I grew up with a Narra tree.
It held my tire swings, the tire swings I asked for from papa, and he would stow away old tires and good rope from work for me.
I would wait for the Narraās yellow blossoms to bloom in summer, then to fall like a winter storm in autumn colors, and to find it carpeting the street when I woke up the next day.
It chagrined the mothers on our block, as they dragged their walis tingting and iron dustpans to and fro, morning and afternoon.
To me, it was like snow, but better. I called it my summer snow.
Summer snow, summer snow, I would sing. Papa and Mama would smile. Later, at nineteen, my father would tell me he knew me for humming and singing, would know I was around even without looking.
When our Narra wasn't in blooming season, I would daydream about it. Turning into our street, the Narra in bloom made our common lane look like a postcard, a painting, a dream.
Our neighbors would talk to my father to trim the tree every now and then. The homeowners association backed them up.
Its branches are growing into our lot, next door would say. It makes for too many leaves to sweep, the sweating mothers passive-aggressively hinted.
Papa trimmed it himself with a bolo, but the branches and its leaves would always grow back too fast for it to make a difference.
Our family was different. Mama worked in the city, like Papa, and she didn't like gossip, inadvertently becoming the topic of the mothersā afternoon gossip melee over burning leaves. Papa didn't drink, and come Saturday night drinking by the block fathers, a tradition held as religiously as some do bible study, he would greet the men and leave a big dish of pulutan before crossing back to our home.
Add a willful Narra into the picture of a non-conforming family on the block, a Narra we insisted on protecting.
Caterpillars loved the Narra. Our garden always had the most butterflies.
In the hazy days before school let out and summer would begin, I would daydream about the Narra coming into full bloom, swilling in the wind, swirling on the ground, abandoning school books and chalkboards to look out of the window and fancying a yellow havoc in the hot March wind.
I did not know how special it is to have a Narra in your front yard, not when I learned it was our national tree, not when it refused to die when neighbors hacked at it when we moved away.
Today, as a mishandled wilting Narra seedling stands in my cement backyard in a makeshift pot, waiting in vain for replanting, with my boyfriend pining over its loss, I learned.
Here in Mindanao, he says, the Narra, along with old rare wood like Apitong and Yakal, is so revered, they are almost deified. Workers instructed by their foremen to clear the soil, even of Narra, would cry out and beg its owners not to, surely we cannot. It is Narra.
Here, he says, it is bulahan. It is like jewelry. Not just any family can say they have a Narra in their backyard. You must be a special family to have a Narra.
Did you sayĀ bulawan? I ask. Did you say gold?
Both, he says, it can be both. Bulahan and bulawan. Holy and golden.
My heart warms. I did not know my friend was a treasure. They always hated our Narra.
I daydream of yellow blossoms again.
