After setting the book aside for two months throughout Summer Semester, I am finally back and done with Nicholas Spark’s The Rescue. Safe to say, this is his best that I’ve read, because it made me cry.
It was unexpected. Somewhere in the middle, I questioned how so many people proclaim to be Spark’s greatest fan when the pace somewhere in the middle almost lulled me to sleep. But I am a bookaholic, and bookaholics read from cover to cover. So I endured till the very last page. Sparks did not disappoint me this time.
I had expected a love story twist. But it turned out to be the story of a man with repressed childhood traumas. Traumas caused by his father’s death while trying to save him in a fire. A gripping ordeal. Totally unexpected. Sparks has a knack at hiding the truth from readers, not even a hint, until the right moment when just one word would suffice to reveal it.
Are there fathers who love their children that much? Towards the ending, I burst into tears at certain points. There was no gradual built-up of emotions, so no anticipation of what would come. I guess this is what it feels like to bring about deeply repressed emotions. They just come out without reason.
I remember the day I fell sick as a child My dad carried me in front of him, my chin rested on his right shoulder. We were coming down the steps and into the living room when I vomited down his back. This is my earliest memory. Somewhere among those books I’ve read, it is said that our earliest recollection is the key insight to our hidden unconscious. The other memory was less active. My cousin sister, Mui Quan, carried me in her arms while I looked on. We were in a room that resembled the hospital. The person lying on the bed was unconscious.
Even though no one told me what happened. And I didn’t know any better. These memories became imprinted, and no other memories ever came clearer.
As a child, I could not sense the passing of time. I remember my dad used to tell me bedtime stories and spoiled me with tidbits. Then, I stayed with my maternal grandmother. I rode my bike with extra wheels attached in her living room. Whenever the familiar honk sounded, grandma gave me 20 cents, with which, I would run out to buy a packet of Mamee from the men who rode motorbikes, selling bread around town. Mom would come visit grandma and I in the early mornings. Grandma could still walk, albeit with some difficulty while holding on to her quad cane. We would wait in the car, while mom grabbed groceries and grandma complained how long she took. Then my father came back into the picture. I climbed onto bed next to him and pestered dad to tell me stories like those he used to tell me with such vivid imageries. But my father turned the other side and said ’no stories’ and brushed me off. I was so disappointed. He never bought me Sugus again and whenever I ran to him in fear, he barely listened, attention fixated on the TV set.
I felt things were different, but didn’t know what changed. The father I knew then wasn’t the same anymore. And since then, I learned to do without my father. This happened at a time when children that age need their parents to form an attachment with, to feel complete.
Now, when it is my duty to take care of dad, I found myself facing my own repressed emotions. I can worry and be concerned about my dad as any competent adult would, but there is no denial that between my dad and I, the emotional bond does not exist. It is a learned response, recorded in midbrain structures at an age when the frontal lobes were still developing. These areas are essential in managing stress. A competent adult would deal with stress by reason, chiefly utilizing his forebrain. But since the forebrain is less developed in early childhood, the midbrain does the job, and any trauma occurring at this stage is almost etched on stone. That’s why psychological disorders are hard to treat and effective therapies take a long time. Because we need to bypass responses of the cerebral cortex to access memories recorded in the midbrain.
When dad comes around me these days, even before seeing him, my senses would cause me to pull back and clam up, although consciously, I know enough to forgive. Exactly the way he used to pull away from me when I was three years old.
When I was finishing the last pages of Spark’s book, I wondered why fate determined my early childhood to be this way. Why can’t I have a father like my friends do? How can life be so cruel to a little girl? But as I wrote this post and saw the connection between my early experiences and the Psychologist I would soon become, I think perhaps it was all meant to be.
I would exchange anything if it means undoing the damages caused by the stroke. Give me back the father who told me bedtime stories. Unfortunately, that is not possible.
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