He is still the same son after all

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I was really depressed, frustrated and feeling low. What happened last year was repeated – three kids getting sick one after the other.

Angel and Edgar were already well and finally went to school.

Ralph’s fever just started last Friday.

Of my three kids, Ralph, who is the eldest, is the one that I don’t want to get sick, because he is the one who has the lowest threshold on pain.

True enough, he was always whining, almost crying at the slightest hint of pain in his body.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with being a firstborn child. We were always there for him, and wouldn’t let anything harm him.

Because he was the only one then, we can look after him better. That’s why he rarely gets sick when he was still young.

But he got sick… and was always crying. I couldn’t even leave him for a while – so I stopped writing, left the computer and just sat beside him on the bed.

To entertain him and let his mind off the pain (imagined or true), he is feeling, I talked to him. I asked if he still recall what we used to do when he was still small….

We used to walk around the neighborhood without any particular direction, he was barely four or five years old then.

Every afternoon, we would go out, walk around. Sometimes, we would fly kite in the vacant lot just a block away from our house…

We used to go swimming then too, all three of us – Ralph, my wife and me. We wouldn’t even wait for any occasion to go, anytime we decide, we pack and call on the tricycle at the corner to take us to the resort…

He was smiling… he remembered…

He remembered too, as he told me, the things he did when he was small – how he got burned by the flat iron because he touched it out of curiosity, the same curiosity that pushed him to touched those grills at the back of the refrigerator, and how I found him once stuck on the freezer because he tried to lick the ice at the sides.

We were laughing… it was a very rare chit-chat that has become a luxury for us two – Ralph and I.

Lately I have been trying to push him to grow up, making him responsible… because I need him to be. He is after all the eldest of the three.

He is not really the rebellious type, but in his own little ways he does… by going home late without even texting me… and teasing Angel even though he knows it irritates me no end.

Maybe those weren’t intentional, maybe it was just me…. whatever.

The closeness that we used to have when he was still small wasn’t there anymore… as if we were alienated from each other.

But because he was sick, I had to talk to him gently… lowered my voice, so as to calm him and his pain…

And because he was sick, he too had to stay put, listened to me, and at the same time talk in a gentler voice too.

Our conversation was nice… one that didn’t happen for a long time.

And I was surprised, because he put his head on my lap – imagine a 16 year old boy, sleeping with his head on his father’s lap… and he slept good… he was calm… and I realized, it was something that I miss…

I too was able to fall asleep while seated, because I can’t move lest I’ll be waking him up. So I just stayed there and savored the moment that my son and I were close to each other once more…

That was when I realized that, he is still the same son that I used to have more than 10 years ago.