The firstborn has the power to heal the breach between the families especially when there has been an elopement or a misunderstanding.
The firstborn basks in her parents’ affection.
They rub her legs in the sunshine and blow loud kisses on her belly.
Grandparents and the rest of the family circle close, like many embraces.
The firstborn inherits the carabao, and with the maya bird spends his early years riding its back through the paddies, calling the wind.
The firstborn lies in the duyan, rocked to sleep with lullabies.
It will be at least three years before she is taught to watch over her
sleeping baby brother.
The firstborn is given the tongue of the roasted pig to suck on during
the christening party.
He will grow to be quick with words.
The firstborn has his stomach bound with a triangle of cloth,
to guard against colic.
When the cord dries and falls off, his mother keeps it in a hanky
pinned next to her heart.
When his sisters and brothers follow, she strings the dried stumps together and knots them into the same cloth, breathing a prayer that all their lives they will be as close as this and know it.
The firstborn will receive new clothes and shoes when the family can afford these.
Gifts are not withheld from the others, only deferred to better times.
After the parents, the eldest dips his hands into the common bowl.
He takes a larger portion of meat or fish, especially if he is old enough
to work the fields.
The firstborn carries other gifts and names.
She is called Elder Sister, Exemplar, Little Mother.
She carries her family’s hopes and takes care that the ricepot does not overflow.
The firstborn is also the Elder Brother.
He will have to provide for his unmarried sisters, give them a life for
which to give thanks forever, even if it is spinsterhood.
He will be schooled in the knowledge of his tribe, including war.
She will learn the ways of plants and medicines and the arrangement of limbs.
He can wear the robes of justice as well as the threads of inconstancy.
They will want her to wear white and to bring offspring into the world.
She will tend her mother in labor and learn the alphabet of blood.
When it is time he will join his peers at the river where the village herbalist
will cut the tail off his lizard and wrap the rest in a paste of guava leaves.
They will let him follow his restlessness to the borders of the village, and one day he will disappear into another country to hunt.
She will sit by the window until someone passing beneath with a song and a stringed instrument snares her restlessness and binds it to his own.
They will learn to do other things because the sun will rise tomorrow in the east once more than it has so far in its long history.
They will learn to do other things because there are constellations we have just learned to name in the sky.
They will learn to be other things because they are like foam that rises to the edge of the waves, trying to abandon the formlessness of water.
They will learn to be other things because they know the cubits and origins of your house.
Having passed through its gates, they know they can be new.
Having tasted salt and milk they will go in search of oil and grain;
seed to put in the soil, reeds for plaiting baskets, a story-lamp or two.
© Maria Luisa A. Cariño. From the U.P. Club of America (Chicago) Internet Page. Maria Luisa A. Carino (born 3 September 1961; Makati, Manila; Philippines) is an Assistant Professor on leave from the University of the Philippines who has just completed her Ph.D. in English (Creative Writing) as a Fulbright fellow, in the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Luisa is a nine-time winner of the Carlos Palanca Award for Literature (for poetry, fiction and the essay), the Philippine equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize; she is also a two-time recipient of the Philippine National Book Award for her Cordillera Tales (New Day, 1990) and her Cartography (Anvil, 1992).