For One More Day

Since I usually spend around 2hours lying in bed every night the past week waiting for sleep to kick in, I decided to finally catch up on books I bought/borrowed that I haven't had the chance to read.

I settled on Mitch Albom's For One More Day the other night, and like the other 2 books of Albom, I liked this one :) Story-telling at its simplest, hardly no big words, but it does the trick :)

I'm posting some of the few scenes/lines I liked in the book - not really to convince you to read the book. More for my sake, really, than yours :)

You're walkin' along the street, or you're at a party,
Or else you're alone and then you suddenly dig,
You're lookin' in someone's eyes, you suddenly realize
That this could be the start of something big.

:)

^ Part pa rin yan ng book, lyrics of a theme song there. Siningit ko lang dito :) Kasi... wala lang :)

----
She wasn't easy on me, don't get me wrong. She smacked me. She scolded me. She punished me. But she loved me. She really did. She loved me falling off a swing set. She loved me stepping on her floors with muddy shoes. She loved me through vomit and snot and bloody knees. She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me.

Her only flaw was that she didn't make me work for it.

You see, here's my theory: Kids chase the love that eludes them, and for me, that was my father's love. He kept it tucked away, like papers in a briefcase. And I kept trying to get in there.

Years later, after her death, I made lists of Times My Mother Stood Up for Me and Times I Did Not Stand Up for My Mother. It was sad, the imbalance of it all. Why do kids assume so much from one parent and hold the other to a lower, looser standard?

Maybe it's like my old man said: You can be a mama's boy or a daddy's boy, but you can't be both. So you cling to the one you think you might lose.

----
She guided me toward a large tree on the corner near our house.

"This was late one night, when I couldn't sleep." She rubbed her hand over the bark as if unearthing an old treasure. "Ah. Still there."

I leaned in. The word PLEASE had been carved into the side. Small crooked letters. You had to look carefully, but there it was. PLEASE.

"You and Roberta weren't the only ones who carved," she said, smiling.

"What is it?"

"A prayer."

"For a child?"

She nodded.

"For me?"

Another nod.

"On a tree?"

"Trees spend all day looking up at God."

I made a face. "I know." She lifted her hands in surrender. "You're so corny, Mom."

She touched the bark again, then made a small hmm sound. She seemed to be considering everything that happened since the afternoon I came into the world. I wondered how that sound would change if she knew the whole story.

"So," she said, moving away, "now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted."

----
"Mom...," I said, haltingly. "Why didn't you just get money from Dad?"

"I didn't need any more from your father. We got by all right, Charley."

"Why didn't you go back to the hospital?" I said.

"They didn't want me."

"Why didn't you fight it?"

"Would that have made you happy?" She sighed. "It wasn't like today, where people sued over the slightest thing. It was the only hospital around. We couldn't just leave town. This was our home. You and your sister had endured enough change. It's all right. I found work."

"Cleaning houses," I mumbled.

"I'm not as ashamed of that as you are," she said.

"But..." I stumbled for words. "You couldn't do the work that mattered to you."

My mother looked at me with a glint of defiance.

"I did what mattered to me," she said. "I was a mother."

----
Here is what you are going to find out about marriage: you have to work at it together. And you have to love three things. You have to love

1) Each other.
2) Your children.
3) Your marraige.

What I mean by that last one is, there may be times that you fight, and sometimes you and Catherine won't even like each other. But those are the times you have to love your marriage. It's like a third party. Look at your wedding photos. Look at any memories you've made. And if you believe in those memories, they will pull you back together.

----
"If I'm dead... If I die... do I get to be with you?"

She grinned. "Oh, so now you want to be with me."

Maybe that sounds cold to you. But my mother was just being my mother, a little funny, a little teasing, the way she'd be had we spent this day together before she'd died.

She was also justified. So many times, I had chosen not to be with her. Too busy. Too tired. Don't feel like dealing with it. Church? No thanks. Dinner? Sorry. Come down to visit? Can't do it, maybe next week.

You count the hours you could have spent with your mother. It's a lifetime in itself.

----
I saw in her expression that old, unshakable mountain of concern. And I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.

----
"You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can't trade them in. You can't lie to them. You can't run two at once, substituting back and forth. Sticking with your family is what makes it a family."

----
I've thought a lot about that night. I believe my mother saved my life. I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.

But there's a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother's story, because hers is where yours begin.