mayanllanera-blog

[mayanllanera-blog]

Soar High

   A distinctive knock awoke this little boy from his deep sleep. His dream of flying was soon about to end when this loud voice started echoing from the door of his bedroom. The sound, though familiar, seemed never pleasing from the ears of this little boy.

   “Mario! Wake up!”, said the voice accompanied by loud thumping on the wooden door.    The little boy opened his eyes, rushed towards the front door and hurriedly ran to the rice field. His day starts at 4 o’clock in the morning.    He started by feeding the carabao. When the carabao is already full, he will take it to the field, and they will begin plowing the rice paddies. Plowing takes about an hour to finish and another hour to do transplanting. Transplanting is planting the rice one by one. He needed to hurry or else he won’t make it to his 7:00am class.    The back pain he is feeling is beyond explanation. Mario is only 8 years old, but his body has been doing an old man’s job since he arrived at this place. They are relatives, that’s what they told him, but they never treated him as such. The last memory of his mother was when they rode the bus going to their relative’s place. He fell asleep on the bus on the way there, and when he woke up, he was already in this place, and his mother was gone.    It’s 7 o’clock, and he realized that his stomach has been empty since early morning. He knows that the teacher is making sense, but the words do not make sense at all to him. His stomach his grumbling, and he is getting light-headed.    “Recess is only in about half an hour, I can do it!”, said Mario in his heart.    The little boy opened his plastic bag to check if the coconut he took from the field isn’t spoiled yet. “But whatever,” said he in his heart, “I’d still eat it anyway.”    He’d always hoped that his day would never end in school for it is the only place where he felt like a kid. With an empty stomach and a half-empty knowledge, his heart is full.    It’s 4 o’clock in the morning again, Mario rushed towards the rice fields. The carabao seemed sick, but he was too scared to tell his relatives. Mario doesn’t call them uncle or aunty, he just never calls them at all. He tried plowing the field without the help of the carabao, it took him another hour, but he managed to do so. He planted the rice but was not able to finish all of it. He knew they would be angry as soon as they figured out what happened, but he kept it to himself and went to school during that day.    He came home and was ready to eat dinner when a wooden stick knocked him on the floor. There was loud banging on the ground as soon as his head hit it, he lost count but a couple of times. It took him a few seconds to get back to his senses. He heard this familiar voice again, but this time, the voice speaks words that cut like knives. The words he is hearing are what his mother taught him not to say. When he recovered a bit from the pain, he rushed towards the front door. “This is the last time I would rush towards this front door again,” Mario told himself while bursting into tears.    He ran and ran, he doesn’t have a plan. Where to go or what to do, he does not know, what he only knows is that he just wants to escape the hell he had been.    He does not know how long he’s been running until he arrived at this place. This is the place where I am right now. Mario is asleep on the bedroom next to mine. He must be dreaming about flying. Every morning, he would talk about it. I would sit on the sofa sipping my hot chocolate, every day, every morning, hearing his flying stories. He has been living a comfortable life now. He met this beautiful woman who accepted him as he is. She knew right then he can never give her a financially stable life, but she took the risk.    Mario is 56 years old now, but his heart is still a young kid. He still dreams of flying. He always wanted to become a pilot. He knew he would never get the chance to attain that dream so he worked hard so that his children will achieve theirs.    He was able to meet his mother before dying, she thought their relatives would take care of him. Their family struggled financially. His mother, my grandmother, was offered by her sister a solution to their problem by taking care of one of her sons. There are 4 of them. Unfortunately, my father was the one chosen by my grandmother to be taken care of by her sister.    I had never seen my father cry that hard in his life hearing my grandmother’s apology. I saw the little boy again, the 8-year-old boy whose hopes and dreams crumbled into pieces because of his mother’s wrong decision. His voice cracks, his hands are shaking, his eyes are all wet, but he managed to accept his mother’s apology.    Is there anything as noble as an experience seeing my father accepting an apology from the person who took away everything he should have been? I could never think of any.    Mario is 60 years old now. He told me one day that he already attained his dream of flying. I do not know what he meant by that, so I asked him what he means. He told me again that his dream already came true.    “My daughter, the moment you rode the plane going to Hawaii, I knew right then that my dreams already came true,” Mario said.