I lived here: 97-C 4th Street, New Manila, Quezon City

The author, leftmost, and the ‘Broadway gang’. (Photos via Noelle de Jesus)
 

97-C on 4th Street in New Manila was my family’s second home. It was a spic and span two-level duplex in a compound of some ten apartment flats ranging in size and spread on different levels, split between two very different kinds of buildings — one rectangular with rooftops, and one that was a three-story L-shaped, square and modern with expansive windows — that sat between what must have been an hectare of land. Throughout the time we lived there, there was always a spot of construction going on — one of the flats being renovated or building repairs taking place. To be sure, the open spaces around and between the buildings were mostly cement paved for the many cars that would drive in and out. But there were also paved tiny pebble walkways that alternated with tidy rectangular lawns of green, set with green hedges —those ubiquitous large santan blossoms comprising fifty or so miniature single flowers that a child could pick apart in seconds and scatter like confetti. Here and there, the developers had laid down large rocks with mossy patches. I also remember gumamela plants as well as a shrub peppered with tiny fragile blue flowers with gooey pistils you could detach and stick quite easily onto your t-shirt.

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Our family had to move from our first home on F Calderon in San Juan, about three streets beyond the edge of Wilson, because all of a sudden, the owners wanted to re-possess the house. We had lived in San Juan since I was in kindergarten, so to my eyes, it was a huge change. It did not seem to be a good time to move, but move we did, grateful and fortunate to have found something that was fairly affordable and safe with a 24-hour security guard. The compound was also close to relatives and to my lola’s house on España Boulevard Extension.

It was not the best time because my mother had just had two babies. The first was my youngest sister, Mariel, who has no memory of the month or so she lived in San Juan. The second was the hip little pocket-sized magazine, TV Times, inspired by the US TV Guide, which covered entertainment and the pre-historically simple programming schedules of the only five local TV networks that existed at the time. For our first six months on 4th Street, my father was away overseas on a research grant in Singapore to finish his book, The Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines.

The duplex was neat and clean, and its environs, green and pretty. The compound grounds were also graced with a number of fruit-bearing trees. There was a rare green macopa tree in the narrow strip of green near the main gate, by the foot of A and right by the steps, on the way down to E, there was a papaya tree. A productive kamias tree stood on the L-shaped green space between B where the Quesadas lived and our own unit, C. At the foot of our house, right beside our stoop, on the ground beneath the santan hedges grew patches of three-leaf clover, makahiya and occasionally, tiny mushrooms. On that lawn, I could sit on the concrete ledge, look down and call to my friend Chary’s basement flat, no need for a telephone. Their flat was larger — or seemed so to me — and all on one level.

My favorite tree was the tantalizingly easy-to-climb and quite fertile duhat tree, with its sprawling branches that adorned the green lawn in front of the Rubio’s D unit, right next to ours. If people wondered why it didn’t seem to yield very much fruit, we the impatient children of the compound would never tell them it was because the very instant any one of us saw a duhat sprouting, including one that was even only slightly purple and in fact, more red than anything else — we would tug it from its stalk and eat it, right there and then, grimacing at the sour bitter tartness.


The author (second photo, center) and her ‘Broadway gang’ 

The people in our neighborhood
The compound was owned by the large family of a prominent architect. This was the reason that a good number of the tenants were related in some way, if not by blood, at least by marriage. Mrs Rubio was my friend Chary Diño’s older sister, who also happened to work with my father at AIM.

Tenants had designated parking places in three sections, and though there was a long driveway from the main gate that went past our complex all the way to the taller, newer L-shaped building of flats adjacent. Cars could then also exit on an equally large stony vacant lot that must also have been owned by the family, but while we lived there, it was nothing more than a driveway, wild grass and a grove of banana trees. There was a three-and-a-half-foot concrete wall separating our complex from the broad cement space on the other side, around which the taller, newer and more impressive building stood. Here, there were three larger, more posh apartments, the homes of three more related families.

