When you reach a certain age, you'd recognize the effort that you exert in remembering things. It was yesterday, yes it was, when you were telling a group of friends a story that your mom told you four years ago. Now you strain to recall what it was, careful in separating what you remember from what truly happened.

The day when fiction becomes fact is the same day when you'd feel the slow waning of the years, the soft solitary footsteps of their leaving.

Here are some things I remember:

1. my aunt says I was 2 years old when I said my first English word. the English word was dead.

2. the smell of sampaguitas after we've mixed them to make bubbles

3. a strip of sunshine landing on my uncle's face some random afternoon

4. mothballs in my father's closet

5. old and rusty gold-rimmed glasses on a bedside table

6. cold green bathroom tiles

7. a storybook that I wrote for myself about two girls who went around the world and never came back. the illustrations were horrendous.

8. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a red lunchbox and a thermos of hot milo

9. a boy named george who made faces at me during recess.

10. my 1st grade uniform: moss green skirt and a cream polo with moss green piping.

11. a small blackboard with the alphabet written on it backwards

12. two wooden doll's houses, one smaller than the other. both had two floors. the bigger one was better furnished because it had more rooms.

13. Ura, an old crazy lady who walked around the city with big plastic bags tied to her skirt and a purple bandana around her head.

14. the taste of Tita Magdalena's mechado.

15. the lilting way my mother pronounces English words

16. my mother facing her vanity mirror, looking blankly at her face

17. how steady my mother's hand was while she clutched my arm when i was almost taken by a sipay(rumored pirates who kidnapped children in the early 80's. possibly an urban legend but someone did try to take me.).

18. a yellow box with a golden lock, a memory of folly and forgiveness attached to it.

19. my mother's maimed middle finger

20. the smell of a Perry Ellis perfume wafting in rooms my mother has occupied

21. Frank Sinatra singing on a Sunday.

22. soft, sweet pilipits (squash sweets)

23. combing my father's hair

24. the unsolved mystery of the broken vase

25. secretly unlocking my brother's room whenever he's punished for something

26. my grandmother's spaghetti

27. Ate Glenda's laughter when she was very young

28. someone throwing a fit over paper doll cutouts

29. Max's fried chicken after Sunday Mass. they don't make 'em like they did anymore.

30. selling stationery, P1.00 a piece for the small, square ones and P1.50 for the page-length ones that smell good.

31. eating Serge chocolates while lying on new sheets, reading a book.

32. the smell of new books

33. a pack of Bazooka bubble gum, the comic strip wrappers

34. Santa Claus and my last memorable Christmas

35. reunions at Lolo Ramon's boat-shaped house in Antipolo

36. the heat from stage lights

37. Cyril Maano

38. my mother's shame at something I told our relatives about over dinner

39. Perfect Strangers and the sound my father's rickety rocking chair made during commercial breaks

40.going to school without taking a bath

41. a red dress and a sailor hat

42. smoke from cigars; a group of men wearing fedoras

43. my father's shiny Knights of Columbus sword

44. laughing with Anthony over Pugad Baboy comic books

45. the gift of a small lab set

46. scores erased from a pink examination notebook

47. tricking our family driver into buying me Scramble after school lets out

48. balled up handwritten letters thrown from school buses

49. my Jeffrey fixation: Jeffrey Gaggalang (1st Grade), Jeffrey Sarmiento (2nd Grade), Mark Jeffrey Querubin (6th grade), Jeffrey-no-last-name, a waiter from a pizza store, Jeffrey Tam (2nd yr. highschool)

50. Sam, then Theresa

51. brown suspenders hanging from a coat rack

52. a perfect, blue sky from my bedroom window

53. playing hooky

54. a spelling bee; the word chaos

55. Felix the Cat and an early farewell to innocence

56. Stephanie's mom's Fusilli dish

57. Kuya Boy singing Besame Mucho in the dark

58. My father's voice; my father's stories