this is the sound of wheezing

I remember. When I was a kid, weekends were about waking up early. Weekends were about waking up early and bothering the maids as they went about their morning chores. I particularly liked spraying Pledge. There was something about the lemon-y smell. The satisfying sound of spurting. I never wiped the stuff. I thought the rag icky. But spraying was my job. I also liked tinkering with glass cleaner. Outside, I liked playing with the walis tingting. I used to pull its sticks out and run around our garden chasing my younger siblings (sometimes my older brother) and screaming that the walis had just been used to sweep away dog shit.

But, wait, Pledge.

I Pledged my tables the other day. It was like melancholy and droopy-eyed nostalgia were looking over my hunched shoulders as I smoothed my rag across the table's smooth surface--smooth, gleaming surface, mind you; I Pledge like a dream. It made me think of muggy mornings back in our old house in Antipolo. It made me think of the child that I was before life got in the way. It made me think of my father. Of how he smelled freshly bathed. That staunchly clean masculine smell. Of his white polo shirts. The way he used to flex his biceps with me and my brother hanging on to his upper arm (ah, what skinny children we used to be). It made me think of the games my brother and I used to play. Whenever our yaya would call us to bath time, we always made a production out of our sojourn to The Bathroom. We'd lie on the floor and roll like elongated tires. Or we would stretch our arms wide and spin around and around until we were just incoherent with dizziness. I remember how every time my parents got home from work, my brother and I would run outside and climb onto the gates while the maids swung them open to let their car in. I remember how sometimes before my parents would leave for work, they'd take me and my brother into their car for "one round", which was basically a drive around the rotunda in front of the subdivision's clubhouse. Sometimes, if they had enough time, they'd give us two rounds.

It's so weird. I'm feeling so weird. Sometimes. Sometimes I just miss my family, I guess.