"Where do you get your inspiration for your stories?" I am often asked in my book talks.
“From everything and anything,” I reply. The answer is incorrect —and a cop out. You see, book talks are hurried affairs; time isn’t a luxury. But in a post, well, time never slips by unnoticed; you keep clicking and it keeps coming back.
There are a thousand and one answers to that question. But let me give one now by telling a story.
Pearlie, my youngest niece, was in her mother's womb when her family migrated to Australia. Strictly speaking, there is nothing Filipino about Pearlie—now 17—except her blood. Aussie food, Aussie accent, Aussie school, Aussie nationality, and Aussie friends. Aussie Pearlie (pronounced Puh-lie in Aussieland)!
When Puh-lie was 10, her dad (my brother Earl) flew in his whole family back to the Philippines for a visit. That was my first time to meet her—she with a pair of big eyes that became even bigger when she saw things we locals consider inconsequential, if not boring.
“Oooooh, coooool!” her Aussie tongue would drawl. And she would follow that melodic phrase with questions upon questions. I’d have to dig from a part of me, which I hardly visit, to explain. Pray tell, what’s so cool about “dirty” ice cream, jeepney, cow-drawn carts, rice fields, trees, and daing?!
But through her eyes, my own jaundiced pair saw things as though I held a magnifying glass over a 20-20 vision. I saw my country up close for the first time and what it has to offer—from smoggy Manila to dusty Umingan, where her dad and I grew up.
For years I had not paid attention to the stately trees that lined our highways and the vast rice fields dotted with scarecrows, teeming with birds, as we traveled north of Manila. I had ignored the charm of the jeepney, painted in gay abandon with colorful folk art, curtained with little bells and tassels, and decked up front with hordes of silver horses.
And the sorbetero! The image that flashed in my mind as Puh-lie said “Cooool!” was that of a little girl excitedly waiting for the tinny ringing of the dirty-ice-cream man.
Another image was that of the same little girl urging her dad to buy a small bamboo chair from the caravan of oxen pulling wood-and-rattan carriages overflowing with native arts and crafts. And on the little girl’s face I saw my own.
Being with Pearlie not only walked me down memory lane but down the path that led me home.
The impact of the Puh-lie experience touched and taught me so much that I decided to share it—two years later. The joys of and from the ordinary, I learned, should not be diminished nor clouded by cynicism that comes with adulthood.
About this time I had already started a series called "Oh Mateo!" Its hero is an eight-year-old boy, Mateo, who has no mother, and is being raised almost single-handedly by his father, a farmer. I say ‘almost’ because Teo is doted on by the five old ladies (sisters) who own the farm and who love Teo like a real grandson. Although not through a family tree or bloodline, they're Teo's lolas, period.
Mateo’s small eyes are a perfect foil for Puh-lie’s big ones, I mused. A poor man’s son, who has never seen any place other than his little town, Teo’s life is irreversibly changed one day when Puh-lie arrives from abroad where she lives.
She sees texture and shape (and beauty!) in every rural sight, from snorting pigs to a sputtering jeepney—looked down upon by many of us who have seen the world.
(More on Puh-lie in my next post)
Being with Pearlie not only walked me down memory lane but down the path that led me home.
The impact of the Puh-lie experience touched and taught me so much that I decided to share it—two years later. The joys of and from the ordinary, I learned, should not be diminished nor clouded by cynicism that comes with adulthood.
About this time I had already started a series called "Oh Mateo!" Its hero is an eight-year-old boy, Mateo, who has no mother, and is being raised almost single-handedly by his father, a farmer. I say ‘almost’ because Teo is doted on by the five old ladies (sisters) who own the farm and who love Teo like a real grandson. Although not through a family tree or bloodline, they're Teo's lolas, period.
Mateo’s small eyes are a perfect foil for Puh-lie’s big ones, I mused. A poor man’s son, who has never seen any place other than his little town, Teo’s life is irreversibly changed one day when Puh-lie arrives from abroad where she lives.
This gave birth to this book:
“She sees more things because she has big eyes!” Teo prematurely concludes in the book. But soon he realizes that eyes, no matter what size, see the wonders of God’s grace. “Even if my eyes are small, I can see the same things her big eyes can see,” he ends the story.
Here is a page from the book, Big Eyes, Small Eyes (illustrated by Beth Parrocha-Doctolero and pubished by Hiyas of OMF Lit) showing Teo and Pearlie; and meet Puh-lie, my niece, the young girl who inspired it.
(More on Puh-lie in my next post)
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