As I used to know it

The arrival of summer, when I was a kid, was always announced by the fat and fleshy fruits of the camachile trees abundantly growing in my Lolo’s backyard. Together with other kids, my brothers and I would pick the plump, coiled fruits that have ripened from pale green to deep red using a sungkit (a long and slender stick with a wooden hook crossed at the tip of it). Kernels of sweat would outline our faces as we happily put our yields inside a galon (a big and empty can of pineapple juice). We would divide the fruits equally among ourselves; unequal distribution of the fruits would mean anyone of us rising up in arms. Under the trees, with the earth as our benches, we would feast on camachile as the summer heat was occasionally stirred by a sweet, cool breeze that would send the small wing-like leaves of the trees to pirouette down the ground. We would repeat the same activity every day until Palm Sunday. During the Holy Week, as our elders would say, we were required to pray instead of play.

Piety and reverence characterized the Holy Week of my childhood in the ’70s in Laguna. Life would come to a standstill beginning Holy Monday that instead of playing during the time of repentance, the young ones would pray with the young once. There was no patintero in the middle of the road and under the scorching heat of the sun. No children would play taguan (hide-and-seek) on a moonlit night. We were told that if we played and fell flat on our faces, we would not be able to stand up again; worse, the earth would eat us alive like what happened in the story of Nanay about a man who sprinted the street on a holy day and never resurfaced after he fell. If we got bruised, the wound would not heal and blood would not stop from flowing. The camachile fruits were all red but no one picked them, not even the birds would peck on their white flesh that now littered the ground. We didn’t dare go out of the house to harvest the fruits for fear that instead of plucking camachile, it would be snakes that would drop from the tree. In those days, every member of the family was required to either pray the rosary or read the Pasyon. It didn’t matter whether it was done out of piety or out of love. In those simple times, who could tell the difference?

Silence was a total virtue in those days. Less talk meant less offense to God. If ever we talked, we did everything in a hush. Our elders told us that if we spoke loudly during the Holy Week, we wouldn’t be able to close our mouths anymore. Young as I was though, the irreverent me wondered why the old women in our village used microphones when singing the Pasyon in kubols (makeshift altars set up outside the house) whose canopy and drapery were laced with the pink petals of bougainvillea. When I tried to ask, I was punished to read the Pasyon with them. I grew up loving the punishment I got. I was only seven then, but I have since made it my devotion to read or sing the Passion of Christ every Maundy Thursday, from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. the following day.

Fear of God back then was so profound that people spoke quietly, if they ever spoke at all. Noise, especially on Good Friday, was forbidden. No jeepneys would ply the street or if there were, they would drive slowly. Even the askals (astray mongrels) seemed to cooperate. Their barking, if they barked at all, seemed muffled, or was it only in my imagination? At the crack of dawn during Holy Week, the crowing of roosters was missed but perhaps only in my memory. Nevertheless, I do remember the quacking of ducks swimming in Laguna de Bay or the mooing of carabaos grazing the fields. Gulod, the village where I grew up in Cabuyao, Laguna, even now is a perfect venue for reflection and solitude, sandwiched as it is by palayan (rice fields) in the west and lawa (lake) in the east.

Being still was a form of reverence. The elders clutched their rosaries the whole day. No strenuous physical activities were allowed. No washing of clothes. Even children were not allowed to take a bath. With a wet bimpo (towelet), Nanay would clean us and then change our shirts. No drawing of water from deep wells. Our tapayans (earthen jars) had been filled days before the Holy Week. The usual rustle of water in our piskera (makeshift wooden sink) where we washed the dishes was missed for we did the chore very carefully and almost noiselessly.

Our lives would slowly be back to "normal" on Black Saturday. This time, people took a dip at Laguna de Bay which was still clean and clear in those days. Sabado de Gloria, as tradition would have it, was also the time when young boys would turn into men because circumcision en masse was done by an herbalist (more popularly called as mangtutule) on this day. This rite of passage was performed among boys aged six to 12. Also on this day, families began to feast on sinigang na ayungin sa bayabas, ginatang hipon, pesang dalag, mangga’t bagoong, inadwas na hipon and, for those who had more money to buy, inihaw na baboy. This fare was a welcome treat for most people who had to contend themselves with nilagang upo and inihaw na daing from Holy Monday to Good Friday.

Come Easter Sunday, many people in our barrio were in frenzy to go to the town proper for the yearly Salubong or Easter Sunday procession which was done before dawn. In the afternoon of Linggo ng Pagkabuhay, elders rounded up the kids and brought them to a common ground where a fiesta of games was held. There were palosebo, hatawang palayok, luksong tinik, luksong baka, agawan among other traditional games that nowadays are not being played anymore. (Funny how we didn’t think of hiding Easter Eggs considering that in those days, duck raising was the main source of livelihood in Gulod.)

Now that I’m grown up, much has changed in my place – the customs, the beliefs, even the landscape. Jeepneys speed away and honk even on a Good Friday. People go about their daily lives the way they do on ordinary days. The lake, now gasping for its last few breaths, is only braved by those who are not afraid to contract skin disease after they take a dip on Black Saturday.

With all these changes, the camachile trees in my Lolo’s backyard have remained still – unaffected by time, unmoved by the changing faith of people. When they begin to bear fruits, I am reminded that the Holy Week is still a week worthy of reflection.

(For your new beginnings, please email me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. Have a blessed Sunday.)