Writing is a habit of mine.

My first writing session happened on our five-year old Spanish house in the province. The place was made entirely of wood and bamboo. I had the full utilization of its wooden door because I made this my official blackboard. The floor, polished well with red floor wax, was my first canvas where I made my basic lines and shapes. My writing material was those white apog (lime) which abounded the nearby lime processing company. My first teacher was my mother who painstakingly etched my name on the door and guided me through my first serious hand grips and pulse motions.

The first letter I was able to write was the letter M which is the first letter of my mine. It took me three days before I was able to master the four straight lines. The Os and the Cs was harder and took me longer days to perfect. I never did make my O a real O because my version had jagged edges. Up to this day, my C tends to resemble a bamboo stick that would not bend or a half moon with the upper curve dipping downward.

I spent three solid months learning to write my whole name comprising of 19 letters. It should be 20 but I just added my middle initial during high school when my feminist teacher told me that mother’s name should always be included on the child’s name. This actually befuddled me because my middle initial which was the initial of my mother’s surname was actually her father’s name. I told myself, “So much for my mother having her own name, or her mother’s name.”

So I entered a government-funded kindergarten armed with my 19 letters and 5 basic shapes. All that were lacking I learned from sitting in the front row. If I sat at the back, I would not have learned the alphabet. All I would have seen were the backs of the 60 or so classmates studying with me.

So I learned to write on the door, on the floor, on my pad paper, on the blackboard when my teacher wanted me to write “I will not be noisy anymore.”, then finally on the typewriting paper.

My writing progressed from my apog chalk, to fat pencils, to ball pens, to typewriter then finally to computer.

I loved the typewriter the most.

The ta-ka-tak of the keys was the juicer of ideas. The sound filled my mind with the scenes and lines. The hardness of the keys kept me in focus. The ting when I was nearing the end of the line whipped me to be accurate in giving details. When I made a mistake, either in grammar or spelling or I made a word that was not in cohesion with the rest of the sentence, I did not delete anything. I left a blank for me to return to when I had thought of something which could be inserted.

So I went writing with my typewriter. I was not a touch typist; in fact I was using the dutdot system which made my aunt really mad because I never learned to type using all fingers.

On and on I wrote sentences that became prose and essays. I wiggled clichés and phrases and created poems and songs. I went tak-a-tak-ing even in the wee hours of the night under the glow of an overhead gasera. I wove my ideas and thoughts. I built my dreams and hopes. I cried my tears and laughed at my joys, celebrated my victory and mourned my defeat on those words I typed on bond paper.

When I became pregnant, I stayed at home. After the usual household chores, I would sit in our apartment’s terrace and mull over the future. The day dreaing would last five seconds and I had to get a pen and paper and a notebook (or whatever comes in handy) so that I could capture the words that fill my mind. I wrote the stories of my first love. I sang to my child through my own version of nursery rhymes.

Today, even during the busiest times at work, I still snatch some quick time to jot a sentence or two. I have two pending essays that I could not finish for lack of nicer ideas. I am still thinking of writing a love story with Mt. Everest as the main setting but I still haven’t researched on the details.

I know that even when I reached my retirement age, I would still be writing. When my fingers would give way to numbness of arthritis, I would write by voice.

I would share my words and let my children and grandchildren write on the words, and they would pass on the tradition to the next generation until all the words on earth are gone.