Our playmates were Ronna, Wendy, and Nina. They had a baby in the house just like we did, a boy named Peperon and later, came another baby sister named Tami (only when I was an adult did I discover two more babies came, long after everyone had moved). They lived in the largest flat on the third floor that spanned both sides of the L-shaped-building. They were the nieces and nephew of the 12-year-old Chary and their mother, “Ms Pinky”, was headmistress and owner of the ballet studio where my cousins and I took classes, a ten-minute car ride away on 10th Street.

Once the second floor flat was fully constructed and finished, their aunt, Ms Pinky’s sister, moved into the second floor, and she and her husband had a son about my baby sister’s age. And finally, on the first floor flat, lived their cousins from their Dad’s side, Ricky and Donnie.

There were also two studio efficiencies above the garage, and a two-bedroom flat above it, but as no kids lived there, I knew nothing of the tenants. At one point or another, a bachelor uncle lived there, a “Tito Noni” and he operated a sound system business in the renovated guardhouse all the way at the main entrance called AudioCasters. At one point, Ronna, Wendy and Nina showed us inside AudioCasters — which looked to me like a large living room with a bar and a lot of impressive sound equipment, plus a recording studio on the upper loft.

Fairly soon after we moved in, I began to think of all of us kids as the Broadway Gang. Broadway was the name given to that area, despite the fact that you never saw it on a street sign. Nevertheless, it was always referred to as “Broadway” and that’s why the first mall that went up in those parts, in the late ’70s, was called Broadway Centrum.

On the street where we lived
We lived in 97-C for four years from 1976 to 1980. I was nine when we moved in, and when we left the compound to live in the house my parents bought and continue to live in today in Blue Ridge, I was 12. The four years we spent living in Broadway were a magically happy time, and I have always wished that my own children could have their own Broadway Gang.

Beyond the compound 97 was 4th street, proper. Our particular section of it was a green stretch of road lined with acacia and trees with orange blossoms my mother called fire trees; it was bound by Doña Juana Rodriguez Avenue on the right, and Gilmore Avenue on the left. We comfortably far enough away from Balete Drive and the White Lady that haunted late night motorists, but near enough to it that we could all brag about living close. Although we could walk to mass, we drove across Doña Juana to Mt Carmel Church Shrine on Sundays for the eleven o’clock service in our grey second-hand Renault that we later had painted a creamy yellow shade I called “banana yogurt”.


The author’s 4th Street gang.

Further up on 4th Street, three large houses away on 94, much closer to church, was where Tita Myrna and Tito Nards and my cousins, Jon and Mimi, lived. They rented the downstairs house from Lola Lumen and Lolo Taping, who themselves were grandparents of our other cousins: Johnny, Annie, Nina, Jay and Liza. Even back then, I marveled at all the connections — between and among the members of the Broadway Gang.

Gilmore Avenue led to Aurora Boulevard and the mid-sized non-franchise grocery on the corner known simply as “Keystone” to which we would sometimes walk and buy candy or small toys or a pack of three tubes of plastic balloon — to this day, the most ephemeral and delightful of toys. Across from Keystone was the mighty Magnolia plant, a beloved spot where the four of us cousins sometimes went for merienda. The marshmallow nut fudge sundae was my particular favorite: two scoops of ice cream, chocolate and vanilla, miniature marshmallows, a scattering of peanuts, a dollop of whipped cream and a piece of cherry-flavored gulaman.

Many times, we would go play in Jon and Mimi’s house, which we called “Broadway” — we would bike or roller-skate round and round on the badminton court which seemed immense to my memory. Or we would explore the sprawling garden, run all around the large house, and end up wading in the large stone fishpond in the corner of the lot, making use of little short cuts — easy ways to scale the stone walls, so we didn’t need to take the stairs. We were kids, after all; of course, we always preferred to climb down a wall even if we had to hang on and jump a height to get to the ground than to walk down the stairs.

Food glorious food
Back then, all kinds of vendors would ply 4th Street in the afternoon. Our Tita Betty, who lived with Jon and Mimi, had a special ear for the pot-pot man on his bicycle, who squeezed his horn, “pot-pot!” and sold squares of sweet bread sprinkled with white sugar on top that were rather strangely, also called “pot-pot.” She relished “pot-pot” and ate it with Coca Cola, hiding the bottle from us because our parents didn’t allow us to drink soda.

