Happy Birthday to Me!

I wrote this one on the night before my 18th birthday. The "adult" age in our country. I still like to read this one over and over again."

 When the second hand struck twelve midnight last 8th of April, I cried tears of loss once more. It has been like this for months, tears constantly roll from my beady eyes as I lay in the dim night-light in the confines of my own room back there in our home-beyond-the-timberland. Sometimes I would go prowling in our garden during night-time, alone and unpermitted, watching twinkling fireflies sway aloft the calm night air. And the stars would shine in the smooth leaves of the overgrown star-apple tree and I would touch the wrinkled bark of the lone tree and look again at the dainty stars shining like jewels flung by some mysterious God in a forlorn, forgotten time. And I would wish on all of them, yes I will, hoping sooner that one by one they should fall so I would take a kerchief and knot it before the last star fades. I would sit by the kiosk my papa made a long time ago and look at the moon again the same way as I have looked at it ages ago.

 

And so here I am, sitting languorously in the solitude of my dark room. Where are the closet-monsters? the gallant knights and their fair dames? the delicate wings of the dainty-haired pixies? where have they all been gone to?

 

And so here I am, sitting languorously in the solitude of my dark room, fearing the coming of another birthday. I will be stepping into another door, and I don't know what is there in store for me (fear of the unknown), leaving a precious door closed behind. I am slowly drifting away from the premises of my strawberry-sweet, charming childhood.   I am like a sailor in the lonely sea wanting to go back as soon as the anchor is lifted. Couldn't I just die? Yes, that was an option. Couldn't I just die in the flickering firelight of my childhood so that I may not taste the cruel waters of adulthood? Couldn't I?

 

Somebody said I'm sick. I'm sick because I don't want to grow and I can't grow because I'm sick. Somebody aid it would be better for me to die right now than continue living on being sick. I think he's right there.

 

That night, while every one in the house is soundly sleeping, I stole one moment to look at a favorite photograph of mine. It was a photograph of a forgotten place. There were no people in the photograph and I guess the person who took it was alone anyway. It was forgotten place, yes, but our family went there once, or twice, I don't really know now. It was a place where a part of my childhood dwelt. It was a photograph of a road we usually take to get to our farm; a wide grassy path bordered with tall beautiful coconut-palm trees. The trees were lined as if mud-splattered hands carefully printed each holy seed unto the calm earth. Grasses of different varieties grew anywhere, sprouting here and there like the fur of an overgrown cat. The gay wind blew carelessly amidst the alive boughs of the palm leaves smiling happily in the warm sunshine. The sky looks so calm, calm as the snore of a dying old dog, guarding the house of her absent master, waiting faithfully of her master's return. Everything looked normal… and forgotten.

 

Hurtfully, that photograph taken by an anonymous person reminded me of our last trip to that road. It reminded me of the time when rode the cart tied to Berting, our strong water-buffalo, I smiled gaily at the lazy afternoon sun and cried aloud: " Walk Berting walk. Walk always onwards," in an ugly singsong until dusk set in. We, my cousins and my siblings and I , used to tread that unknown place with our parents to go on picnicking the whole day   and we would ride carabao-carts and we would sing silly songs and we would eat boiled bananas and sweet potatoes and yams in that small cottage built by my grandfather a long, long time ago and we would walk for long hours on end not noticing the slow rhythm of the heartbeat clock and we would cool our tired feet in the sweet flow of the inviting river and watch playfully as small fishes-on-the-rocks wiggle around and about in a small lagoon nearby and we would splash, laughingly, crystal-cool waters at each other dirty faces until we are all wet and glad. We would bid good-bye to that place, keeping in our young minds that there will always be another time for such a trip and we return home and follow that palm-laden road once again. We would retire happily and gaily and I used to look back again as out strong Berting pulled his load, I gaze once more to the palm-laden grassy path and look at it at its beautiful fullness; memorizing every tree that grew in which place, every stump that innocently rests, every pebble that was handed down like pearls Hansel and Gretel used to follow home, every blade of that sweet-scented grass that gently brushes my young limbs. I would look at it and place it on the deepest memories of my childhood, in fear of getting old; I would go again to that forgotten place and remember it once more so that I may once again relish my long-lost childhood, forgotten on that long-lost place.

 

I held up my hands with that photograph now wet with tears and stole one last glance on that palm-laden road in the dimming twilight and whispered:

 

"Walk onwards Berting. Walk always onwards…"