I remember that as a child I liked watching the clouds drift by or billow into forms and shapes that would grab my whole attention as they wonderfully transform from a dog to a bird, to a car or a plane, to tree or a fruit, to a face or a human figure. Seated alone on the tin roof by the window from the room I share with my brothers, I would be oblivious to the magical hum of my mother’s cooking in the kitchen down below. Instead, I would be transfixed as I see the changing light of the sun on its way to hide behind the placid Lake of Laguna and the mountains of Rizal, painting white clouds into luminous gold, soft pink, or deep and fiery red until the first twinkle of stars in the still blue skies appear.
That tin roof under the endless sky is a special place of unexplainable delight for that young boy that was me! It afforded me countless, amazing experiences of just being there watching the whole scene and unknowingly becoming part of it. There is peace and quiet that would well within. I would be relaxed. My breathing would slow down. I would be stilled! The passage of time is not felt. I would still be seated on the tin roof caressed by soft winds that blows from the green rice fields, but I would also be lifted up and fly with the clouds, and glory and bathe in the glow of the sun’s soft rays. I would be there a small figure on top of the roof, and yet beyond there, too, as my consciousness would grow to embrace the whole scene before me. I would feel one with the rest of creation!
Then, as if waking from a deep slumber I would feel refreshed and energized even after a long day at school. I wouldn’t know how much time I spent there each time nor would I ever care and bother, except that my mother would be calling me and my bothers and sisters for the dinner served early in the evening. It is an experience that I would treasure and would opt to repeat, if and when I got the chance to sit on our house’s tin roof by the window.
It is too bad that we moved away from that house when I was in Grade 2. I would understand later that we were just renting that place while my father was building a new house for his growing family. The new house is in the middle of the town with fire walls at two sides. It is a proper house according to the old folks as it faces the east to catch good luck that shines with the early morning sun. It has a beautiful view of the mountain that towers over the town but has neither an expansive view of the skies, nor of the lake, the mountains of Rizal, and the rice fields. No more tin roof would cradle me. No more sunsets to see. No more cool breeze from the rice fields. No more gazing at the clouds as they drift by. To get a good view of the sky, I would need to hold my face up and see what piece of the blue space I could see between the high roof of houses around the neighborhood and the eastern mountains of the Sierra Madre mountain range.
Still, I am thankful I got the chance to experience the spaceless space on that tin roof, a place of solitude and communing with the divine even when I was too young to understand the whole experience. Yet recalling it has transported me back through space and time to re-experience it again!
