Finding Luck in Sagada

It was the last days of summer, and a cloud of gloom followed my mother wherever she went. We had just come home to her, my sister and I, from Abu Dhabi, heavy hearts lifted by the sight of each other. I had said that we should go to Sagada, a little resort town in the Mountain Province, where I had been to a handful of times (most without my mother knowing, but that is another story). Cities take their toll, and we had wanted to go somewhere far away, together, to find some happiness.

Chunky the death moth (named such because of this author's ignorance regarding the
 true names of moths) overseeing the goings-on of the Kanip-Aw Lodge common room.

We lived in a lodge overlooking the cliffs, and at night the common room fluttered with moths. When I had been little, on the nights we spent by the sea, I would attempt to kill moths for flying too near. "Don't!" said my mother then, "moths carry good luck." And I had taken care to never harm moths since then. Now I wonder if this is related to the myth of butterflies being souls of the dead. I wonder if butterflies and moths are, instead, messengers.

chos.

This one saw us off as we set for a Kiltepan sunrise

Anyway. We had nothing but good fortune, in Sagada. 

on volunteering, and weekends with the children

There are no pictures today, not for this post. At the orientation, we had been cautioned against taking pictures--not forbidden, but to exercise restraint, for the children's parents feared their exploitation. Perhaps this is a wise decision. Dolphin, who we looked to as leader, and her co-officers took pictures of hands, knees, and the art: shapes cut out with trembling fingers, restrained fingers, weak fingers, but with keen eyes and strong hearts, paint lines wobbly but determined. They seldom took pictures of faces, even then they never put names, or afflictions.

The first boy I worked with put little clay feet on his little clay monkey, and fashioned a harness for it so that it could sit on his windowsill. He did all of this, with one hand, the other in a sling. At the orientation we were taught not to spoil them, we were taught to let them do some things on their own. All I taught the first boy I worked with, was how to roll the clay into various shapes one-handedly, against flat surfaces. The rest he did on his own, a menagerie of little clay creatures keeping him company by his bed by the window.

At another hospital, we made puppets, at first only with a single boy, who was the only one bold and energetic enough at the time to come with these strangers to the playroom for a workshop. He knew exactly what he wanted his puppet to look like, adored the colors yellow and blue, and when more children came, he decided that his puppet should have a crown, so that it could be prince to another girl's princess. He would make another puppet, a rockstar puppet, with a guitar and a microphone, but soon his mind took him elsewhere, and he cut out capes that moved in the wind for his puppets and made them battle for the hand of the princess.

The only teenager in the group spoke very little, hauntingly drawn and silent. At the orientation, we were warned that the children will most likely be lethargic, some would not want to participate at all. At a more recent session, one boy indicated that he did not want to paint, but when we were about to leave, remained the only child painting. The colors these children came up with, mixing oil paint with poster paint, tiny rivers of color amid larger swirls of other colors, courageous with their blues and browns and reds.

 This silent girl, the only teenager from the puppet group, sat very still, never looking up even when asked. Soon, the other children started making flowers. I asked her if she wanted to learn how to make flowers from paper, and she defiantly said that she already knew how to, and slowly, she showed us, taught us.

"Most times," we were told at the orientation, "it ends up that the children teach us, instead of us teaching them."