Indulgence

it's in the blood

Dolly Parton
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

After finishing up all the scripts that they need from me for next week's studio shoots, I went to Makati and met up with my cousin to celebrate his birthday last Monday. He introduced us to his graceful and charming girlfriend ("us" being my brother, his wife and I) and we also spent some time with our other cousin. After a rather light meal (which we stuffed ourselves like pigs with since it was so good), we enjoyed a couple of rounds of beer and just talked.

It was a Thursday night and I just recalled that three years ago, I would probably been out, enjoying myself. At that time, I had access to a car, so I'd probably have picked up my friends and we would have gone out to the coolest place to go drinking. Three years later, I'm still drinking on a Thursday night, but this time, it was in my cousin's house and we were really enjoying ourselves. I had come from work, so I was dressed in rubber shoes, jogging pants and a sweat shirt. There was no intention of dressing to impress; after all, it was to be a comfortable dinner with family. And that is exactly what it was.

And what I enjoyed most about it was that we were not talking about the old times like we used to. We've let that go already and we were there talking about things going on with us now and stuff that we've missed, living these lives of ours and no longer capable of really keeping tabs on each other. It's moments like these were we really just connect. And I was so happy and thrilled that my cousin asked us to continue our little Sunday get togethers. Sunday really is a time for family and I think that would be great. I'm quite happy about that.

We also talked about the future -- making little plans for going out of town and just hanging out in a different setting. It's age, settling in and we've lost much of our steam and really enjoy the connection we feel.

It's funny as well, to think that we've all had our wild days at one point in our lives and we've all reached its peak and we are all ready to live a more quiet, a more steady life. It's a family thing. We've always been close and I'm happy for that. We even have a yahoo group of the cousins where we just continue on with our foolishness and crazy antics. I have 2 cousins in Canada and the rest are scattered around Bacolod and Manila. We don't get in touch as often as we would like and like we used to have.

Family is important. I will never let that go.

posted by wanggo @ 5:36 PM