Clay House
The wide oceans, the vast lands, and the high mountains can’t stop the existence of a certain person as it finds its entrance in the world. Even the fiercest storm and deafening thunder cannot hinder a story of a person’s life as it begins to unfold. This story of mine began in a small house that seemed not to exist when you view it in the outer space, but despite its size a big hand from Great Heavens came to bless the family that small house contains with His big love.
Chilly morning of September 3 of the year 1994 was the day that I was born. I wasn’t born in our house where I reside right now but I was born in the house of my Grandmother in Barobo, Surigao del Sur. At an early age we are trained to stay inside the house and do much more important things than play outside with the kids in the neighborhood. During my younger years, it is a must to know how to read, memorize the multiplication table and even divide large quantities of numbers. Before, my father works as a security guard in the regional hospital, and he’s not at home most of the time, so each time he’s at work, we would go outside the house and play with our neighbors. Consequences follow after our disobedience, because if our father would see just a single bruise on our knees, he would get his belt and use it to teach us a lesson.
Since father wants us to learn from his life, he would keep on telling us about his life story, so we are very much aware of what kind of family he did grew up. He is the fifth in twelve siblings and has been working for the food of his family since his older brothers and sisters had stowed away. Despite the capabilities of his parents to feed them up, still his parents would choose to spend their money first to fulfill their own pleasures, before thinking about the needs of their children.
On the other side of the story, my mother grew up in a family that’s responsible. Although her parents were not able, still she and her other siblings tried their best to finish college, but the youngest sibling of my mom wasn’t successful because of getting pregnant at the age of 15, and was not able to finish even high school. My mom is an academic scholar from high school to college, and graduated without her parents spending a single penny for her education. My mother grew free and was happy during her younger years, unlike my father who grew up unhappy and was claiming that he never did experienced happiness on his entire life.
Their two different worlds collided and formed a single place here on earth to form a family with three kids. In the place we call as home, there are two types of discipline: strict (father) and the not so strict (mother), and I like the second type. After my father resigned from his job, he became a house husband and was the one who managed our house, and the most frightening thing of all, the thing that could make even the smallest bone in my ear tremble, is that he’s the one who’s going to take care of us, because I was just 4 years of age by that time and my older sister 5.
While my father manages our house, he would give us problems to be solved, recite the alphabet and the ABAKADA, make him see us read a dictionary and even recite the multiplication table from 0-10 without mistakes. Unsolved problems are equivalent to whole day of lecture about life and an hour of action. But despite the strictness of the person whom I considered as a monster when I was a kid, all of his hard work taught us how to read and write. Without my father I may have become an out of school youth, and maybe if his rules have no teeth, I might have a family of my own at an early age.
At the age of five, I was sent to school to study in Grade one since my father didn’t want to keep us for long in the house, for we already knew how to read and write. Being in a new environment seemed like the outside world, it seemed to whisper the word FREEDOM. The new environment with many other kids with the same age as mine is so new to me. I felt like I have stayed in a cave for many years and was finally out after some time, but I was wrong, for even if I was outside our home, chains are still around my neck, feet, and hands. Every move that I make I should ask permission to my mother, even in eating my lunch, my mother won’t allow me to eat it in our classroom. She wants me to eat it inside her own classroom because she’s a teacher in that school.
Well, to make the long story short, I can’t take their discipline so I started to rebel and I sometimes cut classes. I even went to places far from the school boundaries. Though after receiving some stripes after school because of my parents’ discovery of my rebellion, still the adventure it brought me can’t be replaced.
In our house, every chore has corresponding workers. And as long as you live under the shadow of the roof, you have to do your job, for we believe in the saying that, “Those who are lazy, don’t have the right to eat.”
Well, those were years ago, back when we were still kids and even don’t know how to wash our clothes or cook. Now things are slowly changing, for our parents are not that strict on us anymore and they’re already letting us to do things on our own, for they said that we already knew what’s right from wrong.
Reminiscing the old days makes me miss the way I look at their very worried faces whenever I escape from school and do things that could harm me, anyway who I am right now is the effect of the training I had when I was a kid.
I may have never enjoyed my younger years, but still I’m happy, for I believe that what’s important is the future happiness that awaits my road. Glad that my parents preserved me and trained me at an early stage of my life. Seeing that the result of letting their kids do what they wanted is very visible in our environment; some got pregnant at an early age, some lives together without getting married, some are jobless and now most of them are under the control of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, so I really thank God for giving us such responsible and supportive parents.
I believe that, to become unshakable in facing life, we have to first build a strong foundation of character, which undergoes a process that starts at home. We are all like clay brought to a Clay House by our Master in heaven to prepare us on greater things that He wants us to do.
