The early nine years of my life was empty, slowly filled in with collective consciousness—only that the prince’s costume didn’t fit my heart. I was nine, playing pretend, but somewhere between a ferry ride and a volcano, I began to remember something I lived.
I was nine, in the haze of that cusp between innocence and something that perhaps only hindsight can call awareness. My head, shaved close like a monk’s from Jackie Chan and Jet Li films—one of those boyish fashions, they’d said—and yet I felt the unfamiliar sting of it, that visceral mark of difference. I could almost hear the rustling of the neighborhood girls’ laughter as we tried to make sense of who we were. Camille, Lou, and I—our roles cast by fate and gender and the curious desires of a child’s heart. James Marsden as the classical prince charming has the early charm on me, something that gives me warm blush. But I, the boy, played the prince charming. Why? I thought it right—such a straightforward thing. Boys play boys’ roles. Yet in my heart, a confusion bloomed, one I was too young to understand. For it was Amy Adams as Giselle in Enchanted whom I adored and desired to play, not the prince, but that sweet, impossible character. Her eyes sparkled with a magic I could not name, and there it was, the first flicker of unspoken desire to be like her.
This desire to be something, longing for change and new was strong enough that past ideas of my early childhood of the previous years faded except for one irrevocable thing, the sea.
It was the queer summer of 2007—a time when the heat of the sun mirrored the turmoil of a child’s secrets. I remember the bus ride, the blur of neon lights painting the night through the fogged window, a distorted world seen only in flashes, like my own scattered thoughts. We were going south, toward my mother’s hometown—San Andres, a place so distant it felt like the edges of the world. I recall the bus journey with a kind of tender clarity. We were children, full of questions and stories untold. The world beyond the window had no clear shape, only shadows, glimmers, the sense that the land was unfolding into something else entirely.
And yet, there was the sea. The sea that pulled at my mind even as the ferry crossed over it, pushing my heart into erratic beats, my palms sweating despite the cool night air. The ocean, dark and infinite, carried my thoughts into strange spaces—had I heard stories of sharks, of monsters lurking beneath the surface? Neither the great white shark from Steven Spielberg’s 50’s horror film Shark nor John Eyres’ 2000s Octopus was for real. Fear gripped me momentarily, but it gave way to awe as the ship rocked gently, singing a lullaby that soothed even my most restless fears. The deep-blue waves, cradling us to sleep, were as familiar to my childhood as the stars themselves.
We arrived half-asleep, greeted by saltwater’s sharp tang and the loud, joyful cacophony of fishermen. The air was thick with life: seaweed, swordfish, and stories of the town that seemed to hum with the pulse of old memories. My mother’s voice, tender and calm, narrated tales of her own childhood—racing up coconut trees, running barefoot in rice fields, the land alive with an almost mythical quality. I tried to picture it, tried to imagine her childhood as I had seen it through the frame of a film—a place of magic and wonder, wrapped in the fog of innocence. But the world outside the window was not fiction, it was tactile and present, and I was caught somewhere in between.
We passed through the rough roads, no highways or neon signs to guide us, only towering trees and the wild, unexplored edges of the earth. I remember the phrase my mother used: “old-fashioned.” How could I, a child of the rural itself, understand it then? Perhaps I thought it was another way of saying “forgotten,” as though the modern world had bypassed this place altogether. It felt like stepping into a page of a storybook that had been left unread for too long. “Old-fashioned,” she said, and in the absence of city lights, I wondered how one could see in such darkness. My mind churned with images from my books—wild boars, water buffaloes, monkeys—but all these fears dissolved as the sun rose higher, casting its light on the village ahead.
The town—a sleepy, hidden place, cradled at the foot of a mountain—was almost dreamlike. No steel towers here, no modernity intruding on the silence of the land. The houses, simple yet full of life, were surrounded by gardens that spoke of patience—hibiscus and roses, vines winding their way across the bamboo fences. And there was Lola Berlinda, her arms open, her heart warm. The house she welcomed us into was a contradiction: solid yet light, like a memory itself. I remember the Capiz shell windows, the light filtering through them in such a way that it seemed to capture the sun, holding it there for a few eternal moments.
