We were poor. My father was a jeepney driver turned taxi driver turned rice farmer. My mother was a homemaker. Both didnβt finish high school. My idea of rich people were my teachers because they finished schooling and those who owned π΄π’π³πͺ-π΄π’π³πͺ stores because they have income streams. Candy π±π’π΄π’ππΆπ£π°π―π¨ from my father were enough …
One was an aunt of my father, the other was her daughter. The mother and daughter tandem of my childhood life of terror were known to us as ππ±πΆπ―π¨ Feling (grandmother) and ππ’Μ CiΓ³n (aunt). Like life playing tricks on me, their house stood a fence away from the church and just about 150m away …
In high school, we had a gatekeeper -a security guard sans the arsenal that makes one, who, I thought was very old. He was 25 then, I was about 13 or 14. As a teenager, that was how I looked at people who were older -rotten old. But when I reached that old age of …