Day Twelve: The Importance of Wowowee

This is one ridiculous photo of Willie from WOWOWEE.
Unfortunately, he's not on the show anymore.
You can imagine what the rest of the television show is like. 

I am sitting in my Dad's living room, watching Filipino television. I cannot understand a word anyone is saying. And despite this handicap, I find myself captivated and unable to tear my eyes away.



It's a train wreck of a show is called "WOWOWEE." Little girls in full pageant make-up are forced to sing for prizes. Chubby little boys stand in a line with transvestites and play a game called "Hep Hep Hooray." Another game called "Cash Bukas" put a disheveled middle aged woman in a glass box half-filled with cash (I'll let your imagination guess what happens next). The hosts are painful to watch as they flirt with each other and the contestants (yes, even the children). Horrible, horrible. And yet here I sit, pretending to write, pretending to not watch the spectacle of these desperate people. My Dad snickers at the TV. He loves this show. He used to watch it with my Mom, and so here I am watching it with him. And I feel silly, happy, and a little embarrassed.

This is the only the second time I've come back to my Dad's condo since my Mom died. The piles of sympathy cards sit on the dining table next to the piles of Mom's junk mail. Her closet remains untouched, as does the right side of the bed. A glass of water, now covered with a small bowl, still sits on the night table, waiting for her to take a sip in the middle of the night.  She left it there the morning she had her stroke, and Dad has covered it so that it would not collect dust. In fact, the night table is dust-free, which leads me to believe that he has cleaned everything around the remnants of her life. Her slippers sit at the edge of the bed, her brushes are neatly arranged on the dresser.

When I leave in the morning, I'll probably clean up after myself, taking care to not disturb the places she last touched.