All parents have a love story, surely.
even if it's hard to imagine them being young. and lustful. . . *shudder*
I asked mom about hers on mother's day in keeping up with celebrating her being our mother and how she came to be so.
And here's how it goes.
Mom was 21. She was working as a teller in a bank. She had three best friends whom she went out partying and drinking with all the time. She was, at the moment, two-timing her long-time boyfriend of seven years, Johnny. Specifically, she was dating their finance supervisor on the side. Because, she explained, the dude gave kick-ass presents. And two, Johnny was working at a diamond factory in Israel, far from reach and sight. So Mom figured to find a replacement in the meantime.
Then she met my Dad. The details are hazy. Something about meeting at a bar in Manila, and my Dad pursuing my Mom quite persistently. Dad, fresh from military school, was gaunt, and really, really dark. A far cry from the handsome and strapping young men swinging by her bank and wooing her. My Dad was also dating somebody else. I don't know what drugs my parents were on. But my Dad kept note of where she went to work. She went back home.
Months passed.
My Mom had, by this time, broken up with her boy. Johnny. I'm not sure about the finance supervisor.
One bright, sunny day my Dad decides to waltz past Mom's bank’s great wide windows in tennis gear. Something about him appealed to my Mom. The way she described him to me, I had an image of a young pre-surgery Michael Jackson in my head, with a shock of curly (curly??!) dark hair, white headbands, high starched kneesocks, and white hookah shorts. The kind that gives you wedgies when you strain with effort. She was so smitten, that when my Dad walked in the bank and invited her and the girls out for drinks with him and his buddies, she readily accepted, all flushed and excited.
Clad in her best gear, she and her girlfriends went to the Halfway House at Camp John Hay that evening, and waited for the boys to come in. She understood the invite to be a hepta-quadruple date, with her girlfriends pairing up with Dad's friends, and Mom would (naturally) pair up with Dad.
But to her shock and horror, Dad walks into the bar with his girlfriend in arm, a girl whom we shall henceforth call Beth.
She spends the rest of the night drowning in alcohol and scheming how to exact her vengeance, somehow deciding to bring wrath and fury upon my Dad. She made a bet with her best friends, saying that before the week was out, she'll have shoved Beth out of the picture, and Dad would be hers. Command and conquer, baby.
She invites my Dad out for drinks the next day, this time at a classier joint.
My Dad arrives with his buddies, but warns everyone that he'll have to beg off early because his girlfriend Beth has cooked a special dinner for him that night--consisting of his favorites like pinakbet and liempo and such. Sorry, guys. I can imagine my Mom narrowing her eyes at this. Meanwhile, smiling.
She gets him stone fricking drunk. So very very drunk, that he misses his date.
However, mom's evil laugh didn't last long because, Dad somehow made up with his girlfriend such that she promised to cook for him again. They set their date for Saturday after their PMA Parade, before my Dad and his classmates were scheduled to leave for Manila on assignment.
My Mom somehow sniffed this out, and concocted another evil scheme which she promised to execute flawlessly.
Somehow, she and the girls got invited along to watch the parade at PMA with Dad and his buddies. After which, everyone else retired to their respective nooks to rest so that they'd be fresh when they'll travel to Manila in the evening.
My Mom, charmed and flirted like a hussy, and ended up convincing my Dad to ride with them. Mom's best friend Grace, who owned the car and who was in on the plan, decided to take seven long detours on the way home, including a long and winding drive up a mountain. So long, that my Dad missed his date.
By the time they got back to the city, it was too late, and he had to hop on the bus immediately, to get back to Manila, thereby missing his second date that week, and leaving his girlfriend to steam and sour on a dinner table full of uneaten specially-prepared food he never got to taste. They had an epic quarrel, no doubt, because by the time Dad got back from Manila, he was already Mom's boyfriend.
Mom gets a pile of cash from her friends, because she won the bet, making Dad her boyfriend before the week was out, and bitch-slapping Beth out of the got-damn picture. Obviously, they ended up getting married. And that's how we came to be. . . *shudder*
But there's still a long saga in between, from what I hear from them, my Dad's version making out my mom to be a frivolous, flirty, volatile, two-timing beeyatch girlfriend (told very lovingly, I assure you), and My Mom's version. . . well, she admits to two-timing. "Eh kung ikaw ba naman kailangan mag-hintay nang tatlong buwan dahil nasa Mindanao siya, na hindi naman tumatawag, anong gagawin mo??!"
To this day, she insists that the moral of the story is that I have to be a go-getter if I want to meet "the right one", the guy I'll end up marrying. But I didn't get the aggressive temptress gene. Maybe it's recessive. Her grandchildren will be gago, I can tell.
Meantime, I ended up as an awkward, wallowing little twit who never gets any dates. Although I can picture myself getting married someday. And yeah, I could have my own love story someday, sure.
Although I'm pretty sure it won't be so "The Bold and The Beautiful"-meets-"Melrose Place"-meets-"She's All That"-esque in proportion. (I can picture my Dad now: "Is that true?? Am I just a stupid bet?! *sob*")
All things considered, I think they turned out pretty well. I mean they're married now for almost two decades. And they've still got the spice going, don't ask me why or how, it's too traumatic.
It's funny though, because all these years I always thought of my parents as pretty boring people. You really can't imagine they came out of a love story that was pretty fucked up when you think about it.