Posted by Rio S.
It’s 2 AM and I can’t sleep. It’s too damned hot, even with all my windows thrown open and with the fan going full blast. I hate summer. It’s only March 4 today. Summer should only be rearing its scalding head at me, but it looks like it decided to put in an early appearance this year.
I hate summer mainly because of two things: the blasted heat that seems to like working hand in hand with my insomnia like tonight; and the blasted warm air that causes my lungs to go on strike. (Let me tell you something, asthma is more of a bitch during summer; some nights I have to sleep sitting up on a baking night so I don’t wake up at 4 in the morning gasping for air.)
Back when I didn’t have asthma (I got asthma only three or four years back), I rather liked summer. I didn’t do so bad in school and never had to spend a day in summer class. I used to spend my summers in Bulacan where there were always rivers to swim in, fields to fly kites in, and ponds to catch fish from. Back then, I didn’t hate the heat so much; I left it to the adults to worry about how sweaty I got or how dark my skin became.
See what summer has gotten me doing now? It has got me remembering.
I guess everybody has summer memories; it’d be hard not to have any as there’s a summer every year. I don’t remember all of my 25 summers (this is my 26th), though I do remember the one when I woke up because of the heat.
Brownouts (power outages) were frequent – or at least, they were a common nuisance – back in 1997. If the summer heat is hell, then the summer heat without the benefit of an electric fan is hell with fangs on.
I had just come home from Bulacan that day (by the time I was 14, I was allowed to go from Las Pinas to Bulacan and vice versa by myself) and I was tired from the two hour commute. I was dismayed to find that there was no electricity and thought that I should’ve spent the night at my fussy aunts’.
As what’s done is done, I grabbed a candle and an old medicine bottle and marched into my room. My dad opened the door as I was getting ready for bed. “Blow out the candle before you go to sleep,” he reminded his only daughter who didn’t like sleeping in the dark. “And close that window, you don’t want to be peppered with mosquito bites tomorrow.”
I protested about the single open window. I could live with mosquito bites far better than I could live with heatstroke. We said good night and my father locked my door for me.
I don’t remember what time I woke up with a start that night, but I do remember waking up to searing heat and bright light. In a second, I realized what was going on. The spot on the bed just beside my feet was on fire.
Disbelief must’ve seized me for a while, but I did manage to move and wake my father and brother sleeping in their respective bedrooms.
I don’t remember much of the scuffle that went on as we tried to put the fire out. In our household, no electricity meant that there was no running water either – no electric pump.
I slipped on the rubber slippers I could find, ran to the guard house, and screamed at the person on duty to please call the fire department. That took a few minutes, as the person in charge seemed unable to comprehend what I was saying.
As soon as I was sure that they had placed a call to the fire department, I ran back to the house. My father and brother were already outside, screaming desperately what I never imagined to hear in real life: Tulong, mga kapitbahay! Sunog! (Help! Our house is on fire!)
Loud bangs filled the air; the glass windows were exploding from the intense heat. Later, we found out that the reason nobody came to help was because they mistook the windows shattering for gunfire.
In a few minutes, standing ten meters away from the house was impossible; the heat seemed to be an invisible wall pushing us back. We watched as the fire consumed the house and waited for the firemen to come. And waited and waited. Twenty or so calls and forty-five minutes later, they arrived. A few minutes was all it took to put the fire out; it had run out of fuel and by then it was no match for the high pressure water.
Morning came and we were asked to go to the fire station to file the report. The person behind the typewriter asked me, “Whose fault was it?”
“Mine,” I answered, recounting how I forgot to put the candle out.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “If that window in your room had been closed, you would have all died, or at the very least, you wouldn’t be sitting there.” He explained how smoke killed faster than fire did and some other things.
And I remember staring at my mismatched rubber slippers and not feeling lucky at all.
