I still remember that day.
It was a sunny, humid afternoon. By my best guess, it was around 4 to 4:30 pm, when the last class of the day was usually Basic Computer or something as equally boring. I watched the clock dismally as the minute hand ticked slowly towards the inevitable ring of the dismissal bell with the speed of an aging beagle swimming around in a vat of processed molasses.
*RING RING RING *
As soon as the bell rang, everybody rushed to the door with their bags already packed. I picked up my stroller bag and skipped out the door, heading straight to the gate. My friends called me to come stay for a while to play in the nearby field, but I shouted back to say that my parents were waiting for me back home. I wasn’t allowed to stay late or stay out too much because of my allergies and somewhat frail condition, so I usually just went straight home after class. I didn’t mind that at all to be honest; Some of my favorite anime shows aired at around 4:30-5pm, so it wasn’t much of a trade-off for a kid who just wanted to enjoy the last moments of his day watching Mojacko on the TV.
I ran out through the big iron gate and waved goodbye to the friendly guard stationed just outside the gate near guardhouse before turning to walk down the gravelly path beside the big road leading up to our house. Our small bungalow was beside this highway leading out of our relatively small town, a kilometer or two away from my school. My parents usually don’t pick me up after school because the surroundings were relatively safe, with only rice fields and small houses around in between the trek home. The most I could get accosted by would probably be a wayward carabao looking for fresh grass near the side of the road. Not that they would assault me out of spite, but perhaps more of curiosity for the snacks we sometimes ate on the way home from school.
I took out my small bimpo I always kept beside my person and wiped away the sweat on my neck as I progressed leisurely on my walk home. It was a little humid earlier that afternoon, but now a slightly cold breeze started blowing down my back from the direction of my school. It usually takes around 15 minutes or so to walk the entire distance from my school to our gate, and I was enjoying the small reprieve from the cloying heat earlier in our classroom. I breathed in a bit and enjoyed the crisp air for a moment, before I was suddenly interrupted from my reverie by the sound of my friends shouting something at my back from afar off. I looked back and squinted my eyes at my friends, trying to figure out why they were waving their hands and pointing at me while running, when I saw something that would remain me for the rest of my life.
I should probably describe the road a bit more. I mentioned that there was a gravel path beside a big road, and there were fields around the road. Well, there were also huge trees lining the side of the gravel path, and their topmost branches formed a sort of canopy above the road. So if you were to picture yourself walking down the path I was walking on, you’d see a long stretch of asphalt road lined with trees of varying shapes and colors; Fire trees with their vivid reds and oranges interspersed with the deep green leaves of mango trees splashing their colors in a wide canopy above the road. As I looked back at my friends, I saw all of these colors rounded out by the glow of the setting sun, while I heard a faint roar slowly crashing its way towards me and my friends. I saw it then, a downpour of rain coming slowly from the direction where we just came from. It was probably a cloudburst of some sort, with the wind I felt at my back pushing it slowly towards us. I looked back at the scene one last time and started to run ahead too, spurred by the shouts of glee from the kids at the back ecstatic to play in the rain before going home. I tried to outrun the squall, but it quickly caught up to me in a flash, and for a moment I relished the feeling of being able to run freely in the rain after a scorching afternoon. Of course, I was promptly scolded by my mother when I got home because I was not allowed to play in the rain because I might get sick.
That memory will remain as one of my precious childhood memories – that feeling of unimpeded bliss while running from the rain, the wind at my back and the smell of the rain-kissed soil changing as the rain pours down from the sky. Now, when I try to recall that memory to evoke that same feeling of freedom and bliss, the picture comes out less that what I expected it to be. The road becomes a little more narrower, the foliage a little less vivid, the wind a little less breezier, the rain a little less adamant. It’s like a faded painting, the paint flaking off after years of being left around an old forgotten house. The image is still there, untouched, but the colors and the life, they slowly fade away.
Remember our favorite life events? Our first Christmas Gift? Our first Birthday party? Try to recall those right now. Chances are, you wouldn’t remember everything that made you enjoy that day back then (Not unless you have an eidetic memory, which is besides the point) It’s a funny thing, that the only time our memory is 100% accurate, is the time when we experience it for the first time. And for every succeeding instance when we recall that memory, it fades just a little bit, losing its luster and glamour, until all that is left is what it made you feel in the first place. Some people might think that it’s a depressing thing to think about memories fading away, but in its own way, there is a sort of beauty in the temporal nature of memory in that we are reminded that the fleeting nature of life is what makes the experience of living itself beautiful and poignant. Memories are merely echoes of a life well-lived, and we should not be weighed down by the fading reality of our memories.
A life well-lived, is a life well worth remembering.
PELANQUITOUS 