Children of the sea

I can still remember how my childhood friends and I would go swimming without permission from our parents.

We would shed all our clothes before jumping into the water. Then, emerging, we would put our clothes back on and lie on the shore in order to get dry. Under the sun, looking at the clouds, we would talk about our dreams. Then we would go home as though we never went swimming. But how wise my mother was: She would know what I had done just by noting my sunburn.

Some of my friends dreamed of becoming wealthy fishermen. Some wished to travel to different shores. When asked, I would always say, “I want to know how deep the sea is.”

Russel, our leader, dreamed of becoming the strongest person in the world. We could not disagree because every time we got into trouble, he was there to back us up.

I grew up in a coastal area in Davao City, which is why I know how to swim, fish, and maneuver a boat. The sea was the wellspring of the livelihood of almost all our neighbors, most of whom were fishermen. Some cultured guso(seaweed) to sell in the market to be eaten, others sold it to plastic manufacturing companies. My friends and I took part in the coastal trade by peddling fish in order to earn some coins, which we mostly used to play hulog-piso computer games.

We had a hideout—an abandoned but still-sturdy building. We called it “Templo Kami,” a reference to Kami’s Temple in “Dragon Ball Z,” our favorite animé series. There, we played tumbang preso, taguan, luksong tinik, and many more games. We considered our hideout an invulnerable fortress; it was for us as strong as the friendship we had built among ourselves.

But at that time, we were just a bunch of optimistic children.

One rainy night, a series of sharp, loud sounds stirred the cold atmosphere. My father immediately ordered me to duck. Why, I didn’t know yet. All I knew was that the sounds were so loud—they resonated many times in my head—that I forgot it was raining.

It turned out what I heard were gunshots.

When the rain stopped, my father went out of the house. Curious, I followed him without his knowledge. Our neighbors were already gathered in the place where the gunshots had come from. Lying there was the body of Russel’s father, Mang Jun, who was a known drug pusher in our place, with holes in his face oozing blood.

“He was shot by the DDS (Davao Death Squad),” someone said.

Then my father saw me. He grabbed me by the wrist and we went home. It was then, at the age of eight, that I became convinced that a gun’s sole purpose is to make bloody holes in human beings.

My mother ordered me to stop seeing my friends. “What happened to Mang Jun might also happen to you if you always hang out with them,” she said. Afraid of having bloody holes in my face, I complied. So I never had the chance to console Russel on his father’s death.

From then on, my daily routine consisted of going to school, studying my lessons, doing my homework, and going to bed early.

The years passed, and I forgot about my friends.

Going home from school one night, when I was a high school freshman, I walked past the Templo Kami. It had grown old and shabby. I heard moans and other sounds from inside the building. Curious, I peeked inside and saw Russel and my other old friends tripping on solvent. They were under its psychedelic effects. They seemed to be hallucinating.

Afraid that they would see me, I immediately ran home. Later that night, I recalled the days when we were young and innocent children. What had happened?

It was then that I started to view life differently.

When I was 14, my parents separated. Members of our family decided to leave the place, but I decided to live away from them. I stayed at my grandmother’s in GenSan.

I tried to find myself. As I grew older and acquired a bit of knowledge about this world, I came to realize that living life is like walking to the sea. You start at the shore, and in every step you take, the sea becomes deeper. Hence, you must learn how to swim.

I also learned that the deepest part of the sea is Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. With that, I thought that I already knew how deep the sea actually is. But—did I? Aren’t 11,304 meters mere figures? Do they tell anything about what the sea really is or anything about what is really there?

Life is like the sea. You can always learn how to swim, but you can never fathom it.

Last summer, I decided to visit the place where I grew up. It was still the same old place I remember, except that much of it was now a shipping port. Most of the houses there had been demolished; the area has been bought by a Chinese businessman. I saw faces: those that I remembered and those that I had forgotten. The once-proud Templo Kami was now no more than a heap of debris.

During that visit, I saw again Banoy and Kakang, two of my childhood friends. Banoy was so skinny that I could hardly recognize him. He said he had found employment as a porter in the harbor.

Kakang, on the other hand, was already a father of three. “That’s life,” he said when we talked about what had happened to him since last we met.

I asked about Russel, and they said he was dead, shot with a sumpak during a gang fight a couple of years ago.

That piece of information caused a twinge in my heart. Yes, Russel was stubborn. True, he was a troublemaker. But I saw a good man in him. He was always there for me every time I needed someone. He was, for me, not only our leader but also a caring big brother. I mourned, not for his meaningless death, but for the life he could have lived.

So Russel is gone, and the other children I once played with have vanished. Still, they will always be in that place where there was a shore on which we lay and dreamed. They will always be in that place where stood a sturdy Templo Kami, where they laughed, played, and enjoyed their childhood.

And that place will always be in my memory.

Jade Mark B. Capiñanes, 19, is an AB English student at Mindanao State University-General Santos City. He is the associate editor of the university paper, Bagwis.