The Life I Was Given at Nine Years Old

"Did you know how shattered she felt the day she had to leave you ?"

Aunt Dinds was trying to convince me, but I looked away from her gaze—unaffected and cold. Those words felt fleeting. I never took them to heart. I was only there to get my weekly allowance, nothing more.

Why would someone like her cry over me? She was a strong woman, unfeeling and at most time--- cold,  the kind who wouldn’t be bothered leaving people behind. Someone like her wouldn’t shed tears for someone like me.

Aunt Yda was my father’s first cousin. She and Aunt Dinds are sisters. Her father was my grandfather’s only sibling, which meant the two families shared a bond deeper than the usual cousin relationship. Growing up, they were aunt  very close. Their homes were not far from each other, so their childhoods were intertwined. They played together every afternoon, shared stories, and had the kind of familiarity that only comes from growing up side by side.

Despite that closeness, there was one difference that quietly set our worlds apart. Their family was well-off, while my father's family struggled to make ends meet.

As a child, I didn’t fully understand the weight of that difference. I only noticed it in small glimpses—the grand houses they lived in while we rented a small apartment. The shiny cars they rode in and us who rode crowded jeepneys. My aunts always dressed elegantly, in outfits that seemed straight out of a magazine. My mother, though a talented dressmaker, never wore anything as fancy.

When I was eight years old, my parents made a difficult decision. They sent me together with my older sister to live with relatives.   In those days, arrangements like this were not unusual. Many Filipino families sent children to stay with aunts or other relatives, especially when it meant better opportunities for schooling or easing the financial burden at home.

 I was not happy. Every day I wished I could go back home and be with my family. I even promised God I will not complain even if we have less food to eat I just want to go home. I cried almost nightly.

Aunt Yda’s house was large, with a lawn surrounded by fruit trees—Java plum, Java apple, coconut sport, and tall coconut trees. My sister and I  learned to climb up to the rooftop to harvest coconuts and make fresh coconut juice.

In the afternoons, my classmates who are my neighbors would come by and we would play until the day slowly faded. Even when I was alone, I could always find something interesting to do.

Sometimes I would pick up dead birds I found in the yard and give them a proper farewell. I buried them gently with flowers and whispered prayers. Before long, I had created a small graveyard just for them. It became my quiet corner of the yard—a place I oddly loved.

Sometimes I climbed up to the roof, hoping to catch a glimpse of our house in Parañaque—too young then to understand just how far away home really was.

Despite my longing to be with my family, I slowly reshaped myself to fit a new life. My rough edges were polished away. I learned table manners, how to speak properly to elders, and how to carry the weight of many household chores. At night, my frail body would ache even in sleep.

But I had little choice. It was the life that had been assigned to me.

I remade myself, piece by piece, until I fit the life I was given.

Then one day she told me she had to leave.

I stood quietly, motionless, waiting for her to say more. All she said was, “I need to resettle back to the province and fix my retirement home there.”

She never said she wasn’t coming back.

She never mentioned that the house had already been sold—to Aunt Dinds.

The house where we lived.
The house where I had slowly learned to love is gone.

She didn’t say any of that.

My world suddenly felt as if it had come to a halt.

Where would I be sent  to next?
Who will be sent to?
What new life was waiting for me?

I was tired.

I was nine years old

Two weeks ago, I had lunch with my cousins. One of them was Aunt Dind’s son. Forty-seven years had passed since those days, yet when I saw him, he still had the same charming smile I remembered as a child.

He hugged me warmly and shook his head, as if  amazed by the passage of time.

“I can never forget you,” he said.

I smiled.

“Aunt Yda talks about you all the time,” he continued. “She was always so proud of you. She would tell us what a good child you were.”

I clutched my chest. She actually said that?

Tears gathered at the rim of my eyes.

So it was true after all—what Aunt Dinds had once told me. I had meant something to her. Yet for years I pushed the thought away, convinced I had never deserved that kind of attention. In my mind, I was too small, too insignificant to matter that much.

And yet, in that moment, I felt her love for the first time.

It was a feeling I had failed to recognize when it mattered most.

Had I known it earlier, perhaps I would not have thought so little of myself for so long. But sometimes understanding comes only after many years have passed.

Better late than never.

For so long, I believed that leaving me had been easy for her.

I was wrong.

Sometimes memory changes its shape with time.

And sometimes the things we were too young to understand slowly reveal themselves years later

Read my previous blog: The Kitten in the Tree and the Girl I Once Was