The air, quite cold, quite crisp, whispers around the old pillars that pushes upwards the dilapidated roof at the front of my mother's home. Bursts of fireworks wash the night sky, their numbers more scant than last year's and the year before. What didn't decrease in number are the loud popping sounds from rebintador and sinturon ni hudas. Beside me my nephew and niece complain how little the amount of fireworks we will be lighting to welcome 2012. In a house filled with grown ups, we forgot there were kids.
My brothers opted to welcome the new year in dreamland. 4 hours ago they gulped the bad memories this old year has brought with beer. It's funny how the line of houses in our street are somber, their front lawns enveloped in the dark. Years ago they had the habit of competing whose house had the best fireworks. Now they're just -- well, sleeping.
Midnight strikes, and the whole sky is ablaze. Some of them come out to watch flowers of light exploding in the black, point at which one burned brighter, or which one bloomed with more color. The blossoms of fire that sprout from faraway houses, a mall or two, is indeed a spectacle to watch for free. Are these the same people I knew for years?
Then the tipping point, when all those swirls and fantastic display will slowly die down. The seconds of burning, of release, will eventually cease. Everyone comes back into their houses with the memory the sky has shared unselfishly.
And then I see the futility of why I'm trying to make sense out of this. My neighborhood has changed, no point for me to rationalize what I missed. I bring the laptop inside the house, to the family who wasn't here last Christmas. I tell myself a new year has come, and they are here.
They are here, and all will be well.
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