Fields of bariri

Today we went to the old barrio of my parents and great forebears. I got a sense of deja vu as memories of years long gone flooded my mind. More so as I heard my sister narrated to my daughters the experiences we had when we as kids romped accross the fields as a short cut to the house of our grandparents. Passing this way was a shorter route. But not necessarily a shorter length of time. Because along this way we bathed in shallow pools we fancied, and climbed guavas or lomboy or any tree laden with fruits, and followed the scent of ripe wild pineapples under the clamps of bamboos. With all these activities, we reached our grandparents house just before the sun set. And no one worried that we could be victimized by mad dogs, drug addicts or sex maniacs. Those times, our only worry was if we met an aswang.

The setting was the same. The place hardly changed at all since the time we passed here when we were kids. Yes, it hardly changed especially after I saw the hills strewn with bariri.

'This is called a bariri,' I told the kids referring to the stalks of grass bearing the seeds. 'The bariri gets pinned like needles to the pants or the hemlines of the unsuspecting traveller.'

The kids hardly paid attention. They were more interested in the newness of the surrounding. We live in the city. And the vast expanse of open fields was new indeed.

The wind was blowing and the carpet of bariri seemed to wave at me to stoop down and look closer. I wore walking shorts which the bariri pins could not reach. But I felt the itchiness as the bariri touched my bare legs.

I remembered my father. I knew he just came from his farm because of the countless bariris pinned to his pants and his shirt. He looked like he was attacked and got hit by the arrows of a barangay of Liliputians. I looked up to those times when he went home with bariris. Tatay would give me five centavos to pick out the bariris from his pants. Those days five centavos were all I needed to get the best merienda in the nearby sari-sari store.

Then there was our elementary school teacher. She was late in our class. And the hemline of her teacher uniform was filled with bariri. She asked many of my classmates to clean her skirt from bariri. Afterwards, she boasted in front of the other teachers that she was late because she just came straight from the city. And she had a sumptuos breakfast in a restaurant in the city. Then my classmates who overheard her laughed. 'Ma'am, you couldn't have been from the city because your dress was filled with bariri when you arrived,' my classmates corrected. And our teacher was very embarrased.

In high school, I had a male classmate who lived in the barrio. Each morning, when he came to school I noticed his pants were filled with bariri. Before he entered our classroom, he passed by the back of our building. Afterwards, when he joined our class, he was beaming with nary a sight of bariri on his pants. For four years he endured this morning ritual. And in our senior year, he was voted by our teachers as the Neatest Lad in our class.

My kids called my attention to hurry up. They were far ahead now. I could hardly hear their conversation. Maybe they were wondering why I was taking pictures of the grasses. Possibly, they thought the grasses were no big deal. But for a farmboy that I was, a bariri is a link to the past. Something I would like to go back to, even just in my mind. @