miss our old house

I miss our old house in Malabon where I grew up. I remember we were neighbors with my aunt and uncle and my grandma, we called her nanay, lived with them. That’s me on the photo above, second girl from the left, my two cousins beside me and my sister on the far right. The photo was taken from our front yard and my cousins’ house was on the right side. I also have two more cousins who are boys who were not on the photo.

Nanay was very strict when it comes to our playmates and we weren’t allowed to play on the street so my sister, cousins and I were stuck with each other. Good thing we had this huge backyard where we played piko, chinese garter, and the pinoy kids’ version of football where you will roll the ball (like in bowling) then the kid on the other side would kick it and then the roller would run around the diamond while the kicker chased the ball, it’s more like baseball actually. And we have a gate at our backyard leading to my cousins’ backyard so we didn’t to go out anymore. It’s just sad that we didn’t really had childhood playmates but we really had a lot of fun playing with each other. I remember, also when it’s raining, we would go to the backyard and ran from one end and slide on the grass until we reach the other end. And we wouldn’t stop until it gets really muddy.

Malabon is known for being flooded when the tide is high and almost every household there owns a calendar with high tide schedules. Our subdivision was surrounded by a river and the streets got flooded whenever the tide was high. I remember my uncle made us a boat so we could paddle around our street whenever there was flood then we would catch fish (guppies) using dust pans. We then would put them in a basin and leave them there for a couple of days. Sometimes we would catch a preggy fish then we would just find baby guppies on the basin the next day. It was really fun!

In our garage, my dad has a small garden where the ground was filled with small pebbles. We would carve small streets from the pebbles and create a small village. Then we would build our own lego houses and cars and play there for hours. When it’s raining, we would play market inside the house. We would get different kinds of leaves from my dad’s garden and pretend they’re vegetables. Then my sister would cut newspapers and write denominations on it and used it as our play money.

I remember also my cousins had a small bahay kubo (nipa hut) in their backyard with a window facing our backyard. Remember those nylon folding beds? We put it on the window of the hut and we used it to slide down to our backyard. Then we would run again to the hut and slide again. Haha!

We really had to be imaginative then since we weren’t allowed to play outside with other kids. It was really memorable and I miss it! Those were the days…

Posted: September 29th, 2007 under Forgotten.