The Great Story Teller

Have you heard stories from your mother when you were a kid? Who among your parents was the story teller?

In the Asian culture back then, particularly in PH when remote places didn't have electricity, parents or grannies used to tell stories to their kids before bedtime.

This post is about a person who was once our story teller during our childhood days with my siblings. 

Father is self-employed and he goes out for our daily bread.  He learned how to fix motorcycle engines but started as a tricycle driver. However that particular job back then was not earning a full time income. So there were days that my father would have zero customers. But he will not let the day pass without having something on our plate for dinner.

Mother was the one who's always with us, doing a full time care of her five children. Can you imagine the stress of raising five kids with an almost two years age gap? Yes my father was really hard working not only for hard labor but making kids as well. (laughs) 

He was really good at doing it because you know five kids like girl-boy-girl-boy-girl was like a pattern and planned. I remember when my mother underwent a ligation process, finally they realized that it was getting harder and harder to live life while adding uncontrolled family members.

Anyway, that was already a long introduction. Let's get back to the main topic.

Since father used to come home late at night, mother will start telling stories to us while she waits for father to arrive. But it was not always a night of storytelling. Sometimes when it is already 8PM and we don’t have something on the table yet, mother would start telling stories so we can forget the rumbling of our stomachs while waiting for father to bring home dinner.

You might think that this article should be posted on mothers day. I don’t post articles about occasions like that, I just leave it to you. Mothers day is five days after my mother celebrates her birthday every year so how can I forget that.

What do you think were the stories mother used to tell?

She will tell us stories about her siblings, as far as I can remember I think they are 13 including her. Geez! That's one big happy family. My grandparents were really hard working (laughs)

Mother was born in a place near local beaches and their house was located in the middle of a forest. Back in the 60’s electricity could hardly reach that area so it was really hard to live in that place. Even in the 90s when we were visiting the place, it was like you are always going back to the past. But the place is amazing, you can feel the presence of nature. You know like tall trees, coconuts, different sounds of birds, the beaches, aaahhh nostalgic!

I remember my mother once told a story about an encounter with an “aswang” (oh shoot, my hairs on the skin are raising). Shall I continue or save it for Halloween stories instead? (laughs)

Yes mother used to tell us stories about “Kapre”, “Duwende”, “Maligno” and other unknown strange entities she encountered along with her siblings when they were just teenage kids.

Sometimes I was kind of, are those entities real? But the story came from my mothers own experiences. I know for sure she wants to entertain us just to momentarily forget about getting hungry and she wouldn’t want to scare us.

Mothers place is 11KM far from my fathers place where we lived and during summer vacation I always went there to spend the whole school break. The place is peaceful because it was a forest but kind of scary during the night like it was a total darkness as there was no electricity yet. Houses were far from each in every neighbor.  

So during the night, I could hear a whooshing sound as if a strong wind passed by causing the coconut leaves to move. Then my cousin said, never mind that noise, it was just our neighbor.

Somehow it made me think that could it possibly be the “Aswang” mother used to tell us about her encounter? She said the "Aswang" flew above the coconut trees and that when it spread its wings it was like the size of our dining table per wing of about two meters long. Then when it flies it creates a strong wind that the coconut trees could swing.   

Anyway that was just one scary story mother used to tell us. She is a great storyteller when it comes to telling her life experience during childhood. I am thinking of writing them here one of these days. 

Sharing you some photo in my mothers place when I went home sometime in 2018.

Who was your story teller when you were a kid? I would love to see your comment below.

Thanks for reading. Ciao!

Feel free to check my previous posts:

Ovation In Your Own Motivation

Anybody Can Do It, Why Can’t I

You Are Doing Great, Keep Going

Feel the pain: Talk about it

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Lead image is my mom

Photo Credits:

MI PHAM

BBH Singapore

Mike Swigunski

Paolo Nicolello