After graduation, summer brought a season of freedom, joy, and childhood wonder as kite-flying filled my days beneath the open sky. My father’s return from military retirement also brought new excitement to our home, especially with our first cassette recorder, which became a source of laughter and family entertainment.
But the brightness of that summer slowly gave way to hardship. I was sent to live with relatives, where I performed household chores and experienced loneliness, fear, and situations far beyond my years. From running through cornfields to escape danger to spending long hours alone with only the radio for company, the season became a quiet introduction to life’s harsher realities.
The summer after graduation belonged, in every possible sense, to the sky. Near our home lay a wide open field where neighborhood children gathered each afternoon to fly kites, and for weeks I was among them from sunrise until dusk, head tilted upward, fingers wrapped tightly around kite strings, completely absorbed in the endless blue above us.
To a boy who had never really considered how many shapes the sky could hold, the variety of kites felt almost magical. There was the sinugong, the sinapi, the crescent-shaped buwan-buwan, the sinayaw inspired by the graceful flight of the sayaw bird, the binandera designed like a flag snapping proudly in the wind, the tinaro crafted from tin into a box-like form, and the tawo-tawo, shaped like a human figure with its arms spread wide, as if it too longed to soar. Even grown men joined us in the field, flying their own kites with the same childlike seriousness, their eyes reddened by the relentless glare of the summer sun.
I stayed outdoors for hours that easily became entire days. My skin darkened beneath the heat, my eyes stung from staring too long into the bright sky, and my mother scolded me almost daily for forgetting meals and coming home late. Her voice carried that familiar mixture of irritation and concern mothers know so well, the kind that already expects not to be obeyed. And she was right. At twelve years old, with the school year finally behind me and freedom stretching endlessly overhead, I simply could not pull myself away.
The field, the wind, the tug of the string in my hands, and the vast blue sky above me felt larger than childhood itself. My favorite color had always been sky blue, but that summer I finally understood why. Standing there beneath that enormous glittering expanse, watching my kite disappear into the light, I felt something rare and unforgettable: the quiet happiness of being completely free.
That same summer, my father returned home from Manila after retiring from the military. His long years of service had finally come to an end, and with his retirement came a sum of money that, by the standards of our modest household, felt almost quiet substantial. Whether it was an advance on his pension or a separate retirement benefit, I never fully understood. What I did know was that the money briefly transformed the atmosphere of our home. For a short while, life seemed touched by a kind of abundance we had never experienced before.
My father arrived carrying gifts that filled the house with excitement: a cassette recorder, a beautiful wall clock for the living room, elegant wristwatches for my older brother and sister, and a portable typewriter that sat on the table looking important and mysterious, as though it belonged in the office of someone far more educated than any of us. But among all the gifts, it was the cassette recorder that completely captured our imagination.
It was the first appliance we had ever owned that could preserve a human voice. To us, that felt almost magical. Spoken words had always disappeared the moment they were uttered, but now voices could be captured, stored, and replayed at will on thin ribbons of magnetic tape. We experimented with it endlessly, recording songs, conversations, and bursts of childish nonsense simply because we could.
The novelty reached its peak when my brother Junjun discovered the recorder’s most entertaining use. Whenever our parents or siblings became involved in one of their brief household quarrels, the kind that flared suddenly over small things and faded just as quickly, he would quietly place the recorder nearby and tape the entire exchange. Later, after tempers had cooled and everyone had returned to normal, he would replay the argument for the family.
We would erupt into helpless laughter hearing those angry voices played back. What had seemed tense and dramatic only hours earlier suddenly sounded exaggerated, theatrical, and almost absurd. The people whose voices had been recorded probably did not find it nearly as amusing as the rest of us did. But to us children, gathered around that little machine in our small living room, it felt like pure entertainment and for a while, the house echoed more with laughter than with worry.
But before the summer had fully run its course, my mother told me I would be leaving home for a while. She called it a vacation. I was to stay with my Uncle Metring and his wife, Aunt Melba, in Subangdaku, Mandaue City. I accepted the arrangement without protest, children were not expected to question such decisions, though even at twelve, I sensed that the word “vacation” was being asked to soften something that felt, in reality, very different.
Their house stood beside wide stretches of rice and corn fields, a modest structure built from light materials and topped with a nipa roof that allowed the sounds of the countryside to drift freely indoors. Uncle Metring and Aunt Melba had two young sons: Atoy, whose real name was Renante, a mischievous and energetic boy who always seemed to be getting into trouble; and Banban, whose given name was Giovanni, a quiet and unusually gentle child whose soft mannerisms and delicate way of carrying himself already hinted at the person he would later become.
