Almost Love Story to Almost Closure
Back when I was younger, my mother tells stories about how she and my father met and when they finally married each other. I would always listen intently with my siblings and dream and laugh about the details they share. But I remembered she told us a story about her long time childhood love, back when she was in High School, who she named Anton. This is a funny story as it had been stuck in our memories.
She would describe him as I would describe a series of little boys in my memory that I claim to love when I was a child. She told me they never had a conversation nor she got too close to him. She would always wonder from a distance how to be Anton’s girl one day. We can all relate to this right?
Anyway, during their High School prom, there was a segment of the program when all girls are lined up and all the boys would ask each and every girl to dance with them. My mother’s eyes were gleaming as she tells the story in detail as if she is reliving the moment. “We had small name tags then to put our nicknames on”. She said laughing, “Everybody in the school knows me as Corazon, but I used my family nickname instead and wrote ‘Nott”. Her expression changed a bit when she revealed that when the exciting thing was about to happen when Anton would finally ask her to dance, he skipped the line and went for the other girl beside my mother instead. She said, she never understood why he did that. Anton danced with all of the ladies except her. She was waiting for that moment but it never happened that night.
My mother actually just speculates that maybe Anton freaked out since he had the name tag “Ton” and my mother has somewhat a reversed version of his name as ‘Nott” but she was known as Corazon. “Maybe he thinks I was too desperate. But I didn’t know he’s going to put ‘Ton’ ”. I believe that no man has ever figured my mother back then because she was quiet, demure and conservative. Her story stuck to me as it was on her with all the WHYs she and I could think of.
Years had passed, I already have a job and I had more brothers and sisters. My mother needed to visit her province to see my grandmother because she was ill. She headed to the province first before the rest of our family because my siblings needed to finish the weekday classes. And when we got there to see our Grandma and celebrated a bit for family reunion with relatives, she told us her sisters has news with Anton. I was like “Oh, yeah that one. The one with the big WHY. Haha!” , my mother smiled mildly but with still eyes, “I guess we will never know now. he’s dead”.
I was taken aback learning about the news, as if finding out a death of a character from a childhood storybook. Apparently, Anton was hit by a car few weeks before my mother visited her hometown.
The stories from childhood, unanswered question in our heads as to why he didn’t took my mother’s hand to dance that night would always be a mystery to all of us. I don’t vouch for them or their ‘supposed’ love story.. I was curious for his reason. An answer. A small closure. It kinda felt like the cliff-hanger of our childhood storybook from my mother’s experience was actually an ending after all. I guess not every almost lover has an almost closure and that’s why I go get an answer for every bit of ‘whys’ with my relationship to friends, lover & family. You’ll never know what will haunt you.