A ‘Perfect’ Family

No one is ever happy with their family. It may be because of a bad decision, a terrible misunderstanding or a lot of other things. But in my family, it was something simple yet irritating: Rules.

I am not the typical teenager who goes out often or wears trendy clothes or eats popular food or knows the latest news about celebrities or even spends that much time on the phone, laptop or someplace else. I’m the type of 15-year-old who does chores every day, reads a book, stays home after every attempt at asking for permission to go elsewhere and wears hand-me-down clothes.

Most times I turn down invitations from friends because, aside from there being a small chance of me being allowed to go, I don’t have money to spend. I wasn’t raised to ask for money from anyone, not even my parents. We are given just what we need.

No one will believe me if I tell them I don’t and will never have a Facebook account.  Supposedly, I am not age-ready and responsible enough to have one.  And even if I will be in later years, Facebook will probably not be that much of a hit anymore; people will be busy with something else.

You can say my life is a teenage nightmare. I don’t have what every teenager might have. Indeed I am not every teenager. Sometimes, I think I might have done something terrible to deserve this.

One day after card-giving in school, my mother told me that she spoke with my class adviser. Apart from the matter of grades, she said that my adviser told her that he saw the four of us (my mother, my siblings and me) playing hide-and-seek one late afternoon. We were waiting for my dad to pick us up from school. It was the perfect time to play hide-and-seek. When Dad finally came, each of us lined up to kiss him on the cheek, like we always did. But because I knew there were still people around, I gave my dad a quick buss.

My mother said that my adviser suddenly burst into tears. He told her he wished he had a family like ours: Perfect.

How can that be? What exactly did he see in us that day to make him say we were perfect?  I know for sure that my family is anything but perfect. I couldn’t imagine a guy crying over such a thing. I couldn’t even imagine myself crying over such a thing.

During class devotion time with our adviser one day, our point of conversation moved from the day’s scripture to matters about family, something I wasn’t that thrilled to be talking about then. When it was our adviser’s turn to speak, he talked of the time when he saw us playing hide-and-seek. He said that when he was watching us, he thought of his family.  He said he asked himself why his family couldn’t be like ours: Perfect. He said it again. Of all the words, why that? Then he broke into tears. He was sobbing right in front of us. Nobody said a word or moved a muscle; we were all stunned.

Everything at that moment felt surreal. And then, finally, I understood.  All that time I never thought of my family that way because I was so consumed with grumbling about the things I didn’t own, questioning why I felt so left behind, being angry over the things that didn’t turn out the way I wanted—not realizing that other people would voluntarily take my place if it meant being in a family like mine.

That very moment I realized I had been so blind. When I saw my adviser crying, I didn’t just see his tears. I felt all the longing he had to be with his family. And right then and there, nothing else mattered to me.

Indeed some of the things we have are only but a dream to others.

Gillian Borromeo is a third year student at Jesus the Risen Savior School (Laguna).

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