Just as the chorale begun the hymn, the church’s wooden doors propped open, revealing the silhouette of the bride. Her whole frame, covered with white cloth, radiated with the afternoon sunshine. She was as beautiful as any bride could be. And her dopey eyes glowed as if to say she was happy. Getting her cue from the hymn, she started to walk down the aisle, getting past the misty-eyed spectators, going to the direction of her blubbering but equally happy groom. She was finally getting married.
She was my cousin. My second-degree cousin, actually. Being one of the older kids in my generation, she was used to being called ate (big sister). The only irony is that she was an only child. But being so seemed to make her attracted to the idea of siblings and turn her into a generous and affable big sister to her cousins. It’s maybe because she was loved immensely and had so much love to give.
Though both her parents were working abroad, her paternal grandparents, with whom she stayed for many years, treated her like she was their own. So growing parentless never became a major issue or a gripping force for rebellion. She was well taken care of, after all, and had fast become the apple of the eye. She went to good schools, was dressed impeccably better than the rest of us, was provided with a wealth of privileges usually not available to ordinary kids, and had the early manifestations of elegance. She was pampered but not spoiled. She was the envy of little girls.
Every time her grandmother brought her to our house, I was glad in the way one would feel when meeting a real-life princess. We were relatively not pauper, but I felt small whenever she was around. She didn’t belong to our world, and neither did we to hers. But while there seemed to be an unseen abyss that separated us, she didn’t in any way illuminate our differences. She would play with us like any child would and talk to us in a calculated, refined manner. Without her realizing it, I was drawn to her by the reality of her existence and she became a paragon of childhood sophistication.
I have no clear recollection of the many afternoons my sister, my other cousin, and I spent with her. But there was one afternoon that stood out from my memory. It was when she, while gently twiddling my hair, commented I looked like the famous local actress of the 80’s. That was one of the few times I felt grandiosely beautiful as a kid. Even if it came from a child, a cousin who had an inclination to biased judgment, I believed it with no reservation. To a kid who was not so used to hearing comments as good as that from outsiders, it was worth much more than bags of candies, dolls, and colored pens. It was more than an innocent comment, for it laid the early foundations of my self-confidence. To this day, even if we’ve both aged and I can’t trace exactly where our similarities begin, I still believe I look like the actress. Not because I’ve grown to like the idea I am beautiful, but because my cousin said so.
When we transferred home, the occasional visits went down to zero. Her grandmother would still phone my mother, but news about my cousin was a rarity. There never was big news about her, in the first place. She lived in silence, in privacy. When we were kids, I remember she would talk only when necessary. Growing up as a teen, she, I believe, permanently tucked into her being a certain sense of aloofness I’d observed from her.
I also grew up to be a silent, private person. I never thought that news about me or us reached her, either. Steadily, we lost our connection. We were slipping away from both our worlds.
The possibility of us meeting again was only during special occasions, which amazingly had a way to patch severed paths together. When we met again, however, we were in our late teens and were soaked in self-consciousness, a strong enough force to stop us from going beyond the cordial hi’s and hello’s. Our eyes would meet and immediately look away as if something invisible in the other direction was more important than reuniting with a cousin. The awkwardness of the act was too much to launch another attempt to establish interest. And even though she was in the same room, her absence was more pronounced.
It is so amusing how time and distance could progressively turn people who got along very well as kids into total strangers as adults. I instinctively took it as a fact, an irrevocable error of past times. When you were kids, you would share even the tiniest bit of dreams, resolved that when it’s time for those dreams to take place, you would still be sticking together like nothing happened in between the years. In between the years, however, things happen not in the way you have foreseen, creating gaps, wide enough to keep you apart. And when one of the dreams finally comes, you are merely a shadow of the past. You are no longer there to share the happiness.
I didn’t know if getting married was part of my cousin’s dreams any more than I knew of her wanting me to be part of her wedding. And so when my mother broke the news I would be in the bridal entourage, I doubted. I asked my mother to repeat the news. I had just come from bed, so I was making sure I was hearing things right. “Who is getting married again?” She did mention the name, and as if to remind me of her existence, she added “Your cousin.”
If it’s another cousin with whom I practically grew up, I wouldn’t have been as surprised. But it was the cousin I lost a chance to intimately know who wanted me to take part in one of the most important events of her life. There had been a huge wall of unfamiliarity between us, and at this point, I was thinking whether it really existed or was only part of my imagination. Regardless, my cousin was choosing to be oblivious to it and seemed to remind me of the good old days, if only for a moment.
There were a few times I would like to think what we would have been had we had the chance to grow up more closely. Maybe we would tell each other stories, we would share secrets, we would be enjoying late-night talks, and we would be like sisters. And I could probably explain better why, for the first time since I attended a wedding, I shed tears when I saw her march toward her groom. Without feeling embarrassed, perhaps I could tell her it’s because I missed her.
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