We sometimes bought hot taho from the taho man though he would come later in the afternoon. There was also freshly boiled corn from the corn man, fish balls from the fish ball man, and of course, our most beloved Magnolia man brought orange or chocolate twin popsies, drumsticks, pinipig crunch or my favorite, the sticky orange and banana icicle. His telltale bell would peal joyfully, causing us to stop whatever play we had going and run out the gate to catch him.

At the compound on 97, catching the vendors was not such an urgent business. The yaya could always ask the security guard to stop whomever we wanted — and if truth be told, I’m sure every street vendor stopped here, knowing full well they would make always make a couple of sales here, and very likely more. Stopping this compound of ten flats was just smart business and worth the time it took.

Our house in the middle of the street
Our duplex unit C itself was modest in size, but not knowing anything else, we did not know to feel it was small for our family of four plus a baby and two helpers. Where you entered was the living area, which received plenty of fresh air and sunlight from good-sized windows, and beyond that, the dining area where our old six-seater glass dining table though Mom could fit eight dinner guests there in a pinch with chairs brought down from upstairs. Beyond that was the kitchen, which was roomy enough for a small table for the help, and the second bathroom in the corner.

At the end of the house, there was back screen door to the outdoor laundry area, from which you could see the outdoor laundry areas of the other flats, and even walk down stairs to the Diño’s outdoor area, likely why the other household help all knew each other and in our time, were friends. Our stairs were on the right, and the staircase created a little telephone nook, and underneath there was a “stock” room…and tiny little room that went down a couple of steps with a hanging light bulb. Ours had shelving and it was where the labada and the ironing board were kept. In the long afternoons, yaya would steal a power nap there, lying there, right on top of the laundry. At night, she spread out her mat on the living room floor, but we never ever saw it — it was like a small magic trick.

Upstairs, there were three rooms, modest in size, two in the front of the house and one slightly larger in the back. In one, we kept the television, a mid-sized black and white Hitachi model with rabbit ear antennae that we always had to place just so, to be able to get clear reception. This, until Mommy was given a color Sony, cabinet style by the TV Times advertiser. The room was only large enough for that huge TV set, a desk, and the straw-woven mat with pillows that we all sat on.


The author’s sisters, Mariel (behind) and Lara.

The room on the left was our bedroom — two single beds pushed together, and the baby’s white wood crib with the rotating wood balls at our feet, so my middle sister Lara would have to climb into and out of bed. Yaya had a folded cot beside the crib so she could tap her charge back to sleep or hand her a bottle or pacifier. Lara and I slept right through those middle-of-the-night feedings, not bothered in the slightest— not even on school nights.

In the upstairs hallway, we had a low double-tiered bookshelf for our books against the wall, and at the center of the house, beneath the skylight was a two-part bathroom — an open sink in the center surrounded by shelving, the door to the toilet on the left and the door to the shower on the right, both spaces of equal proportions. Towards the back of the house was Mom and Dad’s room with its walls painted in forest green and was always quiet and empty throughout the day.

My favorite spot in the entire house was the pebble-paved stairs and the wide stoop, likewise paved, that we considered our own, though we shared it with the Rubios who both worked and were as yet, without children. My sister and I spent endless afternoons there. We would read, snack, play board games like chess, game of the generals, battleship or sungka or just sit and chat and more often than not, we would be joined by one or another of what I came to call the 4th Street gang — a group of the compound kids aged 14 down to 7— Chary, me, Ronna, Wendy, Nina and their cousins, Ricky and Donnie and then, our cousins, Jon and Mimi, and very often, even Liza, who lived in faraway Blue Ridge, but would often sleep over either in 97C or in Broadway for days at a time.

Our front entrance was a swinging screen door and a regular wood one behind it that remained ajar from morning till night. Many times, someone would just call out through the screen door or even up into the window, right from our stoop — “Noelle? Lara?” Or it might the Broadway cousins who often came from 94, after lunch in the summer, sometimes even after school.

