought of taking her away from something that is so important to her and which, remarkably feels the same way about her.

song playing on my windows player: she talks to angels by the black crowes

A Work in Progress

So I set up this blog and convinced K to do a tag team post with me but she is... shy. More like... daunted and says she's not as... good as me at this.

I disagree. My seventeen year old is one of the most level-headed, most intelligent, most talented around. And I say that not just because I'm her mother. She has been home schooled since third grade and has turned out smarter than others her age. Very self-reliant and internet-savvy, my wee one is. Growing up with a mom like me, she's had to be. And I mean that in a single-parent-who's-had-to-work-all-her-child's-life kind of way. She's learned a lot on her own.

Now we both, twitter and technorati, and wordpress and multiply, and now, this, together.

She says she doesn't know what to post about our leaving Manila. I'm guessing she's still processing the reality. One look at the description I wrote for this blog and she started to tear. "We're leaving, Mom."

"Yes, we are. God willing."

Blogging about this together will help us both come to terms with this transition. And someday, when we've gotten to Point B from Point A, we will be able to look back at this blog and smile from wherever Point B is.