My Dad loves to recount an especially memorable day about 11 months after I was born. And I love playing it in my head, just imagining the scene, imagining what my parents might’ve been wearing at the time, how exactly the preceding events unfolded, leading up to the moment I’m about to share. How wide, exactly, my smile was, and how big, really, my eyes were.
My mom was pregnant with me in California in late 1985. But, she felt a lot more comfortable giving birth to me back in Davao City, because of the fact that there were doctors in the family and all, that could be with her in the hospital while she underwent the process. So, she flew back with me in-pouch (heh), and I was born at around 1 – 1:30 AM on the eighth of July, 1985. I was welcomed to the world in Limso Hospital, downtown Davao City, a few blocks from my grandmother’s house on Quirino (then Tomas Claudio) Avenue.
After that, my mom stayed at the Quirino house for several months while I grew big enough to handle an 18-hour plane ride to California. Separated from my Dad the whole time, I’m guessing that he and my Mom agreed on a clever way to compensate for his absence from my immediate surroundings. My Dad would send her cassette tapes he’d recorded in his California apartment; basically, they were recordings of him talking to me, saying “hi, Terence”, singing songs, telling stories, telling me about himself. And purportedly, my Mom would play these tapes over and over while she fed me, carried me around, or whenever. I’m guessing my Dad sent my Mom a whole bunch of tapes over the span of those eleven months.
Then came the day my Mom and I were finally able to catch up with my Dad in California. We flew in to LAX (Los Angeles Int’l Airport), and my Dad met my Mom at the gate where our plane had taxi’d into.
Sometime a few months ago, I read some research somewhere that as infants, we’re already capable of retaining the sights, sounds, and smells we perceive, even in those formative years. This is despite the absence of developed cognitive processes that make conceptual sense of all these sensations. Some study had been conducted whereby a region of a women’s brain was electrically stimulated, and she vividly recalled memories of herself standing in her crib as a toddler, smelling pancakes (or something) in the air. It was all tucked away in her unconscious, between links of neurons just waiting to be jolted out of suspended animation.
I really hope that’s true. Because at that moment, at the airport gate in LAX, I was living proof.
My Mom had me in her arms, perhaps in a bundle of cloth, and she walked up to my Dad; I was fast asleep, probably dizzy and tired from the flight, eyes shut tight.
My Dad leaned close by my ear and said in a soft, awestruck voice: “Hi, Terence. It’s me, Daddy. It’s your Dad.”
Recognizing his voice, I quickly opened my eyes wide, and bright, I guess. And as my Dad loves to say, I struck a smile that was “ear-to-ear”. There I was, his flesh and blood, a bundleful of potentiality. There he was, soon-to-be childhood hero of mine, and conjurer of many sound effects and kenkoy voices. There we were, ang mag-ama.
I really do wonder where those tapes are.
