Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

I just remembered how Mom always hovered over me while I was eating
when I was a kid, and how I used to hate it. The reason behind my
remembering is that I was just now staring at the Champ-o-Rado box on the table,
trying to translate “Naghahari ang Sarap!” based on what little I know
and context (“Healthy/Nutritious and Delicious”? Maybe not),
and on the bottom left corner of this box is a picture
of a mom hovering over her kid while she’s eating,
and they’re both smiling. It reminds me
of me and my mom. But we were never smiling.
Her hovering,
her watching. . .
It was like I could never escape,
even while eating.
Food was a punishment,
a threat,
a boring necessity.
Junk food was my first drug.
Anything I could shove into my face while watching tv by myself.
Crunchy, salty, fatty, full of chemicals—just like this healthy/nutritious
Champ-o-Rado. Sarap! And

My God.
It hits me.

We were never a happy family.

We had our happy moments, like going to Busch Gardens
or to the movies,
but even those memories are not framed without
resentment/
bitterness/
sadness/
hopelessness that no matter how hard we tried, we were never a happy family.
ever.

And now that Dad’s dead, we’re even worse.
He was The Knot that held us all together.
Now we’re just frays
blowing dangerously off into the wind in any direction,
barely attached to the place
we all used to be for 38 years.

A neighbour’s chimes bring me back
to the centre
out of this meditation.
My family loved chimes.
We had them on each side of our house,
to catch the music of all the winds.
I imagine each of us—the four of us—
smiling when we heard the chimes,
noticing them,
and it was quiet.

That was love.

It might have been one, two, or three fourths happiness,
not one whole. But

let’s use a puzzle metaphor instead.
Pieces of a puzzle never really fitting together,
but if you nudged them a bit,
close enough.