Remembering Lent in Sipocot when I was a child

By Renato Perdon
Sydney, Australia
March 19, 2016



Sipocot in Camarines Sur in the Bicol region at that time was a booming town because of the lumber industry in Napolidan and this attracted so many people from all over the Philippines to work and live in the town, an important and vital town that linked Camarines Sur and Camarines Norte. Different kinds of businesses were established, particularly along the main thoroughfare called San Juan Avenue, named after the town’s patron saint. But later, when the operation of the sawmills in Napolidan barrio was affected by the Huk problem, the income of the town suffered immensely.

There was no recreation area for children, and the only leisure, aside from the regular attendance at religious teachings at the Sipocot Catholic Church which our mother compelled us to attend, was to spend much of our time swimming in the wide and clear 'daculang salog', particularly during school vacations. Even with the swollen river after a long hard downpour or typhoon, we children were not afraid to swim against the strong current of the overflowing river.

There were church activities that young children like us were compelled by our religious mother to attend. There were yearly religious activities, including a number of very long church processions with a lot of 'carosas' with religious statues in resplendent attire and decorated by the town’s family church patrons, with gold and silver threads and materials. This was during Holy Week. I remember we would join the church procession and play with and make a ball out of the burning candles while the religious procession snaked around the main streets of the town.

During 'Domingo de Pascua' (Easter Sunday), part of the Lenten season ritual of the church, we would get up early to watch the show in front of the church where a structure was built with its four elevated corners reserved for little girls dressed as angels. Under the four pillared structure the 'salubong', part of the religious ritual, would be held very early in the morning. It featured the meeting of the sorrowful Mater Dolorosa and the Risen Christ. The girls, also wearing angels’ costumes, were singing religious hymns while the black robe or veil of the Virgin Mary was being lifted by a carefully chosen little girl in an angel’s costume and who was securely tied to a big rope covered by a tubular white cloth and decorated with sparkling buttons. The uncovering of the grieving Virgin Mother of Christ in black signalled the end of the Lenten ritual, while the girls costumed as angels threw petals of fresh flowers over the statue of the Virgin. Jesus Christ had risen from His tomb.

My mother, being a devout Catholic, found the kind of life in Sipocot to her liking, particularly in her devotion to her Catholic religion—a calling she had been actively pursuing in her hometown in Pili when she was still single. With us, six boys in tow, she would regularly attend church.

Being a dressmaker, my mother would always make us new, but, almost always, identical clothes. The Perdon brothers, as we came to be known in the town, would go to church and school wearing a sort of uniform made by our mother. We would have short sleeve white polo shirts; and dark short pants, with black shiny leather shoes. So, the five of us would look the same in appearance. Being children of a teacher; we always appeared as a bunch of well scrubbed, clean cut, little boys. Our hair was always properly parted and combed with a generous application of hair pomade from my father’s supply.

I hated the rituals on Sundays when my mother would wake us up early in the morning to prepare us to go to the church. Sometimes, we would pretend to be preparing, but one of my brothers and I would hide under one of the huge wooden beds in the other rooms and continue our sleeping, until she would find out that two of her sons were nowhere in sight. Finally she would find our hiding place, and using a big broom, would drive us outside the space under the bed, like little kittens.

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Excerpts from ‘Memoirs of Sipocot’ by Renato Perdon, 2013