My Childhood

Perhaps my earliest memory takes me back to the tiny apartment where we lived in Pateros.

Calling it an apartment might even be generous. It was a single room where everything—the bed, the small kitchen, and the bathroom—occupied the same space. There was barely enough room for the four of us, yet somehow, it was home.

It wasn't originally meant to be a home at all.

The room had once served as a storage area for the apartment's maintenance supplies. But over time, my mother grew close to the owner of the building. In exchange for cleaning the entire apartment complex and looking after its day-to-day maintenance, the owner agreed to let us convert the storage room into our own living space.

It was far from comfortable, but to my parents, it was an opportunity to start building a life with what little they had.

Looking back now, I realize that some of my happiest childhood memories were made within those four cramped walls.

At the time, my father worked as a construction laborer. He would leave early in the morning and return only after a long day's work. My mother was just as hardworking. She spent her days going from house to house, offering manicure and pedicure services to earn extra income for our family.

Because both of my parents worked, caring for me became a family effort.

My older brother and sister attended elementary school, but their class schedules were arranged so that one of them would always be home with me. In the mornings, while my brother was in school, my sister stayed behind to look after me. Then, when my brother returned home in the afternoon, it was my sister's turn to attend her classes.

My parents did everything they could to make it work.

They couldn't afford a babysitter, so they carefully arranged our routines to ensure that someone was always there to watch over me. 

Thinking about it now, I realize that even in those difficult years, no one ever made me feel like I was a burden. If anything, I grew up surrounded by quiet sacrifices that I was too young to notice at the time.

Of course, that doesn't mean my childhood was free from chaos.

My older brother, being the closest to me in age, was also my greatest rival. If there was anything we could argue about, we probably did.

One of my earliest memories of us happened inside that cramped room we proudly called home.

We were fighting over what to watch on our old CD player. Naturally, I wanted to watch Cinderella—a movie I had probably seen a hundred times by then but still refused to get tired of. My brother, on the other hand, insisted on watching Power Rangers.

Neither of us was willing to give in.

In the middle of our argument, he accidentally shoved me. I lost my balance and fell face-first onto the floor.

The next part of the story was told to me by my mother.

She said my father froze for a split second before rushing toward me. When I stood up, blood was pouring from my mouth, and my front tooth had been knocked out. 

Meanwhile, my brother had gone completely pale. Not because he thought he had seriously hurt me. But because he knew he was about to get into serious trouble.

According to my parents, he was grounded afterward and lost the privilege of choosing what we watched for an entire week.

As a child, I probably thought justice had been served.

But I know my brother always stood up for me when it mattered.

We were sometimes teased for being poor. Most of the families living in the apartment were better off than we were, and children can be cruel without realizing the weight of their words.

Whenever someone picked on me, my brother never hesitated to defend me.

Afterward, we'd retreat to our tiny room, where the rest of the world seemed to disappear. And perhaps out of guilt—or maybe because he simply wanted to make me smile—he would let me watch Cinderella as many times as I wanted, never once complaining.

One memory, however, has stayed with me more than any other.

One day, it was just the two of us at home. I asked him if he could cook hotdogs for us.

He was only seven years old, yet he already knew how to light the stove and cook simple meals like hotdogs and fried eggs. Too short to reach the counter, he dragged a chair over and carefully climbed onto it before placing the pan on the stove.

I, on the other hand, was an endlessly curious toddler.

As the hotdogs sizzled, I wandered over and reached toward the pan. In an instant, it tipped. The hot oil was about to spill onto me. Without thinking, my brother threw his arm in front of me. The oil splashed onto him instead.

He took the burn that should have been mine.

Later that evening, when our mother came home, she was devastated by the sight of my brother's arm.

He had tried to hide the injury by wrapping it in a piece of cloth, hoping no one would notice. But as the hours passed, the fabric stuck to the fresh burn, and the pain became too much to bear. In the end, he had no choice but to ask our mother for help.

Only then did my parents learn what had happened.

My brother hadn't been playing with fire or acting recklessly. He had simply wanted to cook because his little sister was hungry and wouldn't stop asking for hotdogs.

My parents couldn't bring themselves to scold him.

Instead, they tended to his wound, knowing he had only been trying to take care of me in the only way a seven-year-old knew how.

Even now, whenever I think about that day, I can't help but smile at the irony.

The boy I proudly called my "number one enemy" was also my very first protector.

Whenever my siblings and I reminisce about our childhood, there's one story that always finds its way into the conversation.

It isn't our happiest memory.

In fact, it was one of the most frightening experiences we shared as children.

Yet, somehow, it became one of the moments that bound us together the most. Even after all these years, we still laugh about it—not because it wasn't terrifying at the time, but because we survived it together.

