A Chest Full of Memories
I’ve always had an appalling memory. I don’t even remember what I ate last night for dinner, much less what I was busying myself with last weekend.
But here’s the flip side: I can evoke memories that are normally buried deep in the recesses of people’s minds. For one, I can perfectly recall how my first encounters with my friends — or acquaintances, for that matter — went. Like how this colleague was coiling her fingers around her hair when I was first ushered into the office to be introduced to everyone.
I can also pick up seemingly inconsequential tidbits that would elude most people, like that fateful day when my Mom declared that my childhood dream of becoming a musician was out of the question. And so I clung to it, a tiny shrapnel jabbing into my chest every time I breathed. I brought it up again years later, and she listened to my story with incredulity, saying she would never dare utter such a thing. But she did, and the damage was done and was already irreparable.
Yes, by some miracle, I can dredge up memories from bygone times — from a decade ago to twenty years ago. Don’t ask me why. I don’t understand it myself either.
And there’s one incident from two decades ago that I can still picture in my head vividly.
I was around three. Or perhaps even younger. I could already walk in my fumbling gait, and express myself in my garbled speech.
I was close with my sister Beverly, who was four years older than I was. We would often snuggle under the blanket, eyes wide open even though it was already way past our bedtime. We would talk in hushed voices, and she always rendered me spellbound with her fantastic tales about princesses and magic and mayhem.
But her stories weren’t always blissful. They were, in some cases, rather melancholic, especially for a girl her age.
One day, I remembered her chronicling about how lonely it was for her to walk home from school. Especially whenever she’d catch a glimpse of the other children being fetched by their parents, or whenever her eyes would wander over the myriads of stores lining the pavements — which sold all sorts of knickknacks, from snacks to toys to school paraphernalia, none of which she could afford. When these happened, she would be reminded of her stark solitude. Papa was, after all, working in the capital, hunched over the piles of papers on his desk; while Mama, on the other hand, was too preoccupied with nursing our baby brother to concern herself with her older girls.
Sure, I was young then, but for one reason or another, I already felt the pang of my sister’s pain.
And so, that afternoon, without any preamble whatsoever, I decided to fetch her from school, which was only a few minutes from our home by foot. I gingerly picked up some white, fragrant flowers that I spotted along the way — a little something to surprise my sister since I didn’t have any money to buy her food or toys.
And surprise her I did; although in retrospect, it definitely wasn’t because of the bunch of flowers that I was cradling in my puny arms.
Even now, I still don’t have the slightest notion on how I made it safely to her school (without being whisked away by kidnappers or without colliding into moving vehicles), or how on earth I even knew where I was supposed to go.
Needless to say, everyone was enraged when we finally got home, for reasons that I, then, couldn’t quite fathom.
