Changes

A different kind of Valentine

The empowering effect one feels when educating any child lies in the simple truth that the real joy of it is not the moments you have embraced but rather moments etched in their hearts when you had allowed them to embrace you.

Because I have been single my entire life (or so I'd like to think. I do not wish to count that affair. Or that other affair, for that matter.), the 14th of February isn't really worth celebrating. It is just a day like any other day... and I would spend it as such. This year, however, is quite different. No, I didn't go out on a date with a guy I fell grotesquely in-love with. Instead, I spent most of the day with my little (in their own right) angels.

Because it is that time of the year again when we have to bid them adieu, we held a mini Valentine cum Farewell Party. Forget the fact that I was sore many days later for holding the video cam up the entire time (no freakin' tripod. Man!) or for running around in my *gulp* pumps taking pictures (and occasionally posing for one). It was only this Valentine that I felt a different kind of feeling: fulfillment. Fulfillment because we send these students off knowing that they carry parts of us from then on forever because we have become their teachers.

When you teach a child, everything becomes different. You begin to be more patient, more understanding, and kinder than usual. You will be tolerant of all childish monstrosities. You will be keen on their needs, not only academically but also emotionally. Soon after, you, too, becomes a child-- laughing over the silliest jokes or dreaming with wide eyes again. You will be inflicted of innocence adulthood once robbed from you. Your concept of love changes.

I spent the day with the kids and the night with new found friends. Friends who'd rather laugh away the silliness of the occasion than wallow the plight of being single. I got tons of chocolates from the kids, too. Somehow, they tasted better than those chocolates given by long lost boyfriends.