How I Met Your Nanay: "Long Distance Mystery"

My mother and father learned to love each other with
Letters and their voices recorded onto cassette tapes
White, red and blue envelopes went back and forth between
Asingan and Umingan; Saudi Arabia and the Philippines;
Multiple bases and a U.S. apartment residence

I wrote this last year as a part of an autobiographical poem. These five lines sum up all that I know and choose to share about how my parents met. Because my father passed away when I was just six years old, I know that I have already lost one half of what is now a clandestine love story. The other half, is one that I am trying to recover despite my mother's attempts at avoiding conversations about love and sex in order to keep me focused on my own life and trials.

My mother is very good at these things: 1) remembering, 2) keeping secrets when they need to be kept and 3) minding time.

Because my mom remembers things like the last person in the garage who forgot to turn the lights off, names of godparents I've never known, and maybe even where I last placed my sports bra - this is how I know she has a story about her romance with my father that sits and swells inside her. I believe that detail-oriented people are very perceptive for a reason. I think that part of that reasoning allows them to keep information that will be useful to revisit at a later time. And maybe those details gain value and weight over time so that they can be sorted out at an even later time. Who knows? I just know that when I ask for the details, she does not give them up to me. Maybe just not yet. Maybe only when it's time.