We used to have our small and humble house at the former 75th Infantry Brigade (IB) Scout Rangers camp (now 73rd (IB) five kilometers from the Calinan proper going to the direction of the Philippine Eagle Research Center. It was a small house, or should I say home at least, and I can only recall small memories from that house. We left it when I was five years old. But every time I recollect the happenings I had in the place, I felt breathing the same air, cold and pricking.
Just before someone gets to our place, they should pass first a bridge of a cut trunk of a coconut tree that at times when it rains becomes very slippery. I remember falling in the bridge down to the dried river while going home bringing my younger sister’s breakfast of banana and eggs. I was scolded not because I fell, but because my sister had nothing for breakfast.
After passing the bridge brings the visitors’ feet in our yard, in front was our wooden house and a small store in the front. On the left side of the yard, one can see a big poultry house where any helping hand is very welcome in feeding the chickens and chicks. At the back of the house came the loud squeaking of pigs and piglets inside a piggery my father built himself. Then beside the pigs are the bamboo-made with galvanized iron sheets shelters for my father’s roosters. Of course how would I forget those two towering durian trees at the left side of the house where I get my annual feast of durian eating during its peak season. I also remember helping my mother planting leaf vegetables at the side of the poultry. We used to have lots of them but I wonder how on earth was I able to grow up without even having the interest to eat veggies.
The house was not a kind that one can boast to others. There was nothing special in its furniture, the walls are almost full of tiny holes one could even recognize if someone’s outside just by looking at it. Just in the footsteps before entering is a hand carved “Welcome” joined by the old rag we use to take away dust from our slippers but occasionally served as personal hand cloth while playing in the yard. The living room had the biggest space inside. But there were only wooden chairs, a wooden couch, and a small table. Before getting to the backdoor was the kitchen. It’s the same place where our dog sleeps and at times when he doesn’t get fed barks out loud and jumps on the table. On the left side of the living room are the two doors of the bedrooms, one for our family and the other for the visitors. My father made a special location for T.V. set. He made of what looked like a hanging altar on the wall in fronting the door of our bedroom. There were also times when we catch snakes lurking in our mats after we set it for sleep. Then after my father killed it my pillow would smell garlic by which he used in stunning the snake.
The last thing I could remember in our home was the big termite house located at the other room. It was bigger than a basketball and looked like hardened mud being put up at the corner of the room. It was surprising how other said to destroy it because they say it eats wood and will destroy the house, but instead we chose not to. Not even my naughtiness even dared to touch it, not even because I was afraid of termites. Most of the time I fancied watching their small army walking up and down the walls. Termites are fun to watch, with those white worm like bodies. I can only tell maybe that time they just want to share and spare a little space of the house.
It was still there when I visited the house several years after we left the place, and the termites were still walking, never getting tired of their everyday chores. I just wonder if their queen, if they have like ants, remembers me. They went into a rampage when I visited them the last time.