Inside, the air smelled faintly of dust and nostalgia. The television, small and unassuming, was flanked by angel figurines and CDs strewn across the furniture. Yet despite this small world, the outside was alive—alive in a way that the city could never be. The garden bloomed with wild color, and the scent of flowers mingled with the salty tang of the sea that was never far from our senses. Here, food was a feast for the senses—spicy Bicol Express, the tang of sugarcane vinegar on fried fingerlings, the sweetness of Tagapulot. Every bite carried the weight of generations, of labor and love woven into the very fabric of the land.
As night fell and the stars blinked to life, my mind wandered. I could not sleep. There were no dreams that night—only the quiet, whispering call of the night, and the hum of a world I was only beginning to understand. The warmth of the room was in stark contrast to the cool air outside, the sound of the cicadas like a lullaby sung in a language I did not know but somehow understood. The morning came too soon.
We were greeted by the chorus of life when the dawn broke—the chirping Eurasian sparrows, the goats bleating in the distance, and the hens’ early chook! My cousins were early birds; they sand the opening song of Batibot, the kind of habit children had during the late 2000s. My younger brother was in trance by his new toy, wooden top, spinning on the dirt; he seemed lost in the world. And there I was, at the edge of it all, watching the great volcano, Mayon, cast its long, graceful shadow over the land. I had seen it from the distance, its shape perfect and silent, holding the weight of stories that had seeped into the very ground it stood upon. My Lola, in her soft, melodic tone, spoke of Mayon’s tragedy—of love lost and grief turned to fire. It was like any great tragedy, harbored from Romeo and Juliet and Titanic—the kind that finds its way into the heart of a child, even when they have no words for it.
The legend of Magayon—how her beauty, her love, had transformed into the very mountain that now stood, both a protector and a reminder of violence, was a tale I carried with me long after. But Lola’s voice did not tremble; it was steady, almost light, as though the weight of that history had been softened by time. I wanted to ask more, to dive deeper into the tragedy, but I could not. Sometimes, some stories must flow freely, like the river that runs beneath the surface, never asking for recognition.
That afternoon, we walked toward the sea, and there it was—the saltwater scent, the one that had followed me from the ferry ride. It was the same scent that lingered on the fish at the market. It was both distant and intimate, like a memory and a present moment, both at once. The sea, an endless horizon—it was no longer just a concept or a picture in a book, but a reality, vibrant and real. The hot grains of sand under my barefoot scorched a bit and became cooler by flapping waves ashore; I ran barefoot, my cousins, young brother, and Lola Berlinda’s laughter echoed in the distance. We muster the strength of our earthly bodies to play, swam, and gathered seashells and seaweed; our small hands touch the rawness of the world that dared not to touch us yet. The day has faded into golden glow of canvas of setting sun.
The sea, O the saltwater memory—it all stayed with me, locked in the heart of that summer; the world was no longer the same after that. It was no longer simple; too much progress can’t handle us, infinitely more complex. The sun’s heat, the sea, even the stories—they all intertwined in a way I could not articulate, but something comprehensible within my soul. And when I think of that summer, I remember the taste of Bicol Express, the scent of the ocean, and the perfect, unspoiled beauty of Mayon, watching silently over us. It was a world that summer felt endless and the beginning of a self I was just starting to hear.
I didn’t know then that identity could be a tide—pulling you forward, then drawing you back to a memory. But I felt it, even then, in the saltwater.
Jefferson Limos is a BA Communication graduate from Urdaneta City University. He works as an editor by day and usually writes during the silent hour of the night. He grew up reading Hans Christian Andersen and O. Henry stories, and ever since expanded his horizon in literature. His short stories and personal essays appeared in Circles Magazine, UP KALazine IV, Liwayway Magazine, Good Street Anthology, Philippine Graphic Reader, and elsewhere.
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