The sweet, earthy smell of steaming white rice wrapped in a banana leaf, our version of eco-friendly Tupperware, is my personal time machine. It teleports me back over five decades to a tiny lakeside nipa hut, a place filled with wonderful memories and one highly specific, deeply unpleasant incident. Ultimately, that summer taught me a valuable lesson: just because everyone else is doing something, it doesn’t mean you should blindly dive in.
Picture this: endless, bright green rice fields baking under a sun so brutal it turns the horizon into a shimmering mirage. Millions of rice stalks are bending low, heavy with the grains meant to feed the village. It looks peaceful, right? A rural paradise.
But summers in the province were long, lazy, and strictly DIY. No summer camps, no sports leagues, and absolutely no air conditioning. When the daytime sun turned the earth into an oven, my cousins, friends, and I would retreat to our family’s tiny patch of land by the lake. We’d string up a hammock under a small nipa hut and sway just enough to trick ourselves into thinking there was a breeze.
When our stomachs started to grumble, we’d unwrap whatever leftovers my mom had packed and eat with our hands. And our beverage program? Completely free-range. There was a little brook nearby fed by cold underground springs. Whenever we got thirsty, we’d just kneel on the bank and drink straight from the crystal-clear running stream. Total, unblinking, naive trust.
Until the day our adventurous streak—and my cousins’ terrible ideas—got the best of us.
They convinced me to explore upstream, claiming they heard a rumor about a secret, shady spot near a dense bamboo grove where fat river crabs liked to hang out. Visions of an afternoon crab feast dancing in our heads, we scrambled up the bank. We hadn’t gone a hundred yards before we froze.
There, right in the dead center of our pristine, crystal-clear, artisanal drinking water, was a massive, steaming, dark green mound. A water buffalo—a kalabaw—had decided that our favorite stream was the perfect place for a bathroom break.
I literally gagged right there on the grass, choking for air while my cousins absolutely lost it laughing. I made a solemn, lifelong vow right then and there: never, ever drink from nature again.
But even with the occasional traumatic plumbing surprise, the water was our entire world. On our best days, we’d “borrow” a small wooden boat and row out onto the open lake. Sunscreen wasn’t a word in our vocabulary, and shirts were strictly optional. In fact, going into the water with clothes on was a rookie mistake. The thick, muddy silt would get trapped in the fabric, and once the sun baked it dry against your skin, you’d spend the next three days scratching yourself like a dog with fleas.
Sometimes I’d play apprentice to my uncle, a lifelong fisherman whose skin was so dark and deeply wrinkled from decades under the sun that he looked like a walking oak tree—lines he wore with absolute pride. He taught me how to read the water and cast a net, and I’d march home proudly carrying a basket of weird, twitching fish. Mom would fry up the best ones for dinner, and the rest she’d heavily season and slap onto bamboo mats to dry in the sun.
We were mischievous, reckless, and borderline feral, but the village kept us from completely destroying ourselves. There were no fences or locked doors. Neighbors always had one eye on the kids running through the fields, letting us stay beautifully wild while making sure we didn’t accidentally drown, get trampled, or get gouged by an irate kalabaw. Which was a fair risk, considering we liked to poke them incessantly with long sticks. You know, just for the fun of it.
Living in the States now, I watch my own kids grow up in a completely different universe. Their childhood is a highly structured routine of organized activities, strict safety protocols, and digital screens. Sometimes I look at them and wonder if they can even fathom the kind of reckless freedom we had. A time when a boy, a borrowed boat, a piece of salty dried fish on a bed of white rice, and a vast sea of rice fields were all you needed to rule the world.
Or at least, until a vengeful kalabaw decided it was time for payback and ruined our beloved water supply.