*verdad

Two hours brought me back to my childhood, back when hide and seek and langit lupa were the talk of the town. The giant siliatop the waiting shed by the curving road in Camalig is still as red as when I was three feet smaller. I can still taste the ice candy Daryl and Cindy used to buy for me. It dripped of maroon water.

My uncle’s home is filled with love and modesty born by hanging paintings and white statues he made himself. By the porch, the wooden table is surrounded by older men, a glass of rum and melting ice on one hand and long, red cigarettes on the other. Their wives are confined in the little dining room, preparing spicy food, engaging in the urgency of chat. The children run around in the garden where the statues’ backs serve as a hiding place. In all their faces, blood-rushed, alcoholic cheeks are plumped with laughter, happiness in sharing gossip make their eyes flutter and powdery sweat are ignored by mirth. We were young once. We enjoyed this time of the year as the little kids do now.

The sky has told its tale and changed with our metamorphosis. We see the slow blinks and stutter of the stars. We give her light from our skyscrapers and electric flashes of luminous bulbs. She will give us light where the giant sili testified as a witness for many deaths.

We unfurl from the cocoon of innocent youth. We form another circle, one with edges and the discontinuity that age brings to happiness. We play a different game and clasp a different kind of candy between our fingers. We laugh with deeper humor. We cry about something more than a scrape on the knee. We change. We discover. We see not only night and day, we see the dawn and dusk.

You and I may have changed and buried our younger selves under the soil of memory only nostalgic reminiscence could dig up but the conjunction between you and I will never ever die. The we in you and me - that will never change. The stars will tell this story to the moon, and the sky to the sun, the sunshine to the world. We change in the vicinity of change-less in-betweens.