childhood

"what are your childhood memories?" i often used this question to my counselee, to evaluate whether a childhood experience may have a bearing on the recent problem the person has. who we are now is a product of our childhood experiences...Sigmund Freud the father of psychoanalysis states that childhood experiences shape our personality and behavior.

when i was a child, i was around 5 years old then when i felt a very severe pain on my mouth, i was crying and i told my father about it, he touched the tooth where the pain was coming from...the next day, he brought me to the dentist...i also remember tatay bringing medicines for my toothache when he comes home from work. i also remember tatay having this big bicycle, it has a wooden flat top, which exactly fit the front of the bicycle, between the handle bar and driver's sit, i sit on that wooden plank and we go around town riding in his big bicycle. the bicycle has a black round rubber attached to metal cone, when pressed it produces a potpot sound.
my first heartbreak was when i was six years old...that day came without me understanding what is really going on... all three of us his daughters were vacationing in manila when news arrived through a cousin that our father is in a serious condition. i never knew what it meant, my two sisters being far older than i am were inconsollable and were both holding rosaries from manila to pangasinan. in my young mind i was thinking that they were probably praying for tatay's fast recovery. i thought of setting aside an apple for him so that when we arrive in the hospital i have something to give him as a present. but the bus did not stop in the hospital and so i thought tatay might be recuperating home already, it was nighttime i thought he preferred to rest at home, besides the hospital is not too clean being an OC father, he might not want looking at the surroundings of that hospital. so we arrived late in the evening in san nicolas, i remember the bus we rode in was a regular(di airconditioned) pantranco bus. my two aunties were already waiting for us at the station, and upon seeing them, my two sisters started to bawl. i was wondering "what is happening?" so we arrived home, a lot people were already outside and inside the house, lights were installed in front so that our house was so bright...upon entering the house, my father lay lifeless (he was not yet embalmed) in the sala with so many people surrounding him, nanay was already wearing the black viel and was also crying...my aunties were crying, my sisters were hysterical, and i cried too... i thought that i would never see him again, that i will grow up without him, he will not be able to give me what i needed, i will forever not be able to experience what is it like to have a father. my sisters and i refused to have him embalmed, i was thinking that if he will be embalmed then, he is dead, because i believe in my heart that he was just sleeping...that embalming him might hurt him too much...

so many childhood memories, i hope i can share it with you some other time.
recalling this painful heatbreak gives me clear understanding of my difficult and painful relationships in the past...


i remember playing all the time with my neighbor playmate cousins. playing in the pig pen, pretending to be our home with my playmates as family members. we pick leaves pretending to be vegetables for our food, bathing in the river, drying our clothes under the sun so that when we get home we will not be scolded because we do not have evidence that we played and bathe in the river, although we are unaware that our skin beceme darker and with disheveled hair.