Years later, Banban would openly come out as gay. Looking back now, I realize there had always been something quietly self-assured about him, even as a child, as though he understood himself long before the world around him had the language or understanding to recognize it.
My days quickly became consumed by household responsibilities: fetching water from the well, cleaning the house, and looking after the children, especially Atoy, whose boundless energy required constant supervision and left little room for rest.
I had little truly negative to say about Uncle Metring himself. He was kind in the way some men become kind after a few drinks, more open, more expressive, their usual reserve softened by alcohol and the fatigue of daily life. On those evenings, he would sit beside me and talk for hours, and I remember being quietly grateful for the attention and companionship.
Aunt Melba was more difficult to understand. She was not cruel, at least not intentionally so, but there was a sharpness in the way she spoke and a habit of voicing her frustrations aloud without much restraint. Being around her often left me feeling slightly uneasy, as though I always needed to be careful not to do something wrong.
One day, I overheard her speaking to Uncle Metring about money. Times were difficult, she said, and then almost casually, as though the thought had simply slipped out, she remarked that perhaps I was bringing bad luck into the household because I ate too much.
To this day, I cannot say whether she truly meant it or whether it was merely the kind of bitter, half-serious complaint people make when they are exhausted and frustrated, without considering who might be listening nearby. I was not standing in front of them. They may not even have realized I could hear. But I heard every word clearly.
I said nothing about it. I carried the remark quietly back into myself, the way one carries a humiliation too small to protest yet too painful to forget. It was not anger I felt so much as embarrassment, a deep and private shame that seemed to settle heavily inside me.
After that afternoon, I began counting the days with a new kind of urgency, silently willing the summer to pass more quickly, desperate for the moment I could finally return home before hearing anything else I would never be able to unhear.
There was another incident I still remember clearly. One afternoon, I built a kite for the children, hoping to give them something fun to do. Together, we ran into the nearby cornfields, the dry stalks rustling around us while the kite struggled and dipped against the slow afternoon wind.
For the first time since arriving there, I remember feeling genuinely lighthearted.
Then Lorenzo appeared.
He was the caretaker of the fields, and he came toward us in a fury that was immediate and unmistakable, shouting as he ran, his voice carrying easily across the dry open land. In his hand was a bolo knife that caught the sunlight with a frightening gleam, making it instantly clear that none of us needed to be told twice to run.
We sprinted back to the house and hid inside while he remained outside, still shouting, his anger echoing across the yard long after we had disappeared from sight.
When Aunt Melba came home and learned what had happened, she marched outside and confronted him with equal intensity, insisting that the land belonged to my great-grandmother and that we therefore had every right to be there.
The truth, as I would later come to understand, was far more complicated. My grandfather had long since passed away, and ownership of the property had gone to his sister, leaving his own children with nothing to inherit from that land. But that inconvenient reality did nothing to slow Aunt Melba down.
And strangely enough, as I watched her stand there, fearless, loud, and completely unwilling to back down, I found myself admiring her despite everything else that still quietly lingered inside me.
In the meantime, Uncle Metring worked for a liquor company, his days shaped by long shifts that often left the house empty for hours at a time. Aunt Melba spent most of her days traveling from one client’s home to another as a beautician, usually leaving early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon.
And when the children finally fell asleep, the house would sink into a silence so complete that it seemed to take on a physical presence of its own ,something heavy, still, and quietly pressing against the walls.
I would open the wooden windows to let in whatever breeze happened to drift across the fields, along with the distant songs of birds hidden among the trees. Then I would stand there staring outside with the unfocused gaze of someone who had nowhere to go and no one with whom to share the moment.
The loneliness of those afternoons was not dramatic. It did not demand attention or announce itself loudly. It simply remained there, patient, quiet, without complaining so much but homesickness, until I gradually learned how to live inside it.
The transistor radio became my refuge during those long and silent hours. Whenever the quiet began to feel unbearable, I would switch it on and let the voices and music fill the room, if only to create the comforting illusion that I was not entirely alone.
Two songs seemed to follow me throughout that summer, returning again and again as though the radio somehow understood exactly what I was feeling: “Good Friend” and “I’m Coming Home.” Together, they became the bittersweet soundtrack of those long and lonely days, days filled with longing, waiting, quiet isolation, and the slow, aching hope of returning to the place where I truly felt I belonged: home.
Eventually, my parents came to take me home. The relief I felt in that moment, embarking into whatever vehicle that led me back to Pardo, back to the familiar smells, sounds, and textures of our own house. I was back. I was home. And for a little while, that was enough.
