The House My Father Built

By Ms. Ric

Last August I had the opportunity to visit the house that my father built … for the last time. As I stood there in awe of its disrepair, its insignificance to decades of emptiness and neglect hit home. The corrugated bent tin roof and boarded up windows were haphazardly nailed into place with hopes of keeping them from being strewn away by the next typhoon. And the makeshift ladder leading up to the house was very … inviting.

Hinges with layers of rust resist as I trespass to the memories still stored in every crevices of this house I used to call home. But old age is no match for homesickness. The door opens heavily giving me enough light to gingerly walk in the middle of what we used to call sala. An onslaught of people, time, remembrances, and occurrences flood my awareness, and as family memories often do, they grow more melancholy as the losses begin to pile up.

Streaks of light peek through openings from broken capiz windows illuminating the hardwood floor tirelessly polished with bunot and red floor wax now decorated with crisscrossed termite tunnels. The same windows that also served as backdrop to my brother’s coffin as he lay there “sleeping” in my confused six-year old mind. And Mom crying herself to sleep is heard from the distance.

One corner, where traces of an altar once stood guarding the family, catches my attention. Mother Mary and the Crucifix are long gone but their prominence still stands. As the sounds of Mom’s evening prayers echo in the hallowed room, so too are Dad’s footsteps as he paces the room each time his search for our livelihood took him to provinces and lands afar. Even the radio housed in another corner gurgles its reminiscent sound, and oh what possibilities, as we listen to the amplified sound of an American President telling the world that the Americans landed on the moon. Together with our parents, we clamor outside and pretend to see the men walking on the moon!

To the right of the sala are footprints of where walls used to be separating two bedrooms. Musty draft mixed with the smell of mothballs waft through the air. The only furniture still left in the house is my sister’s escaparate. The long mirror is marred from the inside, its shelves are missing, but the door still latches. Missing are Mom’s baul which I dearly wanted to bring back and my sister’s vanity where she made herself up as I sat on the floor wondering if I’d ever be as pretty.

The house is much smaller than I remember. The missing kitchen and bathroom didn’t help much either. A wall of shelves separating the sala from the kitchen also did not stand the test of time but glimpses of hardened sticks of juicy fruits hidden and forgotten on those shelves bring smile to my face.

I closed the door on my way out and jumped the last wrung of the ladder. I looked back and saw the six-year old in me for the last time hiding under the house, inside a drum that housed the chickens, at peace.

As the old house is taken down, I had to remind myself how fleeting times of grace are, that is, if we’re lucky enough to have them at all.

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