ANAMNESIS

It was Friday the 13th of November year 1990 when I was born in Aboabo,
Brooke’s Point around 2 AM. According to my mother, I am not crying when came
out and not even breathing as well. I was being suffocated by my own discharges.
Thanks to one of our relatives who practices traditional medicine, she somehow
made me cry and breathe by means of suctioning my nose and mouth by her very
own mouth.

As far as I can remember, I began to understand people at the age of 1 year

old. I really know if the person I’m talking to is a family member or not because if it
was a family member he or she will talk to me in English and if it were not I find it
strange to listen to the words they utter, I really find taagalog very alien during
those times. My mom kept on training me in English especially in my speech.

When I became 2 years old, I was often left at my aunt’s home at Bgy.
Isumbo because my mom was full time teacher at Panitian National High school and
me father was working in Malaysia while my two sisters were both studying in their
high schools. My aunt always brings me with her. I remember the times when she
brought me at the rice fields very early n the morning to make the birds go away
(mayas). She was laughing at me today whenever she remembers me running
across the field wile shouting “shoo! Shoo!” at the birds. Later on I started to call
my aunt “nanay” not because I know that what nanay means but because I imitate
my cousins calling her nanay and so what I did as well.

By the age of 3 my mother leaves at my other aunt’s house whenever she go

for school to teach it is because their house was closer to our house and that aunt
of mine was her eldest sister. My cousins their calls her nanay as well but they sort
it out that since I was talking English it would be more cute to hear me calling her
mommy and so that’s what they taught me and so I leaned it very fast.

When I aged 4, my father returned from Malaysia and so my mother now had
the reason to take me from my aunts. During those days, I was really got hooked
with my aunts, I even thought that they were my family already. There were times
that I even cry so hard when mama went there and tried to bring me home. I also
find it hard to readjust my feelings and to my environment, I’m not familiar to my
own house because I grew up in the others’. Later on when it was my father who
tried to take me home, I agreed immediately. I don’t know why. May be because his
new to me or may be I missed him. And when I got home I felt very new in my own
house. But I felt very welcomed as well when my sisters showed me the two sacks
full of toys that my father bought for me. Somehow I felt enlightened.