When I was a child we used to be in church every Sunday. Mom would gave me a peso or two to offer during the offertory. Though our home was just a few steps away from church she would always make sure that I am in my proper mass dress before stepping into the church premises. I remember my childhood friends would always come to our place and join each other into the mass and while I am getting dressed or while going home we would always talk about our beautiful dresses. Yes, beautiful, that's our word when we are in our mass dress. We felt we are in our best dress every time. Because our home then was just a walk away and it is just almost in our front, I can always hear the mass songs every time. I used to memorized all church songs then. The opening, till the ending song for which I heard today in mass, which says, "Waray sin'o man nga nabubuhi para sa sarili lamang, waray sin'o man nga namamatay para sa sarili lamang..." It is just as good as I felt it, I never heard it from then until today. That means I never heard it since leaving our provisional house then, until today.
I remember my childhood and the friends that my childhood built, and I miss it.
Aileen and Diday. They were my childhood friends. They belong to my childhood. They were the first of the friends I have made since knowing what is friends are. They were the friends that I stole with our foods in the house and brought it to our little hiding cabin in the backyard and ate it while playing a sari-sari store or making a halo-halo out of the foods we brought out in the house. They were the friends I used to go to church every Sunday. We play a lot. We always make fun. We have had the same childhood until we left the neighborhood and transferred to another block . I made new friends.
But I still keep up with them till grade 3 when Diday stop schooling due to a financial problem. She never went back to school again. And we never have reconnected again, however we often see each other in the area but until my aunt marry her brother and that brought to our reconnection for the last time again. often times, when they visit our home we talked about our childhood. We would always laugh at what we did, at how we did that and those. It is fun, talking childhood in a grown up way. But Diday died soon after. I was not home when she died. I have never known about her death until I asked why she's not coming anymore. It made me sad, I lost a childhood friend. Yet, my memory of our childhood will never die with her body. She is part of it. So long Diday.
Aileen and I continue the friendship while taking our school at the same time. We became best friend up until our sixth grade. I left the area for my university school opportunity while Aileen continue hers in the area with our common friends, slash, classmates. Though both sides made efforts and find ways to communicate, it never take long. Because of the time I was not in the area and the fact that we weren't in the same school again, the friendship gradually losses. And everything came on the rocks. Aileen has a family of her own now. She still lives in our area. We bumped into each other once in a while, and just like as if we never became best friend. But I know we remain friends because we have the same, common childhood memory.
And I miss it.
(this is just one phase of my childhood)
