08/09/2025
๐๐๐ง๐๐ฅ๐๐ฅ๐ฌ | โ๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ป ๐น๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฑ, ๐ถ๐ ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ๐ ๐ฝ๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ
๐ฃ๐บ ๐๐ข๐ณ๐ซ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ฆ ๐๐ฆ๐ณ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ๐ข
Our house was small, the kind where every sound lingered in the corners. Where each whisper scratched the walls, where every breath festered.
โDuring dinner, my siblings made noises using their spoons while our father unfolded a newspaper he bought on his way home from work. He never read from itโat least out loud. He only stared, lips pressed into a thin line, eyes wandering over the ink like a bird with nowhere to land. He seemed at war with what he saw, as though puzzling out how to mend a leak in the roof: patched today, dripping again tomorrow.
โIt was my youngest sibling, only four years old, who dared to ask, โPapa, do you know what this word means?โ She pointed at a headline. The room froze as silence loomed. The emptiness of not knowing sat beside us, reminding us that his presence was not daily, yet certain whenever he chose to show it.
โTo us, fatherโs silence was a wall. Resilient for years, now fragile and breakable.
โHe placed the paper down, the usual trust had left from his face. โI fear I donโt know, sweetheart,โ he admitted at last, his voice low and gravelly, fragile as a reed.
โMother reached across the table, assuring him by resting her hand on his. What we did not know then was that, at night, after we had all fallen asleep, she taught herself how to write and read. By candlelight, she traced letters again and again, she did not stop until she had something to gain.
โQuietly, she said, โWe should learn together. I think there is no better way.โ
โThat evening, we became the students at play, our dinner table became our very own desk. Knowledge was not passed down but divided instead.
โWe pronounced our words, our mother cheering us on. Our father, on the other hand, big-shouldered and calloused from work, shaped each letter on his palm. As if laying bricks for a fragile house, with patience and care, he built words into shelter. He made a home out of a simple house and brought out a family out of a single letter.
โBy weekโs end, my father could finally read his daughter Anatheaโs name on the first page of her notebook. Within months, he could now read Brindy some stories while tucking him into bed, the grocery lists mother prepared, his own name on his biodata, my sisterโs name tag on her first day of kindergartenโand even the letter I sent him on a random Sunday he had off from work, written by my own hand, read on his own.
โFast forward, at the town libraryโs gathering, I stood beside him as his family. Seeing him as no longer the man who could not read, but the man who had begun learning.
โThe man, with his insatiable desire to speak and be spoken to, who had learned.
โThe headline that once ridiculed him had become a story he could carry in his own mouth, escaping through his voice like an enduring vow: his bridge to constant hope and his key to constant hoping.
โIn our family, literacy was not a gift bestowed like a bedtime story or a lullaby. It was shared, piece by piece, like bread and butter passed around the round table, just enough for a family to get by.
โLiteracy was not power that subdued our weakness; it was our weakness that remolded literacy into power.
โAnd as I tell you my familyโs story, remember: this is not a privilege for you to read, but a right given to you.
โI do not say this often. Yet now, I offer this last truth, and may it stay with you.
โAs freedom is your birthright, so too is the ability to read and writeโnot a privilege granted, but a fundamental human right.
Layout by Genevev Manlangit
