Trees of summer

Summer, ever since I can remember, offers the best time to create perfect memories.  More so when you are young and have nothing but time and curiosity to go with energy bottled up by ten months of school.

When I was young, there was no technology or malls to help me pass away time, or money to buy toys that made playing at home an attractive option.  What I had were excitable limbs and the great outdoors.  When I got tired of playing and running under the sun in the playground or in the open fields, my favorite haven would be atop a tree.

In fact, some of my fondest childhood memories were formed suspended in air, up a tree branch.

I remember spending hours alone in the old santol tree in my folks' backyard in Pangasinan, some 30 feet above the ground, taking my pick of the choicest fruits as large as a baseball, with very sweet and succulent pulpy seeds leaving bits of flesh between my teeth.  I'd devour up to a dozen fruits up the tree. When I had my full, I would simply wedge my body on a sturdy branch and watch birds fly by,  or simply listen as bamboo leaves swirl to the breeze.

It was so peaceful and calm.

One time I remember climbing a guava tree in the early morning after a rainy summer night.  Just when I grabbed a nice yellow-green fruit, my grip and foot hold slipped and I fell to the ground back first, back of the head second, hitting an opportunely located rock.  I still had the fruit in my hand, which I promptly let go when I touched my head with my other hand and found it bloody.  I cried and learned my lesson: Guava tree after rain -- slippery.  I still have a scar to remind me of that split-second flight.

I also remember climbing together with my playmates a very large duhat tree inside Fernando Air Base.  The tree was very generous with its dark, fleshy fruits, covering almost the entire canopy.  Problem was the fruits were often located at branches or twigs that were the slightest.  I remember that to reach those fruits I would drape my body on a branch, wrap my legs around it, and embrace it with one hand as the other  is outstretched to reach the smaller twigs where the duhat fruits were.

When we went down the tree, our bodies would be full of small scratches but we would have big smiles on our faces because we knew our teeth, lips and fingers would soon be stained in black.

I remember climbing many trees: Ka Norma's massive mango tree, our ant-infested langka, the Bonilla's Macopa, my relative's chico, a wild black berry tree inside the military base, and countless other trees whose names I could no longer remember.  I climbed them all and went down with memories I still carry today.

Now that I'm much older and can't afford to be seen climbing trees if I feel like doing so, life has become more complicated.  There are now goals to reach and plans to make, bills to pay and people relying on you to pay theirs, plus personal problems and issues to straighten out.

Today, as I was atop my zipline perch at El Grande Resort, I can see from afar, beyond the wall of the resort a tree with about a dozen kids either swinging on its flimsy branches or on the ground, sitting on the roots, or sprawled on the dusty earth.

I can tell from the small barong-barongs near the tree that these children have no technology, no toys, or money to go to the mall to pass away their summer time.

But they have their tree and I know that they are perfectly happy, in the middle of creating memories.


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