Saline

There’s something I’ve always wondered about. When we were born, we cried.
Were there any tears?
And there’s something I will always wonder about until the moment comes. When I die, will I have the chance to mourn my passing?
Will there be any tears?

I’ve cried a lot of times in my life. For joy, for fruition of all my hard work or for achievement. For sorrow, when I lose, when I fall. We all have those moments, sometimes one more frequent than the other. In my seventeen years of existence (in a month becoming eighteen), I’m happy so say that I’ve cried oftener for shallow reasons and for joy than for sorrow.
Tears seem to be just at the edge of my eyes lately. I cried all the way while watching Fruits Basket (Furuba). Tohru Honda is so cryable. I cry when the manang got her sari- sari store in Wish Ko Lang. I cry when the guy janitor told his life story in Wowowee. I cry (but just once) when my brother said that I failed PEHM (which I did not). I cry when I peel the onions.
I remember the book I read just a few days ago, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. When Tita, the main protagonist, was born, she cried and flooded the whole kitchen with saline. The saline from her tears was used as salt for food and it was said that it was better than any.

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There’s this song I’ve been listening to over and over. It’s Jimmy Bondoc’s ‘Safe Place’, which never made any charts, which was never released from his album, ‘Musikero’. There’s these words:

Time has a way of taking things away
From your hands
So when the safe place of your world falls apart
You must gather all the memories
And build the safest place in your
Heart…

It never fails to make me leak saline.
Maybe someday, there will be a shortage of halite in the market, and a bloody war will be fought over it. It will be just like the times when the Romans considered salt more precious than gold. In which case, maybe I should start staring at onions , cry like Tita and watch some more Furuba.