Almost the end of summer
His children can feel it.” Almost the end of summer” is a feeling hard to pin down to just a single element that changed inside the span of seemingly endless days. It is still too warm at night. They dream of air-conditioning in the house if only it would not drive the electric bill up the hills. A weekend at a resort-hotel close by becomes attractive. But even so, it would not hold back time. They can feel it moving at ticking speed down to the very end.
That much is certain. That is why they must now have fun double time. Soon they will be thinking of uniforms and notebooks while their parents think of where to get the budget for tuition. But for now, they drive this thought far from mind. There is still enough time for a drive to the beach or back to the old hometown to play with the local kids who go by names like Pitpit and Arman; even Nobody, who got his name from the famous dance hit from a few years ago, “Nobody But You.”
As usual they will have to bring the soccer ball and their badminton set. They will have to string the net from a pair of coconut trees and do doubles badminton. This will be a big change from playing in the street across their house even if that too is great fun. And they must bring the dogs Abu and Itum. They will have a whole plaza to run in. They will have more fun than anyone else.
But how to get there?
The drive is half the fun. After Carcar they escape the traffic of the city and go up into the hills passing Tan-awan and then past Barili where they get a breathtaking view of Negros, Tañon Strait and Mt. Kanlaon in the distance if it is a clear day. They will have to load up everything including sleeping mats into the van. Don’t forget the swimming things and two electric fans. It will be warm in the old house when night begins. But it will be very cold come dawn when the wind shifts, bringing cold air from the sea.
They will be sleeping in an ancient wooden house allegedly haunted by ghosts. But the father always says they are only good spirits who wait for just this time when they can steal quietly into children’s dreams and feel once again the beat of life. They only miss us. They mean us no harm. It is us who misunderstand.
They are only extremely frail entities. Nothing more than wisps really that stay always in the shadows as the hard sunlight hurts them sometimes irreparably. They are only frail memories that would disappear in the run of time and in the absence of anyone to remember with them the passing of everything. They would disappear with this house if the children forgot where it was and let it rot or not visit from time to time.
But once here, they will tell stories to each other so that tales ring once more into the high ceilings and rafters as they once did not too long ago. Their father lived and grew up here with their titos and titas and their late lolo and lola, whom they never met. Yes, here when the roads were still narrow dirt. Hardly any cars or buses ever passed. There was no electricity.
When they were their age, they played tubig-tubig and tago-tago on this road under the full moon. They did not stop until the old people called them in warning of dili ingon nato who might steal them where they hid. Every morning, they woke up to the metallic clippitty clop of horses’ hooves on the hard-packed earth. The horses pulled rigs they called tartanillas. They took the women to church in the early morning. After that, to the market, and then back home before the noonday heat. They always dressed up in well starched pure cotton Sunday bests.
It was a different world. But they can still feel the last echoes of it sounding from the wooden corners and posts. The shadows of this ancient house have stories to tell too of a grand old past when it breathed with life, young, energetic, expectant and teeming. Once, this old house was as young as them.
It is spirit and memory now. They keep it alive just by coming here for that is the true nature of houses and everything else. Things last only as long as they remember. Just like summer nearing its end. That too, they can keep alive in their minds and hearts. For everything is fleeting only when children forget and lose track of time.
