Laptukay

This is the stuff of memories: laptukay popped on somebody else’s forehead. Long before Dora barged into our TV screens, the laptukay made childhood explorations a lot more exciting. Oh how we would comb open fields and cogon-choked gardens! How we would go home at the end of a full day, faces smeared with mud, play clothes trailing with amorseko, arms cradling a precious harvest of laptukay, dulce kurumbot and cadena de amor!

As houses were built on the vacant lots that used to be our playground, fields were leveled and weeds uprooted. Our laptukay days, it seemed, were over.

But give it to the hardy laptukay to survive. While I was weeding the garden, I saw a plant weighed down by the “fruits,” its roots crawling through the rocks. Happiness! My daughter will have her share of laptukay wars, after all!