The image never left me. In my young scientist’s heart what was amazing was the certainty that sometime between 10 a.m., when classes ended and we went home, and 8 a.m., when we got back to school, the seeds burst from their shells, battled with the ground and grew at least an inch tall. Which meant that while I was taking my lunch, reading my books, listening to my brothers rehearse, the monggo seeds were moving! My mind became busy with plans. I was going to catch that growth.
I knew we always had monggo seeds so it was easy to duplicate the experiment. After dinner, I planted my seeds in an old coffee bottle and placed it by the window ledge. I remember that while I was brushing my teeth, changing into pajamas and saying my prayers, I would keep going back to the seeds to check if they had begun their ascent. After saying goodnight to my parents, I took a couple of pillows and started to intently watch my seeds grow. I remember trying all sorts of things to keep myself awake like reading my picture books or singing songs with my sisters. But my eyes would always give up. In the morning, the sprouts would be there, taunting me. This happened for many nights. I have yet to see it actually happen.
I am always chased by memory, perhaps because I am inextricably linked to them. It is not an exaggeration to say that my memory is amazing. My memories date back to as early as enunciating my first word. In the beginning, it was a wonderful toy I could play with. Quizzes and exams were a cinch as I was certain to memorize notes and lessons. It was always a guarantee that if I wrote something down, my memory would retain it. I memorized car plate numbers (to this day I can remember cars from grade school, mine and our neighbor’s), names of people, prices of items in groceries, poems (...but let him keep the rest, but keep them with repining restlessness, so if goodness lead him not, then weariness may toss him to my breast), even lines from bad TV shows like this one from Love Boat, an Aaron Spelling creation:
"What’s there to learn from your first love?" Capt. Stubing asks a passenger.
"That it won’t be your last," he answers.
But this particular memory kept chasing me. As time passed, it would resonate and become fuller in picture. Now the memory has details of my favorite nighttime outfit: a white T-shirt stained by champorado and blue shorts my mother bought at Shoe Mart on Aurora Boulevard. I decided to chase it right back. Why does my memory keep this story? And perhaps, even more: try to figure out why memory is important to me.
First, I spent time studying what made me remember. This required a re-reading of my journals that cover almost a 20-year period. I stumbled on an irony. My journals do not document what is significant. They document what is safe. This is the first clue, then. My memory has an extra function – it keeps what cannot be written yet. Therefore, any attempt to chronicle would act as filter. It was important to just drown in memory and allow it to speak to me.
To do this, I made a timeline beginning at age one to age 34. I used phrases, bullet-points and even symbols to capture my memories. It was exhausting. Some days I was exhausted by the sheer weight of what I was carrying. Sometimes I cried because I remembered too much. Like this:
"When I was five, my brothers and sisters and I put up a family play. My oldest brother Jed adapted the musical Peter Pan and made his own music. We all had roles and I played Michael, which I didn’t particularly like because all I had to do was sleep. We made posters and tickets although we had no audience except our parents. When the curtain opened, nobody was prepared for the anger of my father. Chin, in his zeal to be a real thespian, destroyed so many sheets for our curtains and backdrop. The sheets were newly bought and the waste of money upset my father. "
Other days I fell in love with who I am, like this memory:
"Entering UP Church of the Holy Sacrifice at 15, wearing a brand-new white bra. I was wearing a smocked beige blouse with beige pants. My hair was clipped to the sides and it landed in soft ringlets to my shoulder. As I entered, three young men stared at me and nudged each other. I think it is my first memory of beauty."
And then there were memories that nobody else remembered but me. Like the day my father told us that we had to tighten our belts. He sat us all in a circle, and he began this way:
"We will all have to be strong. These are difficult times and we all need to sacrifice. I promise you, Ma and Pa will take care of you always."
My mother said:
"Sometimes we will not be able to get what you want. We will need to simplify our needs. Don’t be surprised if we can only eat tuyo and egg some days."
I asked my mother about this. In her memory it was a secret she and my father kept. In my memory, we had a family meeting and she wept because we were so happy we could have as much tuyo as we wanted.
Looking at all I had unearthed brought me to this possibility – my memories are clues to where I should go. They are also about what I must face and confront. It has a shade of déjà vu, because I keep stumbling on their significance in the future. For example, the strength of my memories has brought me to teaching. In memory mode, it is at four that I begin to pretend teach on a brick wall at the back of our house using a stone as chalk. It is a sensorial memory because even in the present I can feel the weight of the stone in my hand. That stone keeps me anchored until today, in everything that I do.
The memory of my father is a call to me to forgive him and understand him. I puzzled over the anger for years and yet, now in adulthood, coupled with the memory of money, two separate memories begin to have congruence. I understand the space of his anger now. Even my Love Boat memory is a reminder of how to deal with a failed romance. And beauty? To know that one is beautiful at 15 is a lifelong gift. Even in my moments of ugliness, I have the memory of the gaze of someone. What my memory has given me is a path well tracked.
And what then of this monggo seed? What does this memory wish me to see? The longer I keep it the more I know that this is my Teodoro, my special son, my seed. I watch him like a hawk to see if he is growing. It always looks from where I am as if it is not happening. Much doubt clouds my heart and I spend all day peering and peeking and watching, watching, watching. The memory reminds me that no matter what, no matter how much I doubt, it is growing. On some morning, it will surprise me.
What is my favorite memory? When I was seven, I came down with the mumps and was properly quarantined. I am lying on my mother’s lap and she is telling me stories. I ask her to tell me again about Hansel and Gretel. All throughout the story I would bombard my mother with questions like, what if the birds ate the crumbs? What if it rained and the crumbs dissolved? What if the crumbs got trampled on? Not finding the way home was such a frightening idea. How I wanted them to simply remember the way home.
I understand this now. Memory is the way home.
(Editor’s note: The author wrote this piece for her mother.)