…was the place where my sisters and I grew up in. Outside, it had then a green metal gate, with its pedestrian entrance permanently shut so that we had to unchain the bolt that locked the garage gate when we have to enter the house. It was marked by a bougainvillea tree, with flowers growing profusely during summers, which fell just as soon as we finished sweeping away its purple-pink blooms.
There is a veranda set five feet higher than street level so we literally had to look down at people passing by, while we sat on a white, ‘70s-style garden set, blinking at the sun as it sets down across us from the west. Down by its southwest side was a small patch of grass—our version of a garden—where santan and aratiles grew, alongside my mother’s orchids and my father’s bonsai.
The house sits at the front side of the property and is part of a bigger compound our family refers to as bagong bahay or the new house, to differentiate it from the old house where our grandfathers and grandmothers had lived. It is what I would call a split-level home, because its kitchens are one level lower than the living, library, dining, and guest room areas, which are in turn a level lower than where the bedrooms are.
We lived there up until I was in fourth year high school with my papa’s uncle and aunt. We are fortunate enough to have had them call us their children, as they haven’t been blessed with any of their own. My sister E and I shared the guest room, painted a pale pink as she’d requested, sleeping on an antique double bed which as I remember had been my great-grandmother’s. The room had an ancient dressing table and a built-in cabinet, and I had all its top and right-hand drawers, being the eldest of the siblings.
In our living room, the TV set was a permanent fixture and we could swing it this way and that so that we could still watch John and Marsha or McGyver even while we ate dinner. The couch, which I now call mine, sat in the living room, its color at that time reddish-orange; its heavy, prickly upholstery contributing to the perspiration sliding down my back on days when I decide to take a siesta there because my grandmother’s lacy curtains—a rainbow of peach and yellow-green—had never been enough to keep the heat out in the afternoons.
We had an old stereo there too—those big-ass versions from olden days that had a turntable and humongous speakers—and on top of it sat a black, rotary telephone, its weight as heavy as I recall it to be. I have mastered turning that rotating disk as silently as a guilty cat so that I can do marathon phone conversations with boyfriends and girlfriends well past midnight.
Our dining table sat seven on a regular meal but has fed a hundred for birthdays, fiestas and get-togethers. And with two houses within the property which is typical as any Filipino family, parties were the highlights of our childhood, with menudo, lumpiang ubod, spaghetti ni Mommy and adobong itik being the ultimate wish dishes of our young lives. At the back, past the kitchen, was our papag, a native bed made of bamboo, which was as versatile as Maricel Soriano—it was another place to siesta; our bahay-bahayan; a stage for impromptu afternoon performances with Uncle B; a lunch venue for when we are “eating out;” a place to fold clothes, prepare polvoron and embutido, or dry our pots and pans; our tambayan where we had endless Scrabble and Boggle games with our titas.
Around the corner from the papag was our washing area. There, I remember was a clay tapayan, where we stored our drinking water. It was smack between two big drums, where water for washing was kept. Potable water was brought in by Didong, our magtutubig, and he usually caught up with the other guy who collected the kaning baboy, which we kept in empty Magnolia ice cream containers.
We had a long garage space, and it fit our family’s three cars—one my father’s, another Uncle B’s and the last my grandfather’s. On weekdays however, the cars are all gone, which gives us a huge area to play with—we biked there, taught how to play siato by our neighborhood friends there, and played badminton there, our shuttlecocks inadvertently landing on our neighbor’s, so then we have to shout: “Mr. Co! Bola namin!,” and after getting it back holler our “Thank you po!”
We had many things to do outside: our other summer diversions included climbing our perimeter wall to reach for malunggay leaves, which go into our Friday fare of monggo; and, picking mangoes and santol from off of the tree, which we both sold for one peso apiece—the ripest santol made into juice which we also sold outside, right by our green gate.
Standing by that entryway, the house for me then looked so big, but now, it seems to have shrunk, partly because the grounds surrounding it have been cemented in recent years, which reduced the impression of height, or perhaps, I simply just grew bigger.
The house still stands, on a place which used to be marked as 1442 Sto. Rosario, but even its address has changed. And as I step into it these days, because Aunt C still lives there, I see the small and big changes, but I’m still overcome with a sense of the familiar. I hope my children’s children, and my sisters’ children’s children, will still one day see the place we grew up in.
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Pictured: The steps at 1442 Sto. Rosario Street
Finally Dee 