Gadget and Internet-free fun— morning till night
How to tell of the tremendous pleasure of those childhood summer days without seeming exaggerated? And yet, it is the plain and unadorned truth. We were the happiest kids in the world and we didn’t even know it. Every day was awesome fun. We had a huge outdoor spaces in which to play, and play we would — often from very early in the morning till dinner time, only coming in to get a drink of water or a cold glass of kalamansi juice, entering whichever home we were nearest to. What would we play? Oh where to even start?

We chalked the pavement for piko, choosing flat stones or bits of broken clay pots as or pato. We climbed the duhat tree. We shook the tree for green macopa — it was much too hard to climb, and then went in to ask a helper for black vinegar or rock salt. All through our games, there would be music — we were a great group for song and dance, singing whatever tunes were playing on the radio, as well as a good number of church tunes and TV theme songs.

Lara, Nina and Wendy took out their dolls and gave them picnics on cliffs and mountains, using the decorative boulders as “pretend” wonders of nature. One day, Chary and I made pies, little dishes and pots, dolls sculpted out of the clay mud made from digging up her family’s garden plot. Oh but we dreamt big dreams. “We’ll make these pots, dry them, paint them and sell them!” we said to each other. But when our creations dried out and crumbled back into dirt on the concrete ledge, it was of no consequence to just push them back into the ground. Easy come, easy go.

We played marbles scooping four holes in a row in the dirt. We caught salagubang, patted them to sleep in cupped palms and then affixed them to thread so we could fly them like tiny motorized kites, till they died horrible deaths, their heads severed from their bodies. We had marvelous mad fun with lengths of narrow garter, skipping over up to two dangkals of our height. We constructed rainbow pin-wheels out of paper, using them to tell our fortunes. We played spin-the-bottle, pass the message, a-what-a-what.

And then there were the games we played, tearing around in the summer sunshine. We biked, roller-skated, scootered and skateboarded ala Leif Garret. We played hide-and-seek, cops and robbers, touch color, patintero and our very favorite Agawan Base —a daring running game that involved prisoners and capturing a base and making as long a line as you could with captured prisoners so that the only one left free could “save” them with a touch. But also, we played soccer — that is, kickball, but Ricky and Donnie also had a football that we would toss now and again. There was a stretch that we even played baseball, but we used a tennis ball. We also went through a Frisbee-period and Ricky (or was it Donnie?) and I would toss the thing back and forth for something like half an hour before we were called in for dinner.

The very best game of all was Bang-Bang — which we sometimes called simply “Bang. ” This was really a higher form of hide-and-seek but you played in teams, and pretended that you were in combat and were shooting each other with your thumb and index finger, crooked like a revolver. The wildly absurd and often repeated exchanges shouted across the cement lot sounded something like this:

“Bang Ricky!”

“Where?”

“Behind the wall.”

“Where there?“

“Behind the wall by the duhat tree!”

“Where there?”

“There — by the duhat tree— now there, by the edge of the wall!”

“OK, I’m dead.”

This game was so much fun that there was a time we would get up extra early in the morning to play it — even Jon and Mimi — would come before dawn to play. Bang-Bang in the dark was irresistible. But after a few days, all of us kids shouting so early in the morning soon roused the ire of the older residents of the complex. We were forbidden to wake up early and play loud games until the sun was at least in the sky.

Sometimes playing soccer, one of us would kick the ball just a little too high and a little too far, and we would lose the ball to the shallow “creek” — it was a canal really — that went over part of the vacant lot. Or a frisbee would be flung too wildly and it would plop into the filthy shallow waters and be trapped there.

A group of us would then have to cross to the open lot where a small community, families of the service people, squatted in a miniature shantytown. Although we were all forbidden by our parents to venture there, we thought nothing of crossing to the other side on the path by the wall — some of us would even scamper across the narrow cement bridge, willful and determined to retrieve our plaything.

