Going to school on foot, I always took the left road; but, one time, mother said to take the right road so she could see me as I walked my way through end of that road. Our balcony was situated in such a way that anyone sitting there could see the right road.
"OK, I will take the right road, Ma; and when I reach the end of the road, I will wave at you."
Mother, attending to my new-born baby brother (the fifth in the family), nodded.
And off I went, taking the right road -- excited, knowing mother was seeing me from behind.
Five blocks away and I reached the road's end. I stopped walking and faced back our house. Already too far away, almost blurry. I had to make the wave as promised, though; but it seemed hard to do because you cannot see the one you are waving at.
Out of faith, I did the wave from left to right and from right to left and vice versa in almost slow motion to emphasize the hand-wave so she could see it.
Did mother see it? "I will ask mother once I am home," I said to myself.
But I never had the chance to ask because family was more concerned with important things than to talk about trivialities.
Before I started my primary education, I had the chance to live in the farm house of my grandma in the mountain and they had a long, slender pathway that one, from the viewpoint of the window, could see someone coming or leaving.
This norm of seeing the coming and leaving of someone dear to one's heart was ordinary phenomenon to children in the mountain farm where they lived, especially when grandma left my mother and her siblings in the house to sell crops and vegetables in the town market.
Mother never knew but I'd watch her go via a crack on the wall every time she left me and my younger sisters locked at home to do beauty home-services for a living during my six years of age; and this changed by way of fire that broke out in the neighborhood -- but that's another story.
To end this story: Despite the minutes spent in walking, not to mention the lingering moments in those grasses along the road of Roxas Avenue, I wondered why I finished my third grade as the "most punctual" pupil in the class.
Mother never knew but I'd watch her go via a crack on the wall every time she left me and my younger sisters locked at home to do beauty home-services for a living during my six years of age; and this changed by way of fire that broke out in the neighborhood -- but that's another story.
To end this story: Despite the minutes spent in walking, not to mention the lingering moments in those grasses along the road of Roxas Avenue, I wondered why I finished my third grade as the "most punctual" pupil in the class.
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