Uprooted from their native place, my parents lived far from relatives. Up to that time, they had visited Carmen, Bohol only two or three times since they migrated to Mindanao in 1946. During their second homecoming, sometime in 1952, they brought with them their three children – infant Ediltrudes, Silvestre and me. We stayed at the house of our mother’s parents whose faces I can no longer remember. There were other people in the house and I have a vague recollection of my mother’s sister Romualda and her daughter Rita. Romualda was a deaf-mute and Rita was born out of wedlock.
That homecoming was unforgettable because of my first and only encounter with a typhoon. It was a terrifying experience for me, then only six years old. With my face drenched by the heavy downpour, I struggled to breathe as we stepped out of the house and retreated to the bamboo grove. A blanket spread above us by tying its four corners to the bamboo canes sheltered us from the heavy downpour as we huddled tightly to share body heat. The pliant bamboos, hissing and undulating with the strong winds, remained rooted to the soaked earth, defiant of the onslaught of the typhoon. We stayed in the bamboo grove for the rest of the day and the night that followed. As the typhoon waned on the second day, we returned to the house. The house was a wreck but erect, its round timber posts remained rooted on the ground. The slanting bamboo poles that reinforced and propped the building had prevented the house from pitching over. Inside, I can see the sky since most of the roofing was gone; the remaining cogon grass that adamantly clang to the bamboo slats were in tatters. Half of the amakan wall was gone; the woven bamboo splits were rift off and flown away and scattered at the rice paddies. The brush of the typhoon flattened the rice crop, heavy with ripening grains, to the ground. It took many days for the adult members of the family to repair the house.
