Childhood Adventure

I think I was about seven years of age then.

I distinctly remember that it was a Saturday morning — very early in the morning mind you — and I recall being quite confused when Dad woke me up. I knew I need not be up at that hour, as there were no classes that day, and yet here was Dad telling me to get dressed as we were going somewhere.

Dutifully I wore my favorite pink dress and my comfortable pair of sneakers. How thankful I was later that I did. No one else in the house was up, and silently my Dad and I left, with him neither telling me where we were going, nor me bothering to ask what he had planned for that day.

The Campus always looked glorious for me, and as we walked the oval with the sun just beginning to rise, I remember being pleased to see it. But whence came as another bit of confusion for me when instead of circling the oval at the Administration building (as was our usual course when he would take me out walking), my Dad turned right to University Avenue, eventually leaving the Campus itself. And though at every point I expected that we would turn back and go home we just kept on walking, until we eventually found ourselves in Cubao! It wasn’t until then that Dad turned to me with his smile and said, ‘Tara, let’s go home.’

I don’t remember us talking much that day, unlike the other times when he would talk ceaselessly about his thoughts, dreams or the stories of his youth. It was as if the adventure itself negated whatever need for conversation there was. And despite being a child of seven who was a bit hungry, thirsty and sweaty, I did not complain, as I remember feeling happy enough to have been asked to join him on that trip.

Years later it became a standing joke in the family, with me kidding him about ‘torturing’ me by making me walk that distance, to which he would laughingly counter by saying that it was his way of finding out how much determination and perseverance I had to get to my goal. Now that I look back to that day, I guess there was something to it. At every point of my life where I found myself struggling, somehow I knew I had the strength within me to ride it out and face it. I just wish I told him that.

I have never since walked to Cubao and back, or to any such distance that could possibly compare. But every now and then, as hard to believe as it may sound, I hope I will, one day. Somehow I am sure he would be pleased to see me do it again.

(photo credit to geronimo!! downloaded from the ‘Net. thank you.)