My father's house was one of the first to be erected on P. Tuazon Boulevard, then Central Boulevard, in Cubao. I was four when he brought me there for the first time from San Fernando, Pampanga. I recall that there were a waterfall and a tilapia pond on the compound, which my father later converted to a swimming pool. We had no neighbors then. The house was surrounded by fields of tall, sweet yam. On that same visit, my sisters took off yam leaves and fashioned the stalks into maroon-and-white necklaces, and I thought them marvelous. A year later my mother would plant her huge, African daisies on the compound. She had daisies of every color and every type (one-layer, two-layer, three-layer). These were the flowers that my sisters would bring to school chapel whenever the occasion required it.

I was five when I came to live in the house. I had to begin going to prep school. The compound was my one, big playground on weekends. My favorite spot was the bamboo grove behind the house. I loved sitting in its shade with the household help, listening to the trees groaning in the breeze and watching dried leaves flutter to the ground like tropical snow. The earth showed me her secrets then. I remember that snails, black leeches, and worms inhabited the rivulets. Cicadas were not afraid to show themselves to me, and I was always fascinated by the triple, pink sapphires on their crowns. The sky was often filled with red and purple dragonflies. In the evening, there were fireflies.

None of those exist today. There was no such thing as taking my sons or my grandchildren outside the house to show them Nature through a microscope. Construction projects literally poisoned the earth of Cubao and turned it into dry dust and cracked gravel. As a matter of fact, I spent P15,000 two months ago just to fill our front plant boxes with garden soil.

Now only the old, frangipani tree stands at the main gate to the compound. That tree was there even long before I came to visit for the first time. I've taken cuttings from the tree, hoping they will grow in the huge pots we placed on our roof deck garden, today perhaps the only remaining garden for at least a mile around.