Although I insist my childhood was happy one, it was shot through with unremitting poverty. My mom had great big ideas. She always had a yearning that someday we'll have a better house and things will get better. My mom and dad wanted to rise above the past and break the chain of financial struggle that they have from both of the family they came from - and always vowed to send us to a "good school" - but there were simply wasn't money. My dad was struggling just to put food on the table and I remember mom selling christmass decors and stuffed toys to help at that time.
We live in a small house made of a scarp plywood donated to us by neighbors, and some galvanized iron roofs that came from nowhere during typhoons. I remember mother would save 6 pesos from me father's salary when he went to Saudi Arabia to work as a driver. She saves that 6 pesos every payout and buys a brick one by one I was five years old and sometimes I imagine how many PomPoms snack food is that going to be from Manang Beth's sari-sari strore that time. As the years past, bit by bit our house started to look like a real one. In 1995 we have a 150 sq meter of house made of real roof and brick walls with proper windows too. We spent those years as a family, bouncing along the poverty line. That experience still haunts me today and drives me on.
