When the defense ended, Professor Santos came to shake hands with me and my family. When it was Tatay Ben’s turn, he suddenly stopped, looked at him carefully, and then his expression changed. Birthday Party Supplies
But that moment—those few seconds of recognition in a crowded auditorium at UP Diliman—was built on years of sweat, dust, hunger, and sacrifices I didn’t fully understand until it was too late.
I was born into an incomplete family.
By the time I was old enough to walk without stumbling, my parents had already divorced.
My earliest memories are not of toys or birthdays but of shouting, slammed doors, and my mother packing clothes into a plastic bag while wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
Nanay Lorna took me back to Nueva Ecija, to a sleepy barangay that seemed to be made of nothing but rice fields, sun, wind, and gossip. Our house was a small wooden structure with a rusted tin roof that sang every time the rain hit it.
The floor creaked, the walls were thin, and privacy didn’t really exist.
If someone sneezed three houses down, you heard it. I don’t remember my biological father’s face clearly.
In my mind, he is more like a shadow—tall, smelling of aftershave and rage, always halfway out the door.
He left a hole in my life that no one tried to name.
We didn’t say “Papa.” We said “siya”—“him.”
We were poor, in the simplest and most brutal way. Nanay tried to pretend it was just “simple life,” but the empty plates and old clothes didn’t lie.
Sometimes we ate tuyo and rice. Sometimes just rice.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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