My daughter is getting married, and I'm gonna cry
When my third child and second son got married last December, I did not shed any tear. I even delivered a very funny and thought-provoking groom's father speech that made all the guests explode in laughter. But my second child and first daughter is getting married in a few days, and I'm sure I am gonna cry. My wife too and all our four other children. I do not know what mystery lies behind the difference between gaining a daughter-in-law and losing a daughter. But this time, there is some tinge of sadness and a feeling of anxiety that seems to engulf everyone in the family. My eldest child and first son is also getting married next year. But this marriage of our first daughter is simply different.
Of course, my wife and I do love our children equally and we give them the best that we could afford, offering to them the highest quality of education that we could not afford or that which our parents could not afford to give us. Joyce Mae, this one whom I will give away in the next few days, was sent to Montessori, to Assumption in San Lorenzo, and then to La Salle Taft. She graduated with honors getting two diplomas in one graduation, that of Marketing and Psychology. In all those years, my driver and I had to bring her to school every day. She did very well academically and grew up with very high I.Q. and excellent E.Q. Her friends twenty-five years ago are still her friends today. She is now a banker, having worked with Chinabank, Citibank, HSBC and now BPI.
When she was born, she was very small and frail that we had to leave her behind in the hospital because the doctors had to observe her very closely. She was always crying and was suspecting that we loved her kuya more than we love her. But, of course, there is no grain of truth to that. We enrolled in weeks and weeks of studies in Ateneo on the science and art of parenting just to become better dad and mom to her and her elder brother. We brought them to Disneyland at a very young age and even to Disneyworld in Florida. We also brought her to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and even to Kuwait and Taiwan. At a very young age, all my kids have been travelling the world. We give all to them, all that we could not have during our childhood. Now, she is a very refined and well-bred lady.
In a few days, she is marrying the love of her life, Terence Randolf, a very fine young man, tall and strong and very decent who has more than twenty dogs and keeps on adopting stray dogs and cats in the neighborhood.. I am happy for Joyce Mae. If Terence coud love animals, he will surely take care of our baby. But I am still in a denial stage. I could not believe that this was the small, frail baby girl that I used to carry. When there was brownout, I would be awake the whole night to fan her and make her comfortable. This was the girl that I used to bring to Montessori and to Assumption, then La Salle. Now, she is going to vacate her room and our youngest jewel, Jiza Marie, will be alone. Yusof has gotten married last December and JP is also settling down by 2015. We are left with Jeremiah and Jiza. And soon, it will be the two of us alone. Back to where we started.
- Latest
