The Voice

It was quarter past nine and the supermarket had just begun its Sunday work with just three handfuls of shoppers. I was walking, but almost running from the other side of the supermarket, while trying to keep my eyes open when I barely heard a kid crying as if shouting. Instinctively, I followed the voice and saw the kid running as fast as he could. I saw my sister running after him and so I ran after them. He was shouting, crying and running all at the same time. My ears failed me what he was shouting until I got closer to him. He was calling out, ‘Mommy!! Mommy!! Mommy!!’

As my sister caught up with the running pace of our youngest brother, she immediately grabbed and embraced him to give some comfort for the ‘lost’ soul. I saw streams of tears in his face making his eyes almost bloodshot. I thought he was trembling. We brought him to the meat section where my mother and brother were. He wasn’t done crying. Sobbing, he told us ‘Iniwan nyo ko e.’ Being the primary cause of the incident, I answered ‘Ikaw kaya nang-iwan sa amin!’

I think every grown up’s memory of his childhood won’t be as complete without the traumatic (sadly, for almost all) experience of getting lost in a market, supermarket, toy store or department store.

As for my brother, I had the opportunity of giving him this experience. Though, he didn’t realize that I was the one who let him ran away so that in a few minutes he’d feel left off, he remembered ‘na inaaway ko sya.’

My youngest brother and I were in the drinks section. I wanted to see if I could try some new flavored drink. But I couldn’t do my thing coz he was climbing up the cart and I was afraid the cart would fall over him. So after I removed him away from the cart, I walked to get some glimpse of the Aloe drink. I heard him run away from me. Thinking he’ll find his way to my mom and brother or see my sister some sections away I didn’t follow him. In the first place, though SM supermarket is relatively big, there were no hundreds of shoppers yet.

Though in doubt of seeing him with my mom and brother, I still asked my bro, ‘Asan si Gio?’ He replied, ‘Di ba kasama mo?’ I turned around and saw my sister, ‘ Si Gio?’ Annoyingly, she answered, ‘Ewan ko kayo kasama e.’ I went away in pursuit of our youngest brother followed by my sister towards the opposite direction.

It took us no more than 3 minutes to locate him. His genetically-inherited powerful voice stood out and that became our map into finding him. For a minute he was a head turner in the SM Bacoor Supermarket.

We bought him a Chuckie, a Moo and a grape-flavored Sunkist.

With my hand on my heart-farewell.