LET’S TALK ABOUT ARACELI

So who the heck is Araceli?  Like I care.

All right, in the mid 1990s, I saw her as a girl unmindful of the complications in a college life. She saw herself through college oblivious of the usual teenagers' issues--trendy clothes, psychedelic hair clips, and updated cool school gadgets--oblivious and unaffected, I should say. 

And yes, a bunch of girls at a distant hallway would just laugh and look her way every time she sported that jet-black shiny long hair which was normally screaming for a comb (but surprisingly charming in that unkempt way) with her enviable lithe body in her normally unpressed, fuscha-pink plaid uniform. In her bulky baggage of a shoulder bag, one would always find two or three books in their torn or dilapidated but readable state. 

But when you check out her poems and write-ups in her usual "intricately difficult to read" penmanship, you would forget what century you're in. She so loved the Shakespearean age and Britain that you could imagine her kissing England in her lines. Never mind if she was too unmindful of what was the fad or forgetful in pressing her blouse or clip her nails, she was beautiful. And that radiated in her poems and prose.

We laughed together. We submitted projects together, although hers were always wanting of order or structure but we were there together. And I love her for that. To me, that was normal of her. To me, she was real. I was the eccentric one. Oftentimes too eccentric for my own good.   I wasn't the most popular. My name became known only because of the scores my trying-hard stance could produce in those days. But I was always away from the crowd. And this Araceli took me in despite that. 

After graduation, we seldom saw each other.  We both became passionate literature teachers. She, being the most colorful and well-loved in a peculiar way; I, being the more introverted but emotional.

Then she lost her father. Right there, I saw a more grown-up woman in that lithe figure of hers. But she was still the same funny Araceli who didn't seem to know what to do first in crucial intimate moments with loved ones. I didn't see her cry but I know she was more than crying. That was her very intimate time with herself. That loss had allowed some gravitas surfaced from inside her. I let her be.

Then we found our men. And I giggle a bit every time I see her with her man in her photos. I could say we were very much alike. Our men may not be the expected choice but we chose well--perhaps, not necessarily in man's standard but this is borne of our very unconventional, perhaps eccentric way of looking at things. (At least this is how I personally look at two very different girls but very much alike at a painful distance.)

Yes, and miles away, I miss her. I miss listening to her thoughts. I ache to listen to her wanton descriptions of the lives of British nobilities and how far from our "reality" their lives are. Maybe I just love how she pours her dreams in those stories. 

But more than these I admire her for her courage to face the unknown and relentlessly dig for those dreams there. To Araceli, the undaunted little beauty, I wish my daughter will take the same step of courage that you took--one that she may never take from me.