Nazis in my dreams.

What’s your earliest childhood memory?   Mine was my grandmother’s death.  I could still remember my father not letting go of my Lola’s hand when she expired in the biggest room in our old Pampanga home, and Auntie Peng rushing to the small maid’s room by the kitchen, weeping.  I was not even a year old then.  But I was told that was what actually happened.

Scientific studies on memory could refute that.  Maybe everything was reconstructed for me when I grew old enough to have real memories.  Ok, the next  memory after that, certainly irrefutable, was my first trip to the moviehouse.  Sound of Music was playing back in the mid-60s (I must have been three or four then).  The only scene that stuck was when the Von Trapps hid in the Abbey and Rolf, Liesl’s boy, came upon them.  I had repeated nightmares after that.  It didn’t help that my school had Benedictine nuns all over.

That first experience was magical for me, albeit disturbing.  I must have enjoyed the trickery and illusion that film offered.  In film, I could imagine a far, far away place with rolling hills where nuns love singing their hearts out and kids going about town with clothes made out of curtains.   I felt for Snooky, a lonely and abused kid in Lino Brocka’s first film, Wanted: Perfect Mother, even if I knew she was getting paid more than Nora Aunor at that time.  I thought London was a cool place after seeing Oliver!  The beggars there looked better and could sing beautiful falsettos. 

My reaction to every movie I saw since Julie Andrews’ had been visceral.  And it remains so to this day.  Is it magical enough for me?  Or is my time better spent piecing together episodes of family high-drama which could even be more fantastical?