Childhood Dusks

I’m looking out the window and I’m reminded how I love dusks.

we were kids, we used to play patintero outside our old house in Pampanga. We’d start when the afternoon sun was not too hot anymore and we’d end just after dusk, when the sun had already set. Some days, we rode our bikes back and forth our quiet street.

There’s an old schoolteacher who lived right across us and whenever she came home and we’re playing outside, I’d yell her name at the top of my voice, “Dang Deeeeee!” She was very tolerant of us since she knew us as the polite kids in the neighborhood, despite my tendency of over-exuberant greetings.

My sister improvised this game of making molds out of muddy soil. She called it “bigak-bigak”. It has no etymology whatsoever. Its name was the least of our problems. We had worse problems of muddy hands, faces, and clothes after we played.

Our grandmother spent her afternoons playing a card game called kwaho with some of the other elderly people a couple of blocks away. They played for money – just loose change, yes – but still money. She came home usually when we were wrapping up our games or parking our bikes. We’d each have a balot whenever she had good winnings from the game. Yes, as a kid, I used to eat unhatched duck eggs. Because whenever Lola gave them, we’d be asked to eat them right then and there, when the sun was already down and we had no idea what we were eating.

A couple of years later, I’d have the misfortune of being too curious about the balot eggs and scrutinized them under the glare of a 40 watt fluorescent light. I didn’t care for the Pinoy delicacy too much after that.

When it got too dark, Mama would call us to come inside the house and prepare for dinner. We’d enter through the kitchen door and I’d make a little hop so I could reach the faucet and wash my hands. They’d be finishing cooking dinner by then. I distinctly remember the smell of sautéed garlic at dusk. Even now, whenever I come across that smell, I am taken back to those countless afternoons when I came home from playing and dinner was being cooked in our kitchen.

We’ve always helped out with chores. The menial task of setting the table seemed to have been always assigned to me. I think it was because I was too young to handle hot pots and pans. Although I remember being told that only by handling breakable plates more often will I ever be less clumsy and more careful. That didn’t work out too well. We ended up dining with mismatched plates and glasses because I usually broke one or two in every set. And until now, I’m still clumsy as hell.

Around dinnertime, TV Patrol would be on the television. It was not the TV Patrol World as it is today. Just TV Patrol. With now-Vice President de Castro leading the panel of newscasters with Mel Tiangco, the late Frankie Evangelista, and Angelique Lazo for the showbiz news. The news bored me then. Who would’ve thought that years later I’d be bored because I couldn’t have television news.

It’s officially nighttime now. I look out the window again and the lights of the buildings around Shaw Boulevard and the Ortigas Center are now lit up. Soon, I have to decide what I’ll have for dinner: fast food, reheated food, or instant food.

I suddenly miss eating balot.