“Mommy, why are there people sleeping outside? Don’t they have homes too?”
I remembered myself as a child asking this question, watching the people sleeping on cardboard mats and the others knocking on our car windows holding Sampaguita garlands, their palms waiting for the change they will never get from us.
I stared straight at their tired eyes with my wide-eyed, curious ones. I waited for an answer. Now that I look back at it, they were also waiting.
For change.
The change they will never get from us.
As the vehicle started to accelerate away from them, my mother tapped her fingertips on the steering wheel, contemplating how she’d word it this time.
“They didn’t study hard enough, don’t be like them, okay?” “They didn’t love their parents enough, do you want to end up like them?” “Make sure you get a job in the future, so you won’t be the next one like them.” Were the past attempts to get me to stop asking. How about this time?
“Just ignore them.”
And I listened. I always did listen.
I studied hard enough. I loved my parents. I have a job.
No, I had a job. Unless asking for spare change is a job, I’d consider myself void of the life I had in the past.
I’d consider myself surviving, not living.
Yes. I graduated with cum laude, and loved my parents until they both passed, I used to work an 8-5 job weekdays. Yet I did end up like them. I did end up sleeping on the cardboard mats I used to be so curious about. Here it is, child me, this is what sleeping outside feels like.
By listening to my mother and ignoring them, I never got to listen to the voices that mumbled and outstretched their hands every time you passed them on the sidewalk, or the voices of the children happily playing on the streets that acted as their home too, maybe even happier than those who had homes, or the voices of the same children crying, aching from hunger and cold in the night.
I became one of the people who knocked on car windows, holding sampaguita garlands or cleaning rags; I became what I was told to just ignore in the past.
But I couldn’t ignore these voices anymore. I couldn’t ignore them, now that I am one of them.
As I sat in a corner with an open, empty palm, somebody dropped spare change in my hand.
But it will never be enough for a change.
