Nostalgia, maudlin reminiscence at the pain of lost childhood made all the more haunting by the broken guitar chords from Segovia. These are moments after a long night of torrential rain and when the sun starts to dissipate the lingering shades of night. Vignettes of boyhood misadventures and the echoes of growing up blues suddenly make one smile albeit wanly. Oh what will I give up in exchange for a return to the summer of my childhood.

Those bygone days were moments in learning, a great deal of it spent basking in all the magazines, newspapers, and books in the decrepit structure we call reading center till I was teary eyed and with a grumbling tummy. The thrilling part of it all was the wiggling through the narrow gap between the roof and the wall which only a wisp of an 11-year old boy can do.

Certainly thinking about things past have its dark side too. I can't help cursing at the sheer foolishness surrounding the demise of a childhood friend who made the railroad track his pillow for the night waiting for the bagon loaded with sugarcane bound for the sugar central. And then there was the thrill of puppy love when the seeming acme of devotion consisted of gazing at the roof of her house.

One can't go home again. After spending more years away from home rather than investing years in it can suspend an objective view of a homecoming. The acknowledging look of familiar faces replaced by feigned interest of current residents perhaps belonging to the second or third filial. I ought not be sad at this turn of events. I must admit that it is not only I who changed... my barrio folks too had the right to change. And they did.