Wally
Rob and Tracy
Monday, April 27, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Searching my past / 26
My mother was working in a school called Sacred Heart which was run by nuns. She lived in a small rented flat near the public market. Home was an hour and a half away where my father and my first two siblings were. The head nun at the school who was known to be very strict with everyone considered my mother an exception. Nanay was her favorite, seeing in her a good heart & her sacrifice as a pregnant woman travelling alone every now and then for several months for her family to live by.
When it was it time for my mother to give birth to her third child, she was at the rented flat. A midwife came to assist her in the delivery assisted by two working students from the school.
I was born at dawn. April 7, 1983. In Catbalogan, Samar. An old tattered towel was wrapped around me. No hospitals. No fancy baby clothes. Poverty smiled at my birth and I'm sure I smiled back at it in my own way.
Two days after, my father came to accompany us back to Calbayog - the place where I would spend the next 16 years; the city that I will call home all of my days.
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It was a sunny day when I woke up at past 7 in the morning. My parents and my brothers were still asleep save for Ronce, our youngest. With the few coins I had, we bought two candles at the nearest store from our house and walked the five blocks up the street. Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral was still almost empty when we arrived. We lit the candles and said a prayer in silence. I turned thirteen years old that day.
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These are two points in my life that I am fascinated with upon arriving at my twenty-sixth year. One from a memory of my strong courageous mother, the root of how I embraced and accepted the lack of financial stability yet taking joy in life itself; the other a personal vivid view from my adolescence that foretold of the future independence I now possess.
Twenty-six doesn't mean I'm old. But it's not too young of an age either. So let all that has to be learned learnt, let all that hides unfold, and everything that sleeps, awoken.
I may be very far away from home and might still have to walk millions of blocks to where I'm headed. But you see, I am ready. So bring it on!
When it was it time for my mother to give birth to her third child, she was at the rented flat. A midwife came to assist her in the delivery assisted by two working students from the school.
I was born at dawn. April 7, 1983. In Catbalogan, Samar. An old tattered towel was wrapped around me. No hospitals. No fancy baby clothes. Poverty smiled at my birth and I'm sure I smiled back at it in my own way.
Two days after, my father came to accompany us back to Calbayog - the place where I would spend the next 16 years; the city that I will call home all of my days.
_______________________________________________________________
It was a sunny day when I woke up at past 7 in the morning. My parents and my brothers were still asleep save for Ronce, our youngest. With the few coins I had, we bought two candles at the nearest store from our house and walked the five blocks up the street. Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral was still almost empty when we arrived. We lit the candles and said a prayer in silence. I turned thirteen years old that day.
_______________________________________________________________
These are two points in my life that I am fascinated with upon arriving at my twenty-sixth year. One from a memory of my strong courageous mother, the root of how I embraced and accepted the lack of financial stability yet taking joy in life itself; the other a personal vivid view from my adolescence that foretold of the future independence I now possess.
Twenty-six doesn't mean I'm old. But it's not too young of an age either. So let all that has to be learned learnt, let all that hides unfold, and everything that sleeps, awoken.
I may be very far away from home and might still have to walk millions of blocks to where I'm headed. But you see, I am ready. So bring it on!
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