RETROSPECT - Chapter 1

 RETROSPECT - Chapter 1

–2022–

I know that the courage I’ve had when I was 22 is no longer the same as when I turned 24. My father had just passed away, we had so many family fights, over finances, responsibility shares, and mixed emotions; more on scattered all over the place. Losing a piece of you will never be easy. It’s just unfair that he did not live long enough to see our success and his adorable granddaughter.

But here we are, still kicking! Well, we have to.

2022 has never been easy for all of us. While lamenting the 2nd year of dad’s passing, mom and I had a big fight that lead us to deciding on transferring to the city. This is just a much crazier version of wanting to get the kind of love and affection we’ve been getting from my dad that my mom was never used to giving. 

She cares for us of course, but the show of affection lacked. Maybe she had some reservations given that me and my siblings are all girls.

There’s just that individuality of them being parents to us. And it’s a bigger kind of view for me now that I am also a parent of one. I guess, being married does not guarantee that likelihood of raising a better kid. Differences still come out as to how you were raised as a kid to how you now raise your own kid. There’s a lot of childhood traumas and bad experiences for me and Aaron. And I tell you, it is hard to face them almost every day.

You will never get to understand what they’ve been through if you only listen to yourself. And so, listening and keeping it cool sometimes is the best solution to having a calm and happy home. But then again, it always is not the case. All the crazy little butterflies in my stomach are gone. Mid-20’s can be crazy for us because we no longer are excited with parties and boozes, we are more excited with real estate, business, investments, and getting stable. 

Maybe even if Heaven is not here, we will still want the same thing, just because, starting early is better than delaying what you can do now for your future. It’s slow but it’s a progressive year for us.

We transferred here in Manila as I mentioned in my previous blog before I turned 26. Oh, and just a little bit of update, my birthday was in Pico de Loro Country Club in Batangas!

It was magical but full of disagreements too. We’ve just spent a lot to sustain our shop, and now, we’re back to only one job each. All our plans did not go as well as how I pictured it the first time. Getting off debts, saving more, while living lavishly is never an easy thing to balance. 

But I am happy to share how every month of 2022 was for us. We were here January 29, By February, we were getting into a lot of adjustments as it’s now only just the 3 of us..

By February, we started projecting our goals and first of them is reaching out to Aaron’s family. Since lockdown, he had never been home, and it’s just now that we have a chance to also share our blessings. It was a normal weekend when I randomly decided on going to Tagaytay Crosswinds with Aaron’s sister, cousin, grandma and her grandma’s sister who we call Tita Essie.

Heaven’s birthday was also approaching so we treated them to a fine dinner at Balay Dako. it is one of the most famous restaurants in the area and we’re just loving how Aaron’s family is with these tiny gestures.

We went home with new memories. It was cold, Heaven was their favorite of course, and she just made everything better like it’s magic since day 1.

March came and my mom and sisters with Jane, my sister’s bestfriend came over to Manila to celebrate Heaven’s birthday. It was her first, and Manila has not eased up yet on the pandemic, so we were not able to invite friends. It was just family.

We ate at Vikings in Makati, it was an extravagant buffet restaurant and I still managed to set up the grandeur of celebrating our little one’s birthday. We started heading to a baby modeling agency and afterwhich, we went back to Makati for the celebration.

The middle of March came and we and Aaron’s family had more city life moments. Like playing bowling at Mall of Asia, eating at restaurants, roaming around the city in a car my father gave me, and getting closer to them.

There’s a lot of photos on my instagram @meaganph, so let’s continue to April on my next blog!

Next year, I won't be doing a retrospect anymore, I'd like to be more updated with you guys so I can be more in the moment too when writing!

Summer in June 2019

When I go home, I make sure to make it memorable and fun, especially with the family. In the first of June of 2019, I just got home from Manila after resigning from work.                                              

Since I started working, I’ve been obsessed with travelling, so why not tag your family along right? And if I run out of cash, there’s my credit card to save me LOL.

So I booked this family room in Casa Consuelo, and by the day we are about to check in, I downloaded long road trip music… including my dad’s playlist as he wished!

We just had this sedan black car (NOM 781) which is no longer ours, and we drove for about 3 hours. Of course the outfits, not to mention, are well-prepared. You know me, and my previous blogs would always have this trademark of outfits, I have a lot of them in my closet.

Casa means house or home. And when I asked the person from the reception area, it was family owned turned into resort.

The room and the furniture looked antique, all were dark brown, the room was dim lit. and not to forget, what we actually paid for, the view!

It was the nearest resort to Dos Hermanos Island (Two Brothers). They were called that because they were two big hills adjacent to each other. In most time of the day it was low tide that you can walk to the islands and climb up. Me and my dad went there and took some nice photos. I was teaching him how to use this Gopro cam that I borrowed from Gelo. LOL.

Here, you have to wear slippers when going down for a dip or a walk as it was rocky. My grandmother said it was because people were fond of picking up rocks at this area.

It was a resort with its own infinity pool, a big lounge area for celebrations, and cabanas that can be used for free when you’re checked in. We were all so happy and that was the last summer I had with the family. It will always be one of the trips to remember.

Ever since we purchased our first car in 2018, we’ve been going around Ilocos Norte. Like The Boracay of the North with the entire clan, Little Batanes of the North, to Vigan Ilocos Sur. My dad was always all in when I give a travel itinerary, simply because he was living the life he had always dreamed of, a life he had always been working hard for. And I’ve always admired that in him.

That is why I beat myself to writing my goals on a piece of paper, or notebook, or here in my blog. It mught be read by people, may be not, and it’s okay. These are memories I can and will always go back to, no matter what age I will be.

Now that I have a family, it has been more defined and clear to me, working hard and smart’s not enough, being a good parent is a different story. And my dad was all-in-one, good, hard-working and smart. J

*end*

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