I had a magical childhood, having been left alone most of the time. If I wasn't reading I'd be building box homes, hanging out at the carpentry shop, or discovering the then barren Better Living Subdivision on my 300-peso ("segunda mano!" my dad exclaimed after coming home with it from Bangkal one day) red bicycle whose left brake lever was so loose it could assume various positions. I called it my "kambyo," and I "changed gears" uphill or downhill, and actually felt the difference. 

There was this girl named Bekya who would walk to our house from the other street to play with me. She was the daughter of a neighbor's maid  and we'd go to their house and explore her "amo" Rudy Dandan's mansion, which had a swimming pool full of moss and frogs, and lots of hidden rooms which had been deserted and where goats would scatter their pellet excreta in. I never did see the infamous Rudy Dandan, who was supposed to be some rich gay heir of Doña Soledad who owned Better Living, although once I think I saw one of his young and handsome lovers topless behind a glass door. 

Rudy Dandan also owned vast lots filled with trees, and we'd climb up the camachile and  sampaloc trees and sit on the branches eating their fruits while watching carabaos bathe in their respective mudholes. On lucky days, we'd ride our bikes far, far away to the quadra (horse farm), making sure to keep it a secret from Papa who would inspect our feet for cuts and scold us if he found out, since the tetanus bacteria thrives in horse dung, he used to say. 

It was Bekya, her dog Snoopy, and sometimes Dandan's nephew Chris, who once made me lie down to kiss me on the cheek and had Bekya push him down on my face so I couldn't move. There was also Russell and Terrence next door, who came only during the summer like King and his twin five-year-old brothers Peter and Paul who locked the door to show me their uncircumcised penises. 

those were enchanting days, back when Paranaque was still a province and our street still wasn't a national road. Today if you take your bike out of the front gate of your house, you'd get hit by a car. No difference really, since the quadra is gone, the camachile/tamarind/carabao field is now a village, the kids are all grown up anyway, and Rudy Dandan is rumored to be dead. 

I thought about all of this now because recently my sister made me write down a list of books my nephew paolo should read. and so thru email i wrote titles like Stuart Little, Freckle Juice, Then Again Maybe I Won't, etc., and I heard he like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing best; when he and ate aya would leave Allan alone on evenings to watch the Filipino Channel. 

I also got my bookshelf today, a small palochina shelf I had made in Laguna a few years back which holds around fifty of the books I grew up reading. I look forward to the day I will hand these down to my child, who like Paolo may never be able to climb tall trees and be free to run around unsupervised, break limbs, get  scratched by the fences I used to jump over or just sit on some branch and watch a whole day pass, but maybe in between the Cartoon Network and pizza, she would get to have at least a small part of the magic I had growing up in Japan Street, Better Living, c.1980.
 

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*poopoo: n., equivalent of pipi in the Sison household.
 

(Today I found my old medals too, from the yearly bookwriting contest in Montessori, that's why i decided to write this all down tonight. I hope you enjoyed it.)