A recollection of my first days Down Under, in Adelaide, South Australia. It was my first time to leave my homeland, the Philippines to study and live in another country. It was scary and fun!
My mother has always believed that I will go far. By that, I reckon she was thinking more literally rather than figuratively (as in the Tagalog idiom “malayo ang mararating”) although the latter has been a constant hope. Anyway, her belief in my eventual geographic destiny stemmed from her most unforgettable memory of me as a baby. That brief episode has been retold time and again to my growing thrive of nephews and nieces as they research their grandma’s earliest if not the fondest memories of us, her kids, their parents.
The story went like this: one morning, she was in the neighborhood “sari-sari” store across the road from our house when she heard the loud, successive honking of a bus which regularly passed our street. When she turned around to see what the fuss was about, she saw the driver craning his neck out and shouting to nobody in particular: “Hoy, kung kanino mang anak ire, ay pakikuha naman dine sa gitna ng kalye!” (Hey, to anybody whom this kid belongs to, please get her out of the middle of the road!)
My mother looked at the star of the public transport commotion and sure enough, to her utter 1960’s horror, it was nobody else but…MOI! Bow. Yes, me, the second kid who hadn’t learnt how to walk yet but by sheer determination, strong baby muscles and some guardian angel instructions perhaps, managed to crawl down the stairs without a hitch and ended up on the middle of Evangelista Street to check out the wider world out there.
“Oh, wow, what is this big monster coming towards me? Oh, cool…a bus!” Scre-e-e-e-c-c-c-h-hh! To the relief of the stressed-out driver, (bless him for not running over me), my aunt came rushing to my rescue. Yanked me out of the limelight and swore that she was just gone for thirty seconds to pee. And how on earth did I end up there when I still couldn’t walk…blah-blah-blah, excuses, excuses…haha. “Hello, Auntie? I was a Darigold baby, don’t you remember?” (Hmm…I think I just gave away what generation I belong to. Sh-h-h.)
Today, she fondly (proudly?), retells the story to her grandchildren. Especially lately, when I have officially made her forecast come true: I have gone far. Far away from home. I now live in South Australia, married to a local Aussie (slang for Australian).
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