DAYBREAK

DURING a brief vacation in my hometown in Ilocos early this month, I forced myself to wake up before light just to see the familiar panorama of dawn in the barrio. Though I was sluggish after an eight-hour trip from Manila a day before, I braved the chilly air to watch the yellow strands of light above the mountain range to the east. I observed the breaking sun as if I had not seen it in so many years.

It’s easy to fall in love with the dawn. I always do. I would have my eyes transfixed to the radiating pink and faintly golden plumage of daybreak, like a beauteous lady smiling enticingly at you, or with rosy arms outstretched for a motherly embrace, dispelling any restlessness and grogginess of your tired soul.

It’s the kind of affection you miss so much, but sleepless nights and hectic obligations make you forget about her though. But the moment you try to reach her by the path of the night, you look east again and you’d find her as before.

There’s always this solemnity of her presence, when only the light moves, slowly from gray of a withering night to streaks of orange, and yellow and shaft of silver breaking from the clouds. And I can only have such lingering moment when I was in our old place in Nanguneg. Unlike in my house in a subdivision in Bulacan, where my view of the east is blocked by row of houses on elevated ground across the street, our house in the barrio would give me a clear view of that Homeric “rosy-fingered dawn.” 


So this time I had another brief glimpse into how our old place would come alive with a soft lyrical movement. Just after daybreak, the crowing of the roosters began to fade, as if on cue for the entrance of the sweet chirping of birds in the foliage, backed up by the rattle of animal carts on the side roads, transporting busy farmers to the field. Chickens working early to find morsel to peck. A lazy cat stirring on a window ledge. The cool air drifting with rustic sweetness, and a soft scent of dried leaves burning nearby.

My mother was up well early, moving around in the kitchen and setting the pot on the stove for the family breakfast. The earthen stove was already alive with radiant embers when I joined my father for a cup of steaming coffee. There was always plenty to talk about. But lately it’s about my bar exams, my plans after I resigned from my present work, how’s the kids coping up, and my lethargic professional career.

It was my late grandfather who trained me, with my siblings and cousins, to become early riser even on a weekend. With him I validated the belief of old folks that good things will surely happen if you’re up at dawn and work hard every day. An echo of Ruskin’s “Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life.” For old folks, it’s never been good for a person to be hit by shaft of sunlight while still snoring in bed.

While growing up in the barrio, the familiar noise made by the farmers as they prepared for work in the field would usually wake me up. On a weekend, just after getting up from bed, I would go with my brothers to our grandfather’s yard just across the street, and joined the old man for a heavy work ahead—planting or weeding or harvesting produce of the soil. We moved to the field and braved the dew-drenched morning. We had to complete our task while the sun was not yet hot.

My grandmother, or any of our aunts or female cousins, would bring us a basket of breakfast just as soon as the sun was just over the rim of the mountains. We would have newly steamed rice and a viand that would usually consist of steamed camote tops or inihaw na talong, with bagoong garnished with fresh onion and sliced tomato for a dip, fried dried fish or smoked fish, tinola or jumping salad (shrimp served raw or still jumping). The smoothness of dawn, a cup of hot coffee, and such sumptuous breakfast under a camachile tree gave me a lot of motivation to work. After our task was done, it’s all play for us boys.

A poem I wrote during my freshman year in a university in Vigan would speak about the beauty of a breaking dawn, addressing the daybreak as Aurora (Greek goddess of dawn). Here’s just to show how I’ve been smitten by the charm of grand lady of dawn.

I am also reminded now of the lessons about the sunrise. It’s always the beginning of everything, where anything can happen after that. A time when the world is peaceful and full of promise. And when I started looking at the eastern sky at twilight with an eager eye, it’s always the start of a new day that gets me excited for all that is to come, reminding me to expect another new day for every day of my life.

I intended my latest homecoming as an opportunity to relax, and now it gives me another beginning. And I must have this faith that is likened to a bird, to borrow a line from Tagore, that sings while it is still dark.

I only remember these things now. Back in Bulacan, it’s a rare thing for me to see the breaking dawn again.