Ah, childhood!

Auro watched a clip on Instagram today. It was a clip from the movie The Namesake. A father holding his son’s hand, taking him close to the sea. The mother with her daughter in her arms keeps telling him, “Don’t go so far that I can’t see you. He’s too little.” As the waves wildly crash on the shore, the father waves his hand in an assurance that he has listened to her concern and that they are safe. The child is safe. The child is safe with the father holding his hands. They are safe! The child is safe. The child is safe. The child is safe.

As they reach closer to the crashing and roaring waves, he suddenly remembers that there is no camera. They left the camera in the car. “What to do?”, the father asks his son. “The camera, it’s in the car. All this way and no picture, huh?” 

The child doesn’t move his eyes from the sea. 

He keeps looking at the sea. 

He doesn’t care about the camera, 

about the pictures, 

about the lost opportunity to capture a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime view. 

He is in the moment. 

The father scrunches down, gets closer to the child, smiles at him, and says, “We just have to remember it then, huh? Will you remember this day?” It is then when the child speaks as the intensity of the responsibility suddenly pulls him back to reality. But his eyes still don’t move. Eyes affixed on the sea, the child asks, “How long do I have to remember it?” “Ah, remember it always. Remember that you and I made this journey and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go”, the father replies. 

All Auro could think was, “How long has it been since I left my father’s hand? How long has it been since my mother lost me from her sight? How do they feel knowing that they had to let go of my hands, let me go out of their sight? How scared have they been, for how long?

Am I scared? I don’t think so. Not since that night. Now I’m more afraid to let them see me. What do I tell them? How do I tell them? 

        I’m not your little girl anymore! I can’t be, not anymore!”

Auro can’t tell them that. So, she just sends this clip to her sister and writes, “Ah, childhood!”

She tells herself, “No, it doesn’t break my heart. It doesn’t break my heart.

…

As if it doesn’t break my heart.

As if 

it doesn’t revive the silent sob screeching in the corner of my heart 

that desperately, 

violently, 

brutally, 

inhumanely 

dumped my childhood somewhere without telling me, 

without letting me know where to find it if I ever needed it back, 

if my parents ever needed their little girl back!”