We climbed down to the trash-riddled black mud shore at the far-end of which grew a grove of banana trees and other wild vegetation, the soft ground of those mucky banks sinking beneath our rubber shoes. Then we stood there, scanning the smelly black waters for it. The “creek” was vile and malodorous, a flowing catchment brook of rain water but also waste and sewage that went underground and crossed over, continuing all the way past the garden at “Broadway.” We would sigh and plan and decide which of us would get it, often arguing about who it was that did it the last time. That person would then at his own pace, locate safe steps on stones or cardboard in the shallow trashy water, trying his best not to get his shoes wet, so as to be able to fish out the offensively wet toy with ginger fingertips while the rest of us gaped and groaned, icked and yucked out, to the tips of our toes. Not surprisingly, fetching a lost toy from the creek soon also became a tantalizing game in itself.


The author’s neighbors, Ronna and Donnie.

Sometimes on rainy days or the rare days when it was just too hot to play we would, as they say these days, just hang out. At our house, space limited us to hanging out on our stoop with board games, jackstones — both Chinese and regular. At Ricky and Donnie’s, we played Monopoly in their room with its double decker beds, all the while the Donnie and Marie Osmond sang their greatest hits on their record player — Ricky and Donnie loved Donny and Marie — we all did, and Ronna could sing “Paper Roses” just like Marie. And we would all sing. At Ronna, Wendy and Nina’s house, there was a sprawling family room. Sometimes, we went there to watch TV — Singing in the Rain on RPN 9 or we watched Anna Liza or Candy-Candy and later, Voltes V or Mazinger Z, depending on the day.

At Chary’s house, we would read and eat santol with rock salt and sukang Iloco — exchanging issues of Tiger Beat and re-hashing episodes of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: Chary like Lara liked Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garret. She could do a mean mime lip-synch of “Hey Deenie”. I liked Parker Stevenson. But we read books too, and would spend hours consuming Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Enid Blyton and Judy Blume, exchanging titles and sharing insights.

Childhood perils
Not all our games were entirely safe or without danger; I remember all too well.

In all the running games of chase, accidents can and did take place — there were skinned knees and bad falls. Often, play would end in tears and someone running home to be alone and heal. Even I once had a near concussion when, after hitting a flier with Ricky and Donnie’s bat, I ran from first to second and bumped heads with Ricky who was trying to catch my ball. I still recall the smack we made. He got a big lump on his forehead. I had nothing. But that afternoon, I threw up three times, and Mom took me to hospital and I was confined for one night for tests.

Too many times, we played dare games — one involved someone taking a dare to do something: walk-through the dark interiors of the empty AudioCasters Studio while one or another or all of us made ghostly whoo-ing noises. Another time, the challenge was balancing on a high ledge or swinging like a monkey on dangerously high fire-escape bars across an air well. Yet another time, we stole a cigarette from her older brother and she and I fled to the forbidden grove of banana trees by the creek to try to smoke them. We weren’t very successful.

Chary and I also indulged in a little adolescent creative writing. We composed a fake love-letter on stationary, dousing it with her brother’s cologne and writing it in what we felt was a male hand. We then left it for my family’s then household helper, a part-time student at PWU named Lita. We signed it with the name “Carding” — one of the carpenters whom we knew who was doing construction work on the premises. On his behalf, we professed his fictional love for her, telling her how he wanted to kiss her and touch her in places she had never been touched. When she received the letter, she said she was filled with rage and ran off to confront the poor guy — calling him every filthy name in the book and rushing at him to pull his hair and scratch his face. We knew at once we had gone too far, and it became my horrid job to tell her that we had played a cruel prank on them both.

I cried with shame when she reluctantly forgave me. I remember how calm she was, and how she told me with a little too much gusto what she had done to Carding. She nearly scratched his eyes out, she said, and he even got a wound on his cheek that bled. To this day, I’m not certain how true this story is. I never saw this myself, you see. It occurs to me now that it is possible she knew all along that the letter was a fake, and perhaps she had told a tale and played a prank on us as well. It served us right.

