mochinthusiast

Porridge (2017)
It was just another day of the week. Quite sunny actually, if compared to today’s weather.

I just got home from school. Oh! I’m soooo excited! I can’t wait to show my grandpa the stars that

teacher gave me. She told me to make sure I tell him that I’ve done an excellent job in answering

her questions.

Skidding my way up our front door, I, spied with my own---too adorable---little eyes, a

figure lying on a mat. The mat was sideways with our couch, and the couch was facing our television

set. With our DVD player just below it. The figure was a tall, not so chubby man with a bloated

stomach. An aged one whose skin is very comparable to mine, sleeping peacefully while lying on his

right side, cushioning his right arm as if it was the comfiest pillow he’d ever used.

Beaming, I announced my arrival. Greeting my grandma, sitting on the couch, with a kiss on

the cheek. I looked around. Right beside our bedroom door is a small circular table with a small

vanity mirror. And beside that mirror is a bowl. Feeling suddenly hungry, I, slowly approached it.

With my hands just above my stomach, I tiptoed my way through the sala, hoping to sneak away

the bowl without having granny notice a thing.

Turns out it was a bowl of porridge. A once warm porridge turned cold. Why hasn’t anyone

eaten it? Surely it wasn’t placed there for decoration. Nor was it there to tempt little old me.

I picked it up, for no reason, without any agenda at all. And by agenda, I meant eating it

or whatever that fits your imagination. With my own two little feet, I strode my way to

grandfather. The bowl of porridge slightly shaking, clutched and sandwiched in between my two--

-also too adorable---feeble hands.

I, tried to wake him up and kept on pulling on his sleeves. After a few defiant grunts, he

opened his eyes. It looked very weary. His eyebrows were perfectly knitted together. For a

moment, he seemed to stare directly right at my soul, my whole being, of course, only from its

windows. As humans call it, the eyes of the beholder. But what do I know really, I am just a kid.

Then he smiled. A fatherly smile alienated from my system through the years of riding the

rough waves. Of course I never knew this as a kid too.

I handed him the bowl without saying a thing. I just beamed at him like I always do and

pranced to our bedroom to change into my pambahay.

Right before I closed the small gap between the door and the doorframe, right before all

sound from the sala got muffled, I think I heard my grandma bitterly mutter something I was

never able to fully understand, ‘When I was…stupid old man…only ate when…little girl’.