Psyche-

I was a small town girl and had a few memories of the grandiose light displays of a city particularly on Christmases. It was a turnabout when I get to pursue college in a suburban and escaping to the city was a fifteen-minute away ride. Having been gone to a classmate’s place for a fix of group homework late past seven in the evening, I caught SM-Baguio lighted in its Christmas theme. Said my friend if we could drop by to check for the holiday’s on-sale. To her courtesy, I somehow had treats of shakes up to the shivering and all those goose-bumps. To melt away our chilling, my friend and I trodded up and down the stairs. The number of people threading in and out for the season covered our monotonous twosome trip for over an hour. I could have paid for her next season’s shakes should she took a longer year degree course. Malling is not at all that emptying your wallets out. On Christmas breaks with extra bills from our parents, I bring my siblings and get our legs walking aimlessly aro...

When I was around nine, I was on track to fend on my younger siblings while my parents were off with their studies and/or work. At that young age, I discovered how was to be a home-maker and a nanny rolled into one. I had seen Mom do the dusting, laundry, cooking and keeping our home so I at least had extracted tips to start with once left with my siblings at home. Before Mom and Dad set to work, they saw to it we were done with our first meal of the day. For how many summers, my parents were on constant search and reserving rooms for the summer classes. We experienced a room that catered as our dining, bedroom and living room that was for me to maintain.  Pick on the caked poop on the floor. Spoon feeding my sibs Cerelac® when they cry hunger. Lull them to sleep on mid-day. Change soiled shorts, nay diapers. Wash, pat and dress them. Add of course were extra errands like fetching water for the drum or bring in the clothes hang to dry on the clothesline. The memory of my baby sib...

A day off! My soul found this place to call solemnization.

It is one of the tiniest books in the ancestral house of my maternal grandparents as it is also the very first book I came across with even before my mother fed me with those grade school textbooks. A bound yellowing pages yet every part intact belonged to my granny. In my memory was stored a seven-year-old having queries what it was. And that, why were the printing so fine, the text three times tinier than my reading book’s. And the leaves were so lightweight, so thin having granny’s shaking fingers a hard time to turn them. Oh well, I cannot remember how she answered me.  I had from an aunt a present of nice booklets of stories inspired from the Bible. They had translations and illustrations that stirred a kid’s imagination. When I thought I did not understand the first story, the song our catechist who hummed to us “Si Noah’y Gumawa ng Arka” complemented with an animation affirmed I was going right with my reading. So I fell for the Bible stories and went on until the last p...

         Grade school years were our food times. I and my siblings would come home from school dashing through the door and aiming for our favorite nook-out – our mother’s kitchen. Our main target: the calories in the “tampipi”, a handicraft out of bamboo stems thinned to be woven and intended as a food keeper. Each of us, ditch our backpacks aimlessly somewhere in the living room; take turn in raking out his or her fork from the drainer to pick on the merienda and find his or her comfort seat around.          On weekends, Mama would call on us to help her make “taputaps,” her delicacy out of raw cassava sliced to be sun-dried, ground into powder, mixed with grated coconut’s milk and sugar, molded into fist-sized mounds, flattened and wrapped with sashes of fresh sugarcane leaves and then steamed to cook.          In a few blinks, I had to pack my bags and leave home in search of independen...

I was at my freshest of the career I professed when my life crossed with his. I was keeping a list of priorities for my act of giving back. Send my baby sis to a post graduate school or help her settle for a job. Handle my younger brother’s medicines due his epileptic condition. Shoulder the furnishing of our townhouse that gets messed up with the call of raging storms. Grace a thanksgiving meal with my grannies and grampy. Handle my baby brother’s miscellaneous fees while he paves his way thru a college degree. Of course included were my then college peers’ woes from monetary issues to a simple food treat. In his naughty arrow shot, Cupid had me again this haughty heart over a man. I said man distinctively different from a boy who I could wildly gush about my younger years. Mr. HL was an ordinary client on the regular clinic hours. Soon as the door shut close behind him, he let loose from his cuddle his pet and briskly brushed away his beady sweat from his forehead and dirt on arms....

Months ago when the new batch of veterinarians stepped out of Centennial Hall of Manila Hotel, I was all consumed of the newly gained kind of freedom. Right from there, a sis from a veterinary sorority and I went straight to our choice of work – be a small animal practitioner. I do not remember to have shaken my boss’s hand when we first met though there was an exchange of greeting. I was born to, I say, a hard-working family. A field to toil for a weekend was mine and my siblings to call playground. Dad would be so squeamish to have us home right after class. Seldom do we have the chance of kids’ play on the neighborhood. Only we tend to break rules when Dad was off somewhere because of scouting, a seminar or studying. Only we got surprised with our chores undone. Of course, spanking got its name. Growing up with one like him – a martinet was an unordinary sweat. Who said growing up is easy? It never was. When I thought after graduating and getting a job, I would be let out to...

It was summer in the year 1987. The newly-wed couple of two dynamic persons were very eager for their first awaited baby of their married life. On the sixteenth of April, due time struck the clock signaling a baby girl’s delivery. Cradled by the ancestral house of the Marrero’s, a tiny angel said hello to a fresh beginning. She was christened at Holy Rosary Parish Church, Kayan East with Mrs. *|\/|*||)* and Mr. |?*|*|\|)* as the godparents. Her name Crista so beautiful was chosen by her father. That is me! Who am I? I am the typical Filipina. I have black, straight thin hair, black eyes and brown complexion. As the law of genetics is concerned, I am a mixed bred of my parents’ genes but people claim my phenotype to be matching to that of my paternal side. My short stance and stocky type of body can not deny. My childhood the earliest that I can remember was in Lubon, my father’s home. With the stature of my parents’ work being transferred from school to school; I was left with my...