Toy, Lolo

There are just some people you get along with even without words. Relationships without words. How about that?

Lolo Toy was my grandfather from my mother's side. He died when I was about 12. When I was in grade school, he used to bring me to the academy. He drove the pedicab. I felt proud and cool being seen with my grandfather looking hip and healthy pedalling his way through the streets. I can't recall why I felt high-and-mighty, but perhaps it's because I was the only kid who had been doing that. I was the only one being brought to and fetched from school in such fashion.

That is the most resonant image I have of him (the only one of roughly three). Just that, an image, and a faint one at that. I remember no talks, no profound conversation, not even a funny exchange. But I do recall him smiling and smirking, and sometimes a feeble sound of a grouch. I do remember his false teeth. Yet I will always go back to that five-minute ride where I would sit back and relax inside the pedicab, put my small feet on a metal support in front and Lolo Toy would just pedal away. His energy spent with me and for me.

Part of the Crime

Dada. That's the name of my family's first beloved bunny. Rabbits are wonderful pets. They're not threatening. They're fun to cuddle, they smell good, they're not noisy, their waste is very easy to clean as well as they're very easy to feed, and of course, they're very cute.

One late Saturday morning, I was awakened by a squeak. Instinct propelled me to look out the window and what I saw was so far then the most horrid sight I had ever seen. A cat quite bigger than Dada was biting him in the neck. Dada was standing on two feet, his front legs were hanging paralyzed in the air as I became paralyzed myself watching the scene in silence. That was a long moment of shock and devastation. When I came to my senses, I said to myself he was dead. I tried burying myself back to bed, as if hoping it was just a dream, or my senses were just fooling me, since I wasn't completely awake.

That was one of those week-end mornings where the whole family had errands to do except for me. I was never a morning person. Thank God for my Ate. She just came back from buying food from the nearby 7/11 and immediately after she saw Dada's condition, she calmly carried him in the house, laid him on the living room's floor and searched the house for bandages and a box to place Dada as she would bring him to a vet. That was one of the few times when I just admired my sister with amazement--one of the few times I wish I had her attitude--and to be blunt in admitting it--her concern and courage. It was at that moment when guilt buried its teeth hard through my neck. What happened to me? I chickened out. Shock and cowardice got the better of me.

Dada did not die. The doctors and my sister had saved him. He even looked cute with a bandage around his head. A wounded bunny and very much loved. In fact, that was not his first wound, he lost his tail before for reasons the family could not figure. Some cat or snake might've wanted to take him in their stomach, but Dada was some fighter. I added to his pains, but he gave me a great dose of guilt in return.

Off-key

I was in my third year in highschool when I joined a band contest. I was so confident and convinced that I was good. Extremely good that my band and I would emerge as the best. In the middle of my performance, one of the supervising teachers came to me and whispered, wala ka sa tono. The rest is memory.

I didn't cry that night after that incident. We lost, of course. In my naive and selfish mind, I figured and accepted that I blew if off. I didn't touch the piano since then, but I loved it so much. I had to make amends with it. I felt sorry for the instrument for misusing it.

That moment is one of those moments I just hope to forget. Weird is this memory with how it chooses what to reserve and what to discard; when to revive an incident or a thought and when to keep it unnoticed.

For now that memory serves like a nagging mother that tells me I'm neither on top nor ahead of anything. It's a din reminder for me to always be in tune with reality.