Mono, Rosalinda & other memories of San Isidro

I am happiest when I ride my bike. It clears my mind.

- BUM D. TENORIO, JR.

The many hours I spend solo on the road is my me-time. My senses are most vigilant when I am on a saddle.

No destination is near or far to an intrepid spirit that has reconnected again with the pedal. Shooting the breeze is therapy, priceless and precious. The body, mind and soul are nourished, treated to an experience that defines freedom.

It is while biking that I am visited by many memories. Like when I biked to San Isidro last Sunday. The wind brought me there. Perhaps because I wanted to pay homage to the place where my late mother came from.

A small part of my childhood was spent in San Isidro, a barrio in Cabuyao 30 minutes away from my barrio of Gulod. San Isidro, sandwiched by sugarcane fields and ikmo (betel) plantations in the '70s, was the place where my mother was born and raised until my father brought her to Gulod when they got married.

When I was barely six years old, my mother left the asthmatic me to the care of Tita Itang, her eldest sister, in San Isidro because Nanay had to be with my youngest brother Rod, then only a year old, who had to stay for months in a ward at the Philippine General Hospital after a complicated abdominal operation.

My father had to divide his time between being a tenant farmer and delivering goods to the hospital. My two older brothers Ronnie and Gadie were in school. My younger brother Odick was in charge of our home.