During those quiet early morning moments, just after waking up but before getting out of bed, Mari and I were having a little conversation.
“Mama, you didn’t have ice cream when you were little, right? You only had ice cream on birthdays?”
She got this idea because I once told her how lucky she is to have ice cream whenever she wants, since we almost always have some in the freezer. When I was her age, ice cream wasn’t something we could enjoy every day. It was a special treat, usually reserved for occasions like birthdays.
I answered, “Yeah, you’re right.”
There was a brief silence, and then I suddenly remembered something.
“But we had ice cream vendors!”
I started telling her about the man who pushed a colorful ice cream cart around our neighborhood. He carried a bell, and whenever we heard its familiar ringing, we knew the ice cream man was coming! We would get so excited and immediately ask our parents for some. We had to hurry because, otherwise, the vendor would be too far away by the time we got permission!
Sometimes, our parents would say no because they didn’t have any loose change. But most of the time, we would insist until they gave in, and we finally got our ice cream!
I searched Google for a picture of an old-fashioned Filipino ice cream cart and showed it to Mari. I even tried looking for a video, but couldn’t find one that captured what I was trying to describe.
And just like that, our little conversation took me down memory lane.
I suddenly remembered the other familiar vendors from my childhood. My cousin used to sell pandesal. He would wake up very early in the morning, carry a box full of freshly baked pandesal, walk around the neighborhood, and shout, “Pandesal! Pandesal!”
We also had the taho vendor, who went around carrying two large metal containers balanced on a pole across his shoulders. And when nighttime came, there was the balut vendor.
Those were the little things that made up our everyday lives.
Back then, we thought they were just ordinary things. Nothing particularly exciting. They were simply part of life.
But now that we’re all grown up, we realize how lucky we were to have experienced those things. How rich our childhood was, even when we thought we were poor.
Today, those ordinary moments have become precious memories, tucked away in the deepest corners of our hearts. Sometimes, all it takes is a simple question, a familiar sound, or a picture to bring them all rushing back.
Now I understand why our parents loved telling us stories about their younger days. Perhaps this is what happens when we become parents ourselves. We begin looking back at our own childhood, remembering the little things that shaped us, and wishing we could somehow let our children experience even a glimpse of that world.
But those days are gone. All we can do now is pass them on through stories, pictures, and conversations with the next generation.
And perhaps that’s how memories stay alive.
Life really is a cycle. We grow up listening to our parents’ stories, and one day, we find ourselves becoming the parents who tell stories of our own. ❤️
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