Life, Day by Day

I just got home from a dinner date with high school classmates, one of whom is visiting from abroad.  Although there were just the three of us, we had a lot of fun reminiscing about our younger days and sharing stories about our lives now.  It dawned on me as I was driving home that although we have long been living separate lives, there will always be ties that bind us together, just as some of these also bring up ghosts of our past.

I went to an all-girls high school although I did have boys as classmates in elementary and intermediate grades. But I don't remember much about those days...I think I spent high school in a blur, maybe because I did not become part of any group or clique so that I wasn't able to create a lot of memories. Looking back, my high school life was pretty much about growing up from childhood to teenager. I entered high school at age 11 and graduated at 15...still a child, really. I wasn't even allowed to party with boys yet! My main preoccupation then was reading...I literally finished most if not all of the books in our school library. I was seen as a quiet girl by the other year levels because they saw me as always reading. Of course, my own classmates did not think so because I was quite talkative and opinionated since I had all these general knowledge in my head. They considered me to be very childish compared to them who were a year or two older than me (translation: they ...

Family reunions were never a big deal for me since I really could just barely stand spending time and talking with some of my closest blood relatives (mostly on my dad's side)...don't get me wrong, I care about all of them and in fact, a few are my best friends but there is a bunch that I really have nothing in common with and have a totally different value system so that being around them makes reunions a path to sanctification for me ;) But with the death of the two in-laws (all on my mother's side), family get-togethers were the norm for the past two weeks and I found myself going from one relative to another for lunch or dinner. I have not seen some of these relatives for a long time, others arrived from Canada or the U.S. so that even though I was not one to initiate a reunion, it is during occasions like these that I am more conscious of the importance of family ties especially for those of us who are now in our mid-life. Most families lose touch with their cousins a...