But not long after I had settled once again into the rhythms of home, another uncle arrived with his wife: Uncle Nilo and Aunt Daya. What began as an ordinary visit soon turned into a proposal. They asked whether I would come and stay with them while the summer vacation had not yet ended.
I could not find a way to say no. Perhaps the overly obedient part of me simply could not. By then, I already understood that such decisions belonged mostly to the adults around me, and that my own preferences, though real, were rarely the deciding factor.
Uncle Nilo and Aunt Daya operated a small food store that catered to workers from a nearby biscuit and candy factory, serving a constant stream of hungry laborers who needed quick and affordable meals throughout the day. Once again, my days became filled with the practical duties of someone else’s household: fetching water, helping with chores, slicing vegetables for the day’s cooking, and assisting wherever I was needed.
By then, that kind of labor had already become familiar to me. I had learned how to move through those responsibilities quietly and without complaint, almost as though I had accepted that usefulness was the price one paid for occupying space in another person’s home.
Water had to be drawn from a deep hand-pump well owned by an elderly woman everyone called Isang. She was sharp-tongued, perpetually irritated, and seemed to treat every interaction as an opportunity to complain. Each trip to fetch water required payment, and each payment was accompanied by some form of scolding, sometimes for moving too slowly, sometimes for carelessness, and sometimes, it seemed, simply for existing within her line of sight.
I accepted her attitude with as much composure as I could manage and quietly continued about my work.
But it was there, in that household, that the contrast between my two summer stays revealed itself fully and unmistakably.
Uncle Nilo and Aunt Daya were genuinely kind, not performatively kind, not kind only when convenient, but consistently and unconditionally so. Their kindness did not keep score. It did not make you feel the cost of your presence or remind you of the burden you supposedly imposed.
When I made mistakes, as any child naturally would, they responded not with irritation or harsh remarks, but with patience. Sometimes even with laughter. They corrected me gently, in ways that made me feel guided rather than merely tolerated.
And perhaps most importantly, they never made me feel unwanted.
Looking back now, I realize that the difference between those two households shaped something fundamental inside me. The chores were nearly identical. The responsibilities were much the same. I was still a child temporarily living in someone else’s home, trying to earn my place through usefulness and obedience.
But the emotional weight of that life changed entirely depending on one simple thing: whether the people around you were genuinely glad that you were there.
Furthermore, I began to notice something about myself during those months away from home, a part of my character I had never fully recognized before because I had never been removed from familiar surroundings for so long.
In someone else’s home, I became almost a different person: quieter than I had ever been, smaller in the space I allowed myself to occupy, careful to the point of near invisibility. I spoke only when spoken to. I moved through rooms without drawing attention to myself. I learned to fold my needs inward and keep my feelings tucked away somewhere they would not inconvenience anyone.
It was not courage, at least not the bold and deliberate kind people usually admire. It was something closer to instinct, a quiet understanding that I was a guest, that my welcome depended largely on my ability not to become a burden, and that the safest way to move through an unfamiliar world was to take up as little space in it as possible.
Even now, I am not entirely certain whether that was wisdom or simply survival. Perhaps, at times, the two are not so different. Perhaps the distinction only becomes clear years later, when enough time has passed for you to look back and finally understand what you were doing merely to protect yourself.
When my parents finally came to take me home for the last time that summer, Uncle Nilo and Aunt Daya pressed a small amount of money into my hands before I left. It was probably not much by ordinary standards, the kind of gift people of modest means give with genuine generosity because they understand what it means to need even a little.
But what stayed with me was not the money itself. It was what the gesture meant. It was the warmth behind it, the feeling of being sent off as though my presence in their home had mattered, as though I myself had mattered. That was what I truly carried home with me, far more than the few coins folded into my pocket.
That summer had not been what I imagined when the school year ended and the wide, sky-blue days of vacation first stretched before me like a promise. There had been moments of laughter, kites rising above dry cornfields, and a cassette recorder full of secretly captured arguments. But there had also been overheard remarks through thin walls, a bolo knife flashing beneath the afternoon sun, a transistor radio filling the silence of an empty house, and the long, quiet education of learning how to live far from home without falling apart.
I returned to Pardo carrying all of it with me, both the joy and the loneliness, the pride and the shame, the fear and the quiet gratitude and the way one carries experiences that have genuinely changed them: without fully realizing yet how deeply those changes have settled inside.
And with that homecoming, my grade school story quietly draws to a close, not with ceremonies or ribbons, but with a boy standing once again at his own front door: tired, grateful, and finally ready for whatever came next.
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