And then there was another time that we were just plain stupid. Some of us had taken to hanging out in that open air-well space between the two sections of the L-shaped building. It was where the children’s assorted bikes, go-carts and scooters were kept, and there were also steel ladders that served as fire-escapes from the different flats, and there was one particularly alluring steel bar lattice that stretched across the two buildings, high above our heads.

Some of us had made a thrilling game of using this steel bar lattice in the air well as a set of monkey bars. The game involved your climbing the outdoor fire escape within reach from the ground level up to the second level, and then making your way along the side of the building in what was essentially the planter-box. Then, feet planted firmly on the ledge, you would stretch your arms, reach for the steel bars and start swinging your body like a monkey across a 12-foot drop to the concrete ground, about four feet, till you made it to the open staircase on the other building that served as the foyer to one of the second floor studio efficiencies.

Now, even if you are light and nimble, this was no easy feat, and already, I knew that my fear of heights combined with my weak upper body strength and chunky body weight would fail me about a foot into the exercise. So I refrained from the acrobatics. But three of us were fit and wily monkeys, always up for a dare, and one afternoon, we all watched them from ground level, open-mouthed as first one, then another made it safely to the other side.

We all sighed with relief, cognizant of how closely we were dicing with danger. Then the third one started off. What happened after that I do not know to this day. Maybe he suddenly became aware of the great peril in the height beneath him. Perhaps he had a sudden instant of uncertainty that stopped him in his tracks. Whatever it was — he stopped short and there he hung, hands on the bars…feet still lightly swinging in the air.

“Help!” he croaked.

Someone ran for an adult but could not find one. The rest of us cleared the floor of the killer bicycles and scooters that would surely maim him if he were to fall. We knew he was running out of time. All of us could feel his sweaty hands on the bars as though they were our own. Finally, we called Chary — the tallest of all of us — from her apartment. We then pushed one large go-cart and she stood on, she could just grab his feet. All of us then supported her with our bodies so essentially, our playmate was able to jimmy down on her — supported by the rest of us. He fell, but softly upon all of us…and in the miracle of youth, no one was seriously hurt. All was well that ended well.

But the game I recall that frightened me most is how we made a huge seesaw with a massive wood beam with a steel rod poking out at the end. It was already lying across a pile of concrete hollow blocks, in the window-less and wall-less second floor apartment that was really just a construction site, again, a forbidden zone that we explored without our parents’ knowledge. But it took three of us to fix that beam just so in a way that would allow one person to sit and hold that steel rod while the others carefully applied our weight on the other side, holding the whole thing steady as though we ourselves were a fulcrum, and guiding that person up and down in an awesome ride.

Oh we thought ourselves so clever, assembling that makeshift seesaw. A number of us had a few great rides and initially it worked very well. “What fun this is!” we said to each other, proud at having invented new play. When we told one of our other playmates, she was so eager to sit astride that giant see-saw and we were so eager to show it to her, we plump forgot to tell her to cover the ugly, poking-out-end of that rusty steel rod with both hands while she “see-sawed”. She sat and said, “Go!” and we gave that beam some energetic weight and zoom, up she flew. So startling and so quick was the action, her head jerked back and then forward and bang— her face went right into the steel rod. We found out later she could have very nearly lost an eye, she needed stitches and to this day, she may still have that scar slightly off the bridge of her nose.

I still feel a strong tremor of panic and fear, regret and guilt, when I remember how she cried out, how the blood dripped down her face. One of us sprang to tell an adult, and within minutes it seemed though I now doubt how it could be that fast, she was rushed by her parents to the emergency room at the nearby UERM on Aurora.

I felt bad that they didn’t have time to scold me, the oldest in the group at the time, and that my parents weren’t yet home from work and I had to wait till they came home to tell them. For a while after the car left, those of us left behind stood around, accusing each other, blaming each other. Sisters cried. Cousins scolded. As for my cousins, they soon fled back to 94, and none of them showed their faces at the compound for a full week, until it was clear that our injured playmate was all right, and healing nicely. Sooner than you thought possible, we were all back on the street, playing our games, like nothing horrible had ever happened.

