Trapped

You can't choose the color of your skin, or the country you're born in. You can't even choose whether to be born or not. To make matters worse, you can't then choose your parents.

I've always thought that I know my parents inside out; that I've gotten over the shock that parents are people, too. I didn't realize that parents -- my parents -- can be rotten people, too.

I'm talking about my dad. It's no secret in the family that he has his issues. He's such an insecure person. The root of this insecurity, I've never bothered to find out or think about. He's my dad. It doesn't matter.

He's such a swell dad, always wanting everything for his family. Kids, actually. And now, grandkids. He never had enough money to buy everything he wanted for us, for my mom. But he was a good provider. And my mom was a remarkable household manager. She still is, despite the meager resources (read: money). My dad's been retired for some years now. Retirement, however, didn't agree with him. It showed up his insecurities all the more. He's become selfish, self-centered.

There was a time early on in his retirement when my mom and he just bickered all day long, everyday, without fail. I thought they had settled into some kind of a routine by this time but I was wrong.

My dad isn't the kind of guy who kept drinking buddies. He came straight home from work; gave all his pay to my mom; never went out for socials, unless required. And when he did, it was very seldom that he went out without my mom. I never wondered at this until recently, a few years ago, when my dad said something about himself: that he was a social misfit who didn't have any friends.

I thought I saw him in a new light then, even forgave him for his idiosyncracies, and his patriarchal attitude toward everything. Until my mom got together with her good friends from high school a couple of years ago. Women friends.

My mom's the typical martyr of a housewife. Her family's the center of her universe. She slaves for her family without fail and without rest. Her hands are all arthritic from work. I've always said that my mom's the obsessive-compulsive type. She loves knick-knacks, those small things that you arrange and re-arrange on shelves in the living room that fall off and break at the slightest touch. Sure indication of ob-c behavior.

The highlight of her week is going to the market. Not the supermarket, mind you, but the wet and dry market, where you haggle with the rudest and crassest people on the face of the earth. I exaggerate but you know what I mean. I've always said that my mom would have been great in business. But, just like my dad, she's too parochial. Extremely so, the both of them. I suppose they deserve each other.

My mom kept in contact with her high school friends. They'd go out once in a while to celebrate birthdays. It's not a monthly schedule. After all, there are just three of them. And a couple of times, my mom took my dad along. These are women in their sixties, having lunch three times a year, and spending the rest of the afternoon chatting.

Today, my mom went to lunch with her friends to celebrate a birthday. Around four in the afternoon, she rang up and talked to my dad. It seemed that she was invited to go some place else, quite a distance from our place, by the celebrant. She called up to inform her family where she was and that she was going to home late.

For a sixty-three-year-old woman, late is not like midnight or tearly morning. My mom got home around ten. I didn't realized she was home until I heard loud voices coming from my folks' room. I turned the tv down and heard my dad saying he didn't approve. Of what, I couldn't hear.

I didn't need to hear anymore. I knew that my dad was making an issue out of this unplanned outing. I bristled all over with anger. Here is this woman who's given her entire life to him and she can't even have one day off for herself, to do whatever it is she wanted to do, be it walking around the mall sby herself or having fun with friends. It's not even a question of jealousy anymore. Don't get me started on that issue because my dad's just unreasonable when it comes to other men and my mom.

This time, it's worse. He doesn't have any friends, so his wife can't have any. What he doesn't have, she can't have. She can't be better than him; she can't be happy anywhere else but within the family. Because he's not. He has no place in the outside world. That is also the reason why he can't let go of any of his kids. Not his daughters and, especially, not his son.

I am shocked by the realization that if he were not my dad, I wouldn't like this guy at all. At all. I said that about my brother, too, several years ago. I wanted to divorce my brother. That was bad enough. And now, this. Do I want to divorce my dad?

I want to be free of my mother's marriage and married life. I suppose this is one compelling reason to move out of the family home, to not get involved in other people's married lives. When the kids become adults, their parents become other people who have a right to their privacy.

I have a right to my privacy, too. I have a right not to get involved in my parents' married life. I'm no longer a helpless child, unaware of what's going on, without any established value system to make a judgment call. I'm a grown woman who can only look on as my dad oppresses my mom by being so unreasonable as to take it against her that she had fun with her friends.

Other women have amigas and go to mahjjong sessions on a regular basis. There are wives who frequent the malls and salons and spas. My mom's not like that. She's become ugly by serving her husband and children all these long years. Her one big sorrow is that she doesn't receive the appreciation that she deserves.

My folks are both old and bitter, burdened forever by lack of money. And I see myself as a failure for not getting them out of this rut and providing for them in their old age. I want to give my folks the comfortable life they never had, and will probably never have. Not that they demand this from any of their kids. We know and see that they take pride in their brood. They've always taught us that parents don't own their children as these are merely on loan from God. Thus, they make no demands, monetary or otherwise.

My dad's gone to bed now, I hope. The cd player's quiet now. He was playing music loudly a while ago. At eleven at night, playing Sinatra loudly. I couldn't bear it anymore, this childish behavior, this rebelling. I ran down a short list of friends I could call at this time of night but, once again, thought the better of it. What would I say?

TC I could call but dread the cold treatment I just might get from him. I've lost that one, I have to accept that. IB would not be the same as TC. They felt so far away, so remote, situated in another universe. I decided I couldn't take this music-playing anymore and rang Tom's hotel room.

He was newly arrived and suffering from jet lag, I knew, but I had to talk to someone. As it happens, he had dropped off to sleep only an hour earlier and I had woken him up. I could only apologize and stammer. He sounded so sleepy, I didn't have the heart to pour out my angst to him. So I made an excuse of clarifying his Saturday schedule.

Saturday's my birthday. I don't want to spend it with my parents. I thought I'd go see Tom early that day but remembered that he has a date Friday night who would probably spend the night and sleep in Saturday morning. The earliest I can see him is lunch time. So I guess I'll just spend the morning somewhere, probably the office where I can do some work. Pathetic.

I want out.