Reflecting on an article in the papers, this showed, how easily the bonds are destroyed, and how long it took, to reestablish what was already lost, translated…
Thumbing across the article “Moving the Rocks, Severing Off the Ties”, I’d felt a surge of emotions inside, it’d reminded me of an article I read online, it had, “don’t lose your relatives, as you are down on your luck and became poor”; perhaps, the contents of that article may have been a bit extreme, but, I’d had to admit, that sometimes, that, is how reality goes.
As I was growing up, I’d endured through something that I didn’t even want to recall again.
We were poor growing up, in order to pay for all of our school tuitions, my mother often needed to ask for a loan from the families or friends, and, as the harvest came, after she’d sold off the rice or the pigs, my mother would, immediately, pay them back.
As my mother was asking for the handouts, she’d kept her lowered, smiled, as our relatives talked down to her, and it’d, made me feel really awful for her. Back then, my second uncle works for a public unit, his house, was way better economically than ours was, and my mother would every once in a while, borrow money from my second aunt, and of course, she’d managed, to pay her back each and every single time too. My second aunt married well off, and from time to time, she’d had that superiority status about her, she’d pretty close with my mother, but, one time, they’d had a disagreement of sorts, and, stopped talking for a very long time.
On day in school, my teacher called me outside, said that there was a relative who’d come for me. I’d, walked outside, and saw my second aunt, I was just, wondering why she’d come to school to find me, I’d called out to her, and saw her downed face, as she’d told me, to tell my mother, to return the money she’d borrowed from her immediately.
I was so shocked, my face became so red, and, that sourness came into my nostrils, and, this sense of shame that came out of nowhere surfaced onto my mind. I was just a kid who’d just started middle school, did my second aunt have to use such a manner, to tell my mother to return the money she’d borrowed? All of a sudden, my young mind felt the coldness of this world. I’d told my mother what my second aunt said the moment I entered into my house, and my mother immediately thought of a way, to pay her back, but since then, our family became, estranged from my second aunt, even as my mother fell ill and passed on, my second aunt never even came to see her. It wasn’t until we’re, all grown up, did all of us, cousins, start contacting one another again.
harder for the person doing this, and it’s NOT the least easy either, for the one on the “receiving end” either, not my photograph…
My second aunt coming to school to ask me for money since left this inerasable shadow inside my mind. Up to this day, I’d still recalled how my second aunt looked, with her gloomy face and her snobbery, along with how dumbfounded I was and my embarrassment too. Ever since, I’d told myself, that no matter how hard times got, I will, NEVER ask to borrow money from anybody I know. “Without the money, your closest of kin would, look down on you.”, or maybe, the world isn’t always so cold, and people aren’t always so awful, but when it came to matters of money, the relationships get damaged, that, is the, undeniable truth. But I still choose to believe, that people are innately good, that blood ties are not something you can sever off, and whether or not I will need the assistance, I hoped, that I’m always the one, who can, provide others with the assistance they’d needed.
So, this, would be, the experiences of someone’s younger years, and the aunt was wrong, in going to the writer’s school, to have her transmit the message to her mother, because it’d gotten the children involved, and, children should NEVER be involved in the adults’ matters of affairs, and, this had, damaged the connections between the two families, and it took until they were all grown up, did they, reestablish contact again, and to think, that you’d, stopped interacting with your next of kin, ALL because of money………