Mara Clara

I look back to the days of my early childhood with fondness and nostalgia.

Everything was simple then.

Our idea of fun was to make “cakes” out of fallen banana shrubs, “cooking oil” from mixing gumamela flower with water from my grandfather’s well, and “rice” from ipil-ipil leaves.

Back then, Barangay Calawisan in Lapu-Lapu City had several green spaces, where we used to forage for wild berries and moved around with caution as there were monitor lizards hiding under coral stones, which formed into mini-caves.

Upon waking up in the late afternoon, after a two-hour nap that my grandparents called a “siesta,” I hurried to the common play area where my cousins and neighbors gather to play just about anything; from hide-and-seek to tubig-tubig (patintero), Chinese garter and biko-biko (piko in Filipino or the Philippine variation of hopscotch).

I loved those activities even though I was not the sporty type, which, I think, was a disappointment to my father given the fact that I was named after a tennis player.

But my most favorite “game” was role-playing.

What I lacked in physical prowess, I tried to make up with what I believed then was my skill in drama. I was able to cry on cue, especially when an older cousin or playmate, who acted as director, would shout, “Hilak, syagit, nga-ab kay nasunog inyong balay ug wala na mo’y mapuy-an!
(Cry, scream, wail because your house was gutted down by fire and you have nowhere to live.)

During those times, we were fans of the television drama shows, Anna Luna and then later, Mara Clara.

Like Anna Luna, I played the role of the unwanted girl who lived with her estranged grandmother after a tragic sea accident separated “me” from my mother. I also played Mara, the role that catapulted Judy Ann Santos’ career to stardom. I used to imagine where the cameras were placed. I was so into the role that I would cry — no, sob — thinking about my misfortune as Mara, a child unloved by Gary, the man whom she thought was her father.

I was so good at playing the roles of Anna Luna and Mara that even our neighbors would stop and watch me perform. I loved the attention! I failed miserably at Chinese garter but my six-year-old self found redemption in mimicking the way Judy Ann Santos cried.

My role-playing/acting career took off in our neighborhood that my playmate, Ramon and I thought that it was time to create our own scripts. It was never written; the plot was in our heads with my grandmother’s bougainvillea plants as the witnesses.

For the Bisaya readers of this column, I am not certain if you have done this but when my playmates and I did role-playing before, the kontrabidas were rich and spoke in Filipino.

During those years, we thought that those who speak Filipino are superior than us. To reach Manila, via boat, was seen as a luxury; an impossible dream even. In my lenses as a child, the aunt or uncle who returned home from Manila were considered “war heroes,” bringing with them tales of the big malls and the crowded streets.

We used to jut down the Filipino lines uttered by the telenovela villains, memorized those lines, and infused them in our “play.”

I cried buckets of tears, when Clara told Mara: “Inagaw mo ang attention nila dahil naiingit ka!”

I pictured myself as the lowly Mara, with my head bowed and eyes on the floor, while Clara screamed: “Wag na wag kang magdadala ng mga gamit dito na hindi sa iyo!”

But my ultimate favorite was: “Amoy pusali! Basura! Kanal!”

Imagine those lines on repeat every day for the next two weeks. Or until such time we heard new lines,
which were so impactful, that they warranted a change in our “script.”

In recent years, when asked by friends and business acquaintances about how I learned to speak
Filipino, I have one consistent answer.

“Mara Clara taught me.”