We keep your memories alive, Dodong Solis

We heard about your passing yesterday.  I opened my picture files and remember that you told me once, when I was scrounging for stories about the early people in this city, that your folks used to own that piece of land where the new hotel was now standing.  

"That used to be the land where my Lolo's house once stood," you said.

"How rich you must have been by now, if your Lolo had not sold the land," I said.

You said something after this but I could no longer remember your reply. I wanted so badly to remember it now that it has fallen upon our shoulders to remember everything.  

Maybe, some other time, when my mind would be in a more relaxed state, maybe, it would work again and I would remember. 

Just like what the Crystal Woman told me once.  The memory will just come to you in the most unexpected time. It will not announce itself to you when it does, unlike what happens in the movies.  There would be no spectacle, no drama. But you will know when it happens.  The information from the crystals, stored for millennia under the earth, will just come to you and you will know it when it does.

I will remember what the Crystal Woman said to remember the stories in this city. 

I will remember everything. 

Old passion re-asserting itself

When I was six, Ma came home with an exciting news about an artist/teacher, a dignified and illustrious Mr. I forgot-his-name, accepting six or seven year-old children to train under him at home. The students--whom Ma imagined could be all boys--would stay with the Master on weekdays and may go home on weekends, an arrangement similar to a boarding school for young artists.  Even in a remote place like B'la, it promised something special; it even sounded different: a training in Art. I felt loved, happy.  Even at that point, I thought, Ma must have felt something about me, must have thought I had some of what people called "potential."  I was filled with excitement. Day after day I waited for it to happen: to learn Art, to watch the Maestro render reality on paper. But the month ended without a word from Ma. I waited and waited until the waiting became so unbearable.  When I finally asked her about it,  she told me she decided against it because she was worried about me. For her, it was unimaginable: a six-year-old girl living with boys under the tutelage of a man.   That officially ended my career in Art and Ma quickly forgot all about it.  I didn't. 
Well, maybe, I forgot all about it while I was growing up but that's what I remember now.  I remember how I was quickly forgotten, my dreams set aside. 
Ma taught us to put ourselves last always.  All the drawings that mattered in school were those being done by boys.  The bold strokes, the tri-dimensional realistic renditions, the portraits that copied reality even if they were only done with a ballpoint pen. Girl drawings were merely beautiful, trivial. Together, we--girls--thrived in the shadows, learning from each other and enjoying every moment of it; and that's how we persisted. It's only now, when old passions try to re-assert themselves, overwhelming us in their intensity, that we come to realize we could have been bolder.  
Then, we want to start all over again.

Please remember everything!

Where were you on January 2, four years ago?
I tried asking you but you can’t remember.
Is it only the mind that forgets? Or, is it the heart?
Is it because we did nothing significant that day that the date simply slipped off our memory for good?
We must still have been living in that rented house with a red gate, numbered 72, along McArthur Highway, the house that Sean thought was our own to the chagrin of the real owner. It was the house that Ja, your stepdad, described as a garage because the owner used to park their rusty old sedan and a new van just outside our front door window. It was a house that I remember with horror and helplessness because the bedroom where we used to sleep had no window and the other room, where you used to draw and be alone, used to have windows that looked out to a stove in the open kitchen of the other house. That window was eventually overshadowed by ugly granite when the owner built another extension to their house.
It was a perfect trap, that house. It was built only as an afterthought.
First of all, I’m not very good at dates. I couldn’t remember the exact day I met your father or when exactly America first attacked Iraq, but I can still picture his eyes and the way that his shirt revealed the curves of his shoulders. Just as I had clear pictures on my mind of Operation Desert Storm on the pages of Newsweek magazine on the magazine rack of the Recoletos library; and then, of Typhoon Ruping, afterwards, when the entire city went dead and we had to hunt for bread and canned goods out on Colon street because there was nothing to eat in the entire Tsa Elim dormitory. I still can remember the exact day when you arrived, the dress I was wearing, the look of panic in your father’s eyes, the exhilaration and the long hours of struggle before that. It was a day that changed my life, so, I can’t believe I can’t remember anything on January 2, 2006, when you turned 13. I remember meeting towards the end of that year another 13 year old boy whose mother and father were killed on the street of Kidapawan in broad daylight; and I immediately took to him because I was thinking of you.
If I could not remember where I was on January 2 four years ago, it was not because I had forgotten you. I’m sure I was shuttling to and from Davao city and hometown again, desperate, as usual; trying to cope with the crazy demands of the holidays and jobs. Maybe, it was the Christmas I lost Sean’s biplanes along with his medicines and other toys in a small backpack in the bus, because deep inside, I was crumbling. The holidays always required me to spend the money that I didn’t have and I was always thinking that I wasn’t good enough for you.