Zeth's architecture

(This was posted as a note in Facebook on 03 March 2011.)

One noontime, just when I arrived in our boarding house from a my usual shift helping grumpy-but-soft-in-the-inside elderly Americans get a picture back on their TV screens, or some other situation not unlike those, my housemate Mary’s three-year-old kid, Zeth Nathaniel, made me this teeny weeny “house” built out of a jelly cup and a cake accesory (I don’t know what it is you call that thing you put on the cake where you can rest your frosting flowers or your action figures. I’m not even sure that’s what it’s for.)

Anyway, so he made this tiny little structure while I was sitting in our hallway texting (because you don’t get a signal inside the room).

“Uh. Tao ko nimo ran. Imo du lang ran,”  (Here. I made this for you. You can have it) Zeth said as he presented to me his work of art.

“Wow. Thank you,” I told him, “Ano day a? Balay?”  (What’s this? A house?)

“Huod,” he replied “Yes”.

“Wow. Nami ba (Nice),” I said, and amazed that his young mind was able to come up with such a design, and considering my own fondness for weird and unconventional architectural structures, I continued, “Ti sulod run sa balay mo, diin kaw maagi kaw ka ran dayan bay?  Masuhot kaw sa idalom?” (So, get in your house already, but where are you going to enter? Through the bottom?)

Somehow feeling so proud of myself that at that moment I was nurturing this young boy’s imagination and that maybe this was a major turning point in his future life as an architect or an engineer, I was expecting that Seth would launch into an endless description of how people would be going up through a staircase (maybe a spiral one) that would be from the ground and into the main floor of the building, where inside, the rooms would be arranged in a circle, and of course, they would all look out into the outdoors through the clear glass walls. Blah, blah, blah.

That didn’t happen. Instead Zeth gave me a look that made me feel as if I’m the silliest grownup in the world. It's a look that more or less says, "Are you SERIOUS???"

And then what came out of his cute little mouth made me realize that my imagination is perhaps not LARGE enough for him –

“Man-an mo hanggud takon dun, pasudlon mo takon ra diyan. Indi takon dun mag-igo ra diyan.” (You see that I’m a big boy now, you can’t make me get in there.  I won’t fit any longer. Silly.)

Right. Got it, Zeth.


:)