Tales of Young Offsprings
We are three. I am the middle child. Mae is a year and a half my senior while Sandee is five years my junior. Mae was born in Quezon City where our parents were living within the compound of Lolo Iking Sobrepena by La Trinidad St. now named E. Rodriguez Avenue. Mae was the baby in the compound and dominated the favor of everybody’s eyes. Soon enough I was born in Manila.
I have a vague memory of that part of my life; I just remembered speaking English as we were taught early on in that compound. When I was about 2 years old, Daddy decided to bring the family home in Pangasinan where we lived until our adult years. A few years after, Sandee was born. Our ancestral home in Pangasinan was owned by my grandparents who built it after World War II.
We lived together as an extended family. The house initially had 6 rooms and extended to 9 when I left the nest. It sits on almost 2 hectares of land that was rich with fruit trees. mangos, papayas, guavas, guyabanos, bananas, star apples, chicos, duhats, avocados, name it, we have it. The fruits were the prime of its’ class. Neighbors, relatives, friends come in to get filled and my grandparents being so generous shared the harvest and send them off with two bags full. The land was so fertile that the avocados were as huge as the papaya fruit. Mangos just hang in bunches that even when you close your eyes while aiming a sling will hit down not one but two sometimes three mangoes. These fruit trees helped send my father and his siblings to university. It was through these fruits that my grandmother instilled in me her entrepreneurial spirit.
Like all other siblings, we grew up developing different traits, personalities, and characteristics. Mae is more like Daddy’s girl, my parents’ love child. She and my Dad almost shared the same birthday, Daddy on September 14th while Mae on the 18th. Being firstborn, and the first grandchild, she was bathed with love and attention. Mae is reserved, quiet and exudes a certain calmness that commands the room. She is my protector, my confidante and my buddy. Sandee, on the other hand, was quiet as a child. A thumb sucker baby. Growing up, she had a lot of imaginary friends. I hear her talking to them while playing on her own. Being younger than me, I send her off a lot to do chores, most of the time my own. Sandee is a bookworm. One time when she was in first grade she impressed my Dad when she was openly reading a book while tying her shoelace. One day, I was tasked to take her home with me from school. Because I was busy having fun with peers, I totally forgot about her. We were about to have dinner when my mom asked for her and my jaw dropped in horror as I remembered abandoning her. We rushed to the school, and there she was under the acacia tree playing all alone almost teary-eyed at the sight of us. I felt so guilty for ages!
My sisters loved to play together at home while I became the wanderer. I hung out with my grandpa, my uncle, and dad when they go fishing and hunting. I learned how to fire a shotgun, to make my own sling, to make an animal trap. I dug earthworms then hooked them as bait for fishing. My sisters and I climbed trees. We were like monkeys swinging upon a branch. One time, we even attempted to build a treehouse. At the time, Tarzan was very famous. So we swing up and down the trees while doing a Tarzan call. We caught frogs, dragonflies, butterflies, bugs and played spider derby. Even as a child, I loved the outdoors. In the summer, we go on a vacation to my maternal grandfather’s home. I am excited most of all to go swim in the river that whatever chore I was given, I swiftly completed them. While in the river, I almost drowned twice. Mae was almost anxious to go home, afraid of being punished that she let me off her grip at the river.
Earlier in our growing up years, my grandfather would gather us all at night and tell us his stories about prince and princesses from a faraway kingdom, serpents, dragons, magic stones, monsters, witches and giants. Grandpa was a playwright and a photographer. Back in the days when we didn’t have television, most especially when there was a power outage, I looked forward to those evenings when we all sat down and listened to him. Sometimes, only a candle lit the room, I lay on the floor. Daddy scoops me up when I fell asleep. Grandpa’s stories were our daily soap opera. It created and stirred my very young imagination enough to think of endless questions that irritated my grandfather as I always cut him off during his storytelling. My grandma would come to my rescue and silenced grandpa arguing that if it was a television show, it went off for a commercial break.
My mom being the musical director for our local church played the piano each Sunday. She sent us to take piano lessons. Mae and Sandee diligently attended class while I skip them all to go out and play. As a result, I did not learn the piano, which I have regretted to this day. Harmonica, I did!
Our childhood was priceless! Will never trade it for the technology that children loved today. We played with stones, sticks, bubbles made of plant sap, paper airplanes, indigenous tree house or tent, origami, kite flying where everything of its material is devoid of electronics along with technology. Life was so simple then. Yet those times were the most memorable, in it laid the foundation that shaped who we are.
