"learning carpe diem" by abigail lewis

Abigail Loren E. Lewis July 11, 2005
Eng 11 – R06 Sir Miguel Escaño

Learning Carpe Diem

Sometimes, I’m obsessive. A couple of years ago, we were in a mall and I was fretting because I thought I misplaced my cards at home. Kuya Mark, my eldest brother, scolded me. He told me that, since I have no way of knowing if I indeed misplaced my cards I shouldn’t obsess about it. I was wasting the experience of the mall. That’s one philosophy my brother always adhered to: to live the moment. It was a lesson that I eventually embraced.

In the sixteen years I’ve lived and in the two homes I’ve lived in (first in Cavite, second in Las-Pinas), I’ve gone through changes, some drastic and some subtle. I’ve adapted to circumstances beyond my control, dealt with life and its increasing complications. Sometimes, I want to return the first condition, where everything was simple and clear as black and white. I’d return for a visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’ve learned to appreciate Now and Here.

Talk about Cavite and I’ll think about trees. I’ll think about our multitude of them: duhat, malunggay, atis, lanka, makopa, bayabas, cacao and the stump of our coconut. I’ll think about all the healthy fauna of our then-large yard, but, mostly, I’ll think about our mango tree. I think there all the time.

I’d clutch a book on one hand, and scale the tree with the other. Then I’d pretend to read. I don’t know why I insisted in bringing books; I could never have read any. There, I could only think and watch dusk approach. I hear the din of the Mayas competing for a place to sleep in the higher branches of trees. From where I sat, the outline of the leaves glowed faint orange, but the leaves themselves turn dark, turn black. I’d stay until mosquitoes begin to close in on me. Or until the helpers call me down so they could start the afternoon siga.

In the middle of our yard is a nipa hut constructed by a diligent uncle I never knew. During the day, it was home to our bahay-bahayan game, where my brother (Philip), my childhood best friend (Klarriz), and I pretend that we’re grown ups. During the weekends, I bring up the raucous bunch of newly-bathed puppies up in the kubo to dry them, otherwise they’d roll around the grass and dirty themselves again. During night, it’s home to the more sinister escapades of my older brothers’ and their friends. It was where my second brother, Vincent, and his friends fiddled with Spirit of the Glass, and allegedly contacted a spirit from hell.

Behind our house was a huge vacant lot. Long thin blades of grass that stretched to yonder are bordered by the distant houses, the most prominent of which was an Iglesia ni Christo church. The fissures in the earth, our maids said, are where the snakes come from. I loved hanging out in the roof, and I’d risk getting scolded just to stay there. I’d carefully walk on tiptoe on the roof. If not, my footsteps would reverberate all throughout house and I’d be detected.

The roof was also home to my childhood delusions. I’d pretend to be some sort of nature girl who has mastered all martial arts and has control over all the elements of nature. I’d command the wind to blow, and if it did, I’d feel so powerful. It all seems so silly in retrospect, but I remember I thought it was possible. Since what can be and what cannot be hasn’t settled in the mind, a child can imagine and imagine it’s possible.

Our house was pretty small. There were only three bedrooms: the maid’s, my brothers’ and mine. I shared my room with my father, mother and my younger brother. Technically it wasn’t my room, but I liked to think of it as mine. My bed was a white pull-out bed, where Papa, Mama and I would sleep. Every night I would push the study table out of the room and into the hall, so we could accommodate another mattress where Philip would sleep.

We only had one bathroom. Kuya Teng, the second to the eldest, told me once there was a black worm lurking on the tiles. Being the gullible kid that I was, I’d hop from one rug to the other, jump on top of the toilet, and swing on a towel to land on the tiny bathroom stool. That way, I’d never have to touch the tiles. Eventually I slipped and wounded my head. I never played Tarzan in the bathroom again.

In front of our house was a man-made lake. Across it is a concrete bridge we crossed to get to the village church. When I was younger, my father and my brothers used to fish there. Huge hitos, and sometimes tilapias, inhabited the deeper parts of the lake. But they never ate anything they caught. The lake was too dirty.

Klarriz, Philip and I once went there to gather shells, snails and clumps of pink snail eggs. But it was only after I overcame my fear of the lake. My grandmother once told me that crocodiles lived in that lake; she even fooled me into seeing crocodile tracks on the muddy borders of the river. It was only years later that I learned it was where the body of the village idiot, murdered, was found floating. It was only years later that I realized there are more evil things than crocodiles.

Then we moved. We had to move to Las-Pinas because it was nearer to our school and to our parents’ work in Pasay. A family rented our house in Cavite. It has been seven years since.
For the first few nights, I lay in my bed unable to sleep. There is truly something to be nostalgic about. If you’re used to seeing foliage, then when you look out into the window, a gloomy white wall greets you instead it depresses you bit by bit.

Our Las-Pinas house was big compared to the one in Cavite. The second one had five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a patio. Big as it was, it had no yard; there wasn’t a single tree; and there was only a little cramped space between the house and the tall concrete fence separating us from our neighbors. The house was caged by metal bars. Papa remarked that the previous owner must’ve felt like he was a bird. I felt like one too.

Eventually, longing was pushed at the back of my mind by school concerns and the ever increasing complications of growing up. But I’ve never lost the thought that life would’ve been better if we stayed in Cavite. As if, I could have again the simple life of play if we move back.
But I was wrong. I could never return to it again. Not because my parents’ didn’t want to go back but because what the place evolved into. The last time I was there was two years ago- it was depressing. Our clean and well-trimmed garden which seemed so vast a decade ago now seemed like a small space of twisted gnarls of dark branches. The sight of its decay forever extinguished my childhood dream of growing flowers so tall they’d be walls to a maze, just like the one in The Secret Garden. Seeing it decayed felt like a mockery of my childhood.

Now that I’m in college, I’m only at home for the weekends. During weekdays, there is an empty, sucking hole in my stomach. I long for Fridays when I go home. I now realize the many things I overlooked because I was too busy pining over my lost childhood. I miss my family. I miss the quiet walks from school to our house. The wide empty lots gave view to the setting sun; the sky is God’s canvass of swirling yellow, orange, and blue paints.

But if Cavite taught me anything, it’s that nothing is permanent. I know after a couple of years, that’d be gone too. The empty lots would be replaced by towering houses. The sunset will be some forgotten wonder at the back of everything else.

So I stopped looking for things that weren’t there. Maybe happiness is not having the things you love, but loving what you already have. Maybe it’s about experiencing the here and now, and not then, there, and never. Carpe Diem, like they say.