This is, after all, the way it is for children, if you remember.

Lessons for growing up
Towards the end of that four-year period, I recall we all started to change a little bit, playing less, talking more. We each had other activities — music lessons, tutoring and school extra-curriculars. Play was no longer daily, only every now and then, when there were enough of us to make two teams. But in place of that were other games, this time of discovery. Slow and sudden epiphanies were coming upon us — realizations that some of us were looking forward to other games, learning a few of the boy-and-girl rituals that we would perfect as we moved into adolescence proper.

And soon, soon enough, there was talk of some of the families moving out for good. In the middle of that final summer, some of the kids were making a trip to the US. When they returned to 4th Street, my family would be gone forever from 97-C. Even then, I knew it was the end. Things would never be the same again. The thing is, I think we all knew it, though none of us had the words to express it. Chary was in high school with more important concerns. Ronna came home from some summer camp in Bacolod, seeming to have leap-frogged into the teenage years with a bang, right over me. Once we were gone, Jon and Mimi, still living in Broadway, would no longer come over to play. And the next year, they too moved away from 4th Street to their newly-built house in Antipolo.

“You’ll see each other again, and get together.” My mom said, and my 12-year-old self looked at her like she was crazy. The idea of getting together somewhere else — not on 4th Street was too wild, too strange, and in fact, downright inconceivable. No, once we moved out, it would be the end. There was no looking back. It was my first taste of bittersweet heartache in the mute wordless melancholy that we had come to the end of an era.

A year or so later, we heard from mutual friends that Ricky and Donnie had moved to their house in White Plains and that Ronna, Wendy and Nina had moved to a bigger house one street over from 4th Street. We knew where we all were; that was enough.

The next time my sister and I saw Ronna, Ricky and Donnie, we were all in college at the Ateneo — I was a senior, Ronna was a junior, Ricky, Donnie and my sister Lara were freshmen.

In the halls, we smiled and we nodded at each other, a sign of recognition, acknowledgement for those happy childhood days we spent. Sometimes, we might sit and chat for a bit, but never for very long. It was not that we were unfriendly to each other, we just had nothing much to talk about. By this time, we all had our own friends. All the games we used to play were just memories from different selves lifetimes ago. None of us even lived on 4th Street anymore.

And now here we all are, older and wiser and, most of us past 40. We are scattered all over the globe, many of us with families of our own — but our husbands and wives and our children know the stories of the 4th Street gang. We tend to wax nostalgic about them. And aren’t we so much better now at expressing the great affection we share for those long ago 4th Street days?

“Wasn’t our childhood the greatest?” or “Didn’t we have the best time ever?” we say to each other across our Facebook profile pages. On the rare occasions that we do run into each other face to face, we rush with mirthful glee to introduce each other to spouses and children — “This is my neighborhood playmate!” we say or “We used to play all day long every day!”

Our family members are a little taken aback at our eagerness, our energy and enthusiasm for that “way-back-when” time. We try to catch up in those quick moments — where is so-and-so now? Is so-and-so-married? How many kids do they have? And inevitably, we ask each other, “Who is living on 4th Street now?” “How does it look, now?” And someone will report that this or that is no longer there or that it looks so different now, small and sad. And we sigh and say again… “But wasn’t it just the best?” …still filled with so much joy at the mere memory.

I think we know what it sounds like to others, but it isn’t the years that have past combined with wistful memory that’s rendered this chapter during which we all lived on 4th Street so wonderful and so idyllic. We all know it in our hearts: it’s just the plain and simple truth.

Do you want to share a story about where you used to live in Metro Manila? Post your article on http://manila.coconuts.co/contribute or send us an email at manila@coconuts.co with ‘I lived here’ in the subject title.

MORE ‘I LIVED HERE’ ESSAYS
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East Capitol Drive, Barrio Kapitolyo, Pasig City by Maya Calica
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20 A Fernando St, Marulas, Valenzuela City by Tina Gomez
28 San Ignacio St, Barrio Kapitolyo, Pasig City by Cindy Karingal 



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