SERENDIPITY... NOEL

“I would like to be an architect, a planner, a builder of buildings, highways and bridges.” Never during my childhood life did I dream of becoming a teacher. I don’t have the blood of an educator either. Yet, I can still recall my childhood days in our remote barrio in Pinagbadilan, Libon, Albay when my playmates and I played “titser-titseran” in variation to the usual “bahay-bahayan” and hide-and-seek. I used to play the role of a teacher since I was the most “knowledgeable” of them all. And as the most intelligent among my playmates and cousins, I often said, “I would like to be an architect someday, so I can build my family a beautiful house.” I was born from a poor farmer’s family, the youngest in the brood of 14. My father’s enthusiasm for sending his children to school diminished when my oldest sister eloped with her boyfriend right after her high school graduation. Life in our barrio was a hand-to-mouth existence then; so out of depression, my father did not allow my remainin...