I may not have that fair face, but I am a Sunday child.

Forty-something years ago, in wee hours of a Sunday morning, my mother had a 10-pounder.  I was born from an unfortunate situation of my parents who were in dire need to uproot themselves from the very place they called home since their childhood.

Most of my siblings were born and grew up in the same hometown.  So, growing up in a very different environ caused havoc to some of my older siblings–unable to see the thin line between living and leaving.

On the other hand, I did not realize the difference between us and them (the older siblings) even they kept teasing me and the two other younger siblings “Moros”.

I remembered how I was schooled by my older siblings about the sun, the moon, the stars… and why the sky is way up high. I’ve learned how greed can cause you hunger and misery from the story of the monkey and the turtle.   I even learned the eye-flipping beginning of the pineapple.

Everything changed when all of us were in school and oh, when my father had to die too soon.  I do not know if school made my older siblings’ heads crazy or they just liked school too much that some of them messed-up.

BUT, I am thankful I have all my older siblings to look up to as reference to where I can and/or cannot set my foot onto.  What I am and where I am now, I owe it to my mother and my older siblings.

Like Pina, the girl in the pineapple story, I opened all my thousand eyes and saw all the possibilities and opportunities in front of me.  I treaded all the hardships growing up, succumb to it and learned from it.

I am not that little girl anymore who spent all day long dancing around that humungous school bell just to avoid my first grade teacher.  Now,  I can buy a pineapple in any form!

G.

“Monday’s child is fair of face, 

Tuesday’s child is full of grace, 

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go, 

Friday’s child is loving and giving, 

Saturday’s child works hard for a living, 

But a child that is born on the Sabbath day 

Is blithe and bonny, good and gay.”