MY SPARKLE PENCIL

courtesy: tidingsofmagpies

A few days ago, I reunited with my childhood friend, Cathy, thru Facebook. We have been friends since Kinder (we were around 4 or 5 then) until the time my family transferred to another city when I was nine. It was a painful parting. We have seen each other only once after then, just a few months after we have settled to our new home (there was no Friendster, FB, email or even cellphone then, so we completely lost track of one another).

From the moment I got my Facebook account (and even during the Friendster and Multiply era), I’ve been searching for her. It was just last week that I opened my FB messages and found out that Cathy’s father (or mother) have left two messages asking if I was the person they know, and even mentioned my parents’ names for reference. My heart skipped a beat, because I knew that it was them, the family who was and is our family’s family friend. A day later, Cathy had an FB invitation which I gladly accepted.



courtesy: pytk ni bebet / adobo express

I had lots of good memories with Cathy. We always go to school together, along with my brother and her sister. We always walked from our house to the public elementary school at 5:30 in the morning, traversing along the busy (or sometimes flooded) streets of our small town. Then we crossed a timeworn railroad where numerous trolleys (pedaled by shirtless and sweaty ‘chauffeurs’) went across, along with a dilapidated train that passes every 6:00 AM, which always causes an earthquake of intensity 5 on the Richter scale of the decrepit houses on both sides. We sometimes ate breakfast (pan de sal with dari crème or cheese) while walking. At some mornings, instead of eating pan de sal, I will bring out from the pockets of my school skirt 2 or 3 not-so-ripe tomatoes and salt, and insatiably chomped at each with gusto (while Cathy, her sister and my brother cringed at the sight of something as sour as unripe tomato).  

At school, Cathy and I were never apart from each other. We both belong in the pilot section of our levels, and even our grades came out almost the same. After school, before our journey back home, we would spend our remaining coins on buying toys and trinkets or street food.  We often buy sundot kulangot (sweet coco jam inside a small bamboo twig, where you use a toothpick-like stick to get the jam inside), mansanitas (small yellow, orange or red fruits of a local shrub that taste very sour), sago-sago (edible palm tree fruit, with a green shell and white, soft flesh inside), sitsirya (junk food) like ET or accordion pictures of Barbie (worth 25c). Cathy and I always share together whatever loot we have amassed from the meager coins we have.

courtesy: priscillasbeauty

Cathy’s father is an OFW. So, whenever he comes home, Cathy always got me this shiny pencil with perfumed erasers that I really am crazy about. Each of my classmates whose father works in Saudi owns a similar pencil (or so I thought). I was extremely delighted to have one not out of conceit, but because I really love sparkly stuffs. I remember feeling so lucky then, that I got a friend who is munificent enough to share such a marvelous thingy to her friend.

Cathy will always be my best childhood BFF. She will be my sparkle pencil for all time, one who has added glitter and glimmer in my colorful life as a child.