gordon , melissa

once awhile, people return to bless your life. mel wrote me a card when she returned from taiwan recently. i didn't really teach her but a timely note dropped into her life led her to a new shore she always wanted to find. it happened the same way when i had dinner with my former student yesterday. he insisted on treating me. an old teachers' day gift, he promised.

it has been about 5 years since mel and gordon left college. about to graduate from nus and eager to explore new terrains, gordon had given some thought about teaching and served with distinction as an intern in a secondary school here. he was offered a scholarship and wanted to discern further, whether he was really ready to say yes. i saw myself in him- all 23 and open to what life may bring. sharing at depth about what teaching meant to both of us, i was led to recall times when i shared other stories and truths, the stuff of life which i have since forgotten. he affirmed our past and returned me home; a word that healed, a decision to forgive, patience to bear, regrets to carry and life broken whole, for others...when to find a friend, when to give, and take and how say goodbye. about mel, she was left in a corner after the release of results. fearful of a future she was not ready to see. i led her to another colleague who gave her courage to do her undergraduate studies in taiwan.

i left in both of them a part of my own searching life and now i glimpsed again the decisions gordon struggles to make even as mel revisits singapore with more than a smile etched in her heart. i retrieved my own past as i saw two futures on the same road i walked. stunned, the right words eluded me. but there was little doubt of why i was put into their lives, to guide them to paths i can never take.

as we parted, gordon said words i never expected to hear even as mel penned her thoughts in chinese (i struggled to decipher with all my might). i never understood what thanksgiving meant till i learnt to receive that day. i sat still in the cafe as gordon continue to speak. i looked beyond the life that sat before me...restoring what i lost even as he regaled and helped me to retrace the stories. i know why life brings a season of loss only to bear fruit in later years. the pain no longer there...the anguish, cast away.

that short hour stretched into night. i no longer see beyond the cold windows in that old favourite cafe. before we parted, i blessed him in my own unknown ways. i drove home that night, with the lamps lightening the long road i was burdened by. like mel, i left only to find back the reason to carry on living, if only to make a difference, if only to receive...finding the freedom that giving brings. and the deep gratitude, just knowing. and seeing two lives, released.