So yesterday

            It was one Sunday afternoon. I was stuck on the eighth floor of my dormitory. I was tapping and clicking my laptop furiously as I should finish a reaction paper for my Nursing subject due the next morning. Mindlessly, I opened my media player. Lighthouse family’s lead singer started exuding from the speakers of my laptop. It overwhelmed me with the familiar feeling of vagabonding years with my father, when I was once a little girl, couched on the front seat of his white Honda City, thinking of the adventure that awaits me somewhere ahead. Now I’m sixteen and between the year I was eight and the moment I am now, God, it seems a lifetime has passed.

                I still contain in myself the wonderful feeling of childhood, yes, I very much do. But all that was left were feelings, abstractions of the wonderful banality (which equates to life’s perfection) of my childhood. Almost everything is gone now, though the material still lives on, the whole construct of my past life is now all gone, or rather, has evolved into something distant, something unfamiliar.

                Sometimes I get the feeling of irrational longing for all the things in the past, for them to just pop in front of me, to bring back to life our white house and dear Caramels and everything that entails their existence. But every time I do this, something reminds me of life’s definition; it always walks forward, every dust and every galaxy is caught in the unfathomable dimension called time and it has never destroyed its forwarding momentum…

                Sweet child, breathe now, though the cold water around you stings the soles of your feet and makes your knuckles white, and tingles a little too much of your small body, be triumphant! You made it! You floated! I did it, papa! And I was overflowing with happiness. And I arched my arms in a manner of a professional swimmer, plunged back into the icy water and swam as gracefully as I can. My little sister was just right beside the spot where I dived into. When she saw me did it, her big, black and round peepers started brimming with anticipation and she blurted papa, it’s now my turn to learn how to swim! Papa reached out one arm to little sister’s jaw, and asked her to squirm like a butterfly and she squirmed willfully as what little children do on water. Meanwhile, Kuya was on one of the nearby rocks, silently observing the whole happening, and after seeing my newly-acquired skill, he decided to go for a little show with me. I would swim below the water, he on the surface. As though it means a lot the world, we made our little show full of poignant spirit and I was very happy I can already swim side by side with him.

            I was stepping on a ruggedy-pudgedy sea of garbage and my feet weren’t very happy about it, but I didn’t mind. I looked around and saw more garbage. I looked to my right and I was awestruck. I saw a shaggy family who were examining the garbage and picking up what might be of some value. Papa, shortly after seeing us land our feet on the heap of dirt, coaxed us –kuya, Roxelle, and I—to climb back to his truck named Roxelace. Yes, it did have a name, lettered artfully on the metal board between the headlights.  This was one of our childhood adventures. I was about eight, kuya eleven and Roxelle five. It might have been one summer day or it could be one December day. What’s for sure was that we had the tropical sun blaring wildly above us.

                We were children and restless so we climbed onto the truck earlier that day when papa was about to leave for Smoky Mountain. It is where we throw away piles and piles of garbage from Caramels because the town’s garbage truck won’t collect garbage on a regular basis and that made papa do the job for them. Smoky Mountain is one heck of a fenced cliff alongside the road—smelly, smoky, hot and awfully smelly. This was a prelude to the day’s adventure. After dislodging the garbage, we drove farther away the town. We brought with us lots of Chippy, Tortillos, Piatos and every possible junk food kids enjoy. We also had two bottles of Coke which we later refrigerated down the creek bed—a creek alongside the nearby small town, which was about to witness every agony of a little girl who is about to learn how to swim.

                The next instant we were on the pier, facing our small town (such a small town) serenely stretching alongside the Pacific. The air was sultry, and I smelled of fish. I looked at papa and I imagined of a big fish that was causing his fishing line to dethread itself. Occasionally, I would grip the rod when papa would let me, while kuya and Roxelle, out of boredom waiting for our bait to lure a disheveled fish, would climb on and off Roxelace playfully. We’ve had small shrimps as bait we bought at the market. The fish hook I bought earlier at the hardware later marveled around it a fish it just caught, and we were all very happy seeing this, and it was another adventure.

                I was standing on a grimy soil. It was black, ankle-deep, fish-smelling soil. I looked around; I saw Roxelle and Papa at a distant, freighting to catch up with me and kuya, who had already gone a little too far off the breakwater. For a moment, I closed my eyes rather instinctively, and marveled the soul of the moment. At long last! I was about to ride on a real rowboat, along the wide and windy waters of the Pacific and with the most perfect company the world could offer. It was that time of my life when I have encountered the peculiar sense of guarded trepidation. It was the archaic, frightening feeling offered by the deep and vast ocean and the good stress the circumstances bring about upon knowing that I have the equally archaic, ferocious love and care of my father who could readily protect his little ones when nature would start playing tricks on them.

                This seafaring adventure was my favorite. I could vividly recall how angelic did my little sister, upon sensing the alarm raised by the darkening clouds, mutter her classroom prayer and how slowly and beautifully did a beam of light tear off the gray clouds and turn it to white. We believed that it was Jesus impeding the coming of a storm. We rowed and rowed and I reckon that at that early age I could already appreciate the beauty of our sheer existence amid this colossal universe. We rowed more until we docked below a tarnishing tower of metal scaffolds. It typified a small island where adventurers make their short stops to fill in their raging stomachs or to wait for a storm to pass them by. We ate our lunch on the foot of that tower. We’ve had pork chops and sweet mango slices and coke and they tasted so good together and too perfect to be forgotten by my taste buds—this combo is still one of my most favorite today.

                There are times when the scene recasts a bit to occupy just me, my father, and white horse. I remember our ampalaya haunt one Sunday and my dismay upon knowing that after combing through three towns, we weren’t able to find young ampalaya shoots for sale. I needed the ampalaya for my parade costume the next day; it should dangle on one side of my head.  Papa told me I should not worry because I will be waking up with it first thing in the morning. I believed in him with all my heart. While I slept, little did I know, papa was up the whole night. He made a drawing of an ampalaya out of cartolina and colored pens. The next day I did saw it on my bedside. It was intricately made and so pleasing to the eyes. That day was the opening of Nutrition Month and I was in a slogan contest. Papa also helped me on my slogan. At the end of the day, I went home triumphant. I won first place. Papa won first place!

                  The days are long gone when we were swathed in childhood frivolity. However, like strips of negative films coiled in one definite place of my mind. These memories never fail to produce fresh and vivid epitome of the life I have had when I was once a child whose biggest ordeal was far far from making a reaction paper for a course that in one way or another will eventually direct my future life and will drive me farther away from childhood.