My earliest memory is of crying.
Not just the casual, attention-seeking cry of a child—but the full-bodied wail that echoes through the air and settles deep in the chest like a storm waiting to break. I must have been three or four. My mother had stepped out—where she went, I can't remember—but what I do recall is being left behind with my older siblings. And how I cried.
My eldest brother, eight years older than me, was visibly annoyed. "Crybaby," he muttered, with the exasperation only an older sibling can deliver. It stung. Not the word itself, but the way it made me feel—small, fragile, ridiculous for missing someone I loved.
Another time, I cried for a very different reason. We were playing behind the church, in the convent's garden—a quiet, solemn place shaded by towering trees. Just a block away from our house, yet it felt like a world apart. That day, one of my playmates leapt over my head mid-game, and I broke into tears. Not from pain or fear, but from superstition.
In our culture, there's an old belief that if someone jumps over your head, you'll stop growing. At that age, superstition wasn't silly—it was sacred truth. I remember the echo of my wailing bouncing off the convent walls, mixing with the melancholy hush of the garden. That sound has stayed with me, almost as if the trees themselves absorbed it and have been holding onto it all these years.
And then there was the day we went to the farm to harvest wild guavas. It should have been a sweet memory, a childhood adventure. But the moment took a turn when a pack of dogs began barking and charging toward us. They weren't strays; they belonged to a neighbor who lived nearby. My siblings ran—shrieking, laughing, full of mischief and adrenaline. I, on the other hand, froze. The panic swallowed me whole. I cried, loud and uncontrollably, as if the sound could shield me.
Looking back now, those moments seem small, almost laughable. But to a child, they were everything. And now, I see those very same fears mirrored in my eldest son.
He cries when there's thunder. He clings to the window when his mother's running late from work. He sulks when teased and breaks down if he loses a game. I used to scold him, impatiently brushing aside his fears. Sometimes I even teased him for being soft, blaming it on my wife's side of the family.
What a jerk I was.
Now I realize he's not weak. He's just like I was.
When I raise my voice, when I mock instead of comfort, I wonder: will these moments echo inside him the way mine still echo inside me? Will he remember the words, the tone, the chill of feeling alone with his emotions?
I hope not.
I hope he grows up with stronger memories—ones filled with warmth and understanding. I want to be better. I will be better.
Because in those moments—the boy crying behind the convent, panicking in a guava field, reaching for his mother—I see not only my son, but the beginning of me. These weren't just tears. They were the first expressions of a soul trying to make sense of the world.
They deserve to be remembered.