One weekend afternoon, both of my parents were home, and neither of my older siblings had classes.

At some point, my mother asked my brother to buy a few things from the neighborhood store. It was a simple errand that should have taken only a few minutes.

But nearly half an hour passed, and he still hadn't returned.

Starting to worry, my parents asked me to go outside and call for him.

Back then, that wasn't unusual.

Our neighborhood was relatively peaceful, and parents weren't nearly as protective as they are today. Children spent most of their afternoons outside, running through the streets, inventing games, and wandering from one house to another until someone called them home. 

Mobile phones didn't exist to keep track of us. You simply trusted that everyone would make it back before dinner.

As it turned out, my brother had gotten distracted.

A street vendor had stopped nearby with a game that fascinated every child in the neighborhood. For a few coins, you could draw a number. If you happened to pick a three-digit number, you won a tiny chick whose feathers had been dyed bright shades of pink, blue, green, or yellow.

To a group of children, it was the greatest prize imaginable.

As luck would have it, my brother had a few coins left from the allowance he had carefully saved for school.

The moment I saw the colorful chicks, I completely forgot why I had gone outside in the first place.

Instead of calling him home, I tugged at his shirt and asked if he could spare a few coins so I could try my luck too.

He agreed.

One attempt became another.

Then another.

Before we knew it, several more minutes had slipped away.

Eventually, our older sister came looking for us. She had been sent to bring us home after neither of us returned.

But rather than succeeding in her mission, we somehow convinced her to stay.

After all, she was the oldest. In our young minds, that had to mean she was the luckiest. Surely, if anyone could win one of those brightly colored chicks, it would be her.

So instead of going home...

The three of us stood around that little street vendor, completely forgetting that our parents were waiting for us.

We weren't the only children gathered there. A small crowd had already formed around the vendor, each of us eagerly waiting for our turn. Every time someone picked a number, everyone would lean in to see whether it had three digits.

Most of the time, it didn't.

The lucky winner would walk away hugging a brightly colored chick, while the rest of us dug into our pockets for another coin and lined up to try again.

As children, we never seemed to notice how quickly time slipped away.

One game became another.

One turn became the next.

Before we knew it, what should have been a quick trip to the neighborhood store had turned into an entire afternoon spent chasing a prize we were convinced would eventually be ours.

Then, amidst the chatter of excited children and the vendor calling out numbers, a familiar sound cut through the noise.

A loud, sharp whistle.

Our father's whistle.

To this day, my siblings and I still talk about it.

It's one of those little mysteries of our childhood that we never managed to explain. No matter where we were, no matter how far we'd wandered, and no matter how distracted we were by whatever adventure had captured our attention, we always heard that whistle.

Always.

It was as if our ears had been trained to recognize it above every other sound.

The moment it reached us, we knew exactly what it meant.

Our father was calling us home.

And without saying a word to one another, the three of us took off running.

The closer we got to our apartment, the slower our steps became.

That's when it finally dawned on us. We hadn't just gone to the neighborhood store. We had disappeared for hours.

Standing in the doorway was our mother.

In one hand, she held a hanger.

I can still remember how loudly my heart pounded in my chest. None of us dared look at each other. We simply kept walking, each step slower than the last, silently accepting the fate that awaited us.

By the time we reached the front door, the three of us were already crying.

The hanger hadn't even touched us yet.

I sometimes laugh at that memory.

Not because we got into trouble—but because the moment we saw our mother standing there, we knew there wasn't a single excuse in the world that was going to save us.

Sure enough, the three of us were each rewarded with a few strikes from the hanger.

My mother's frustration wasn't simply because we had disappeared for hours. She had already finished cooking dinner. The pot of sinigang was waiting on the stove, but the sinigang mix was still sitting on the kitchen counter—the very thing she had sent my brother to buy in the first place.

After the scolding was over, we did what we always did.

We ran straight to our father.

He would chuckle, ask if we had learned our lesson, then gently convince our mother that we'd already been punished enough. Before long, she'd let us go, and life would return to normal.

As a child, moments like those convinced me that my father was my favorite parent.

He was the rescuer.

The safe place we ran to whenever we found ourselves in trouble.

It wasn't until I was much older that my mother revealed the truth. She and my father had made a quiet agreement about how they would raise us.

My father would play the good cop.

My mother would play the bad cop.

The arrangement had been my father's idea.

Because his work kept him away from home most of the day, he worried that constantly disciplining us would only create more distance between him and his children. So he asked my mother to be the stricter parent, while he became the one we naturally turned to for comfort.

I realize it wasn't favoritism that made me feel closer to my father.

It was love expressed in different ways.

My father protected our bond by becoming the parent we ran to.

My mother protected our future by becoming the parent willing to be misunderstood.