Apparition at our Balete tree

A day or two after I cut down the thumb-sized branches of the Balete tree,  Ja woke me up to see what hung from among the leaves in the morning of September 8. This was the amazing sight I saw.

It hung there unmoving for the entire day that Ja suspected it was already dead. "Butterflies die so fast," he said.

But it was not just an ordinary butterfly because it was five or 10 times as big. For three days, it hung there unmoving until it disappeared. As soon as Ja saw that it was no longer there, he went up the stairs to find if it was in Pa's old room. "Why did you do that?I asked Ja, who always saw some supernatural meaning to extraordinarily beautiful phenomenon. "Why did you have to check the moth's body upstairs?"  

"I was expecting to find a man with butterfly wings in the old man's room," he said.

Beautiful Balete at the Makati Circuit

Just to honor this old Balete tree inside the Makati Circuit where I used to jog every morning maybe five years or so ago because it's only recently that I recognised it to be a Balete tree.  I used to hover and stare at it when I went to take a look at the nearby Pasig river just a couple of steps away and those strange cargo boats passing by, I would turn around to find the tree, fascinated by its thick trunk that looked like roots or branches, wondering what it was, wanting to communicate to the tree because I, too, felt totally abandoned, cast off in that place. I wanted the tree to communicate to me and I never knew it was actually talking to me at that time and it's only now, years later, that I finally hear and understand.  I hope you thrive, beautiful Balete!