Melinda J. Irvine

This morning Jerry and I left early for the city. Saturday is Jerry’s ballet class and the bus trip takes more than four hours. I grabbed two mandarines from the fridge as we dashed at the door to flag one of the first tricycles of the morning zooming by.

Somewhere in the trip to the highway, down past the bus terminal one of those mandarines vanished. I guess I dropped it. I didn’t tell Jerry, just gave him the remaining fruit to serve as breakfast while we waited on the highway for another tricycle.

We waited quite a few minutes until a bike and trailer with two young men appeared in the distance. I waved them down shouting ‘Pani-an Crossing’ (a crossroads about 10 minutes down the road where the buses pass more frequently).

But they didn’t take us to Pani-an, instead they laughed and one man got out of the the little side-car and handed me a mandarine.

‘Your son dropped his orange Ma’am,’ he said beaming with delight.

Astonished I thanked him and took the orange fruit handing it to Jerry.

Watching the tricycle do a U-turn back across the highway and head back to where it  came from. Jerry said to me.

“Tita Mel, that man is in the Church in Botongon.”

“What, you mean he came all the way from Botongon?”

“Oh yes Tita Mel. Those two men are at the front gate when we left this morning.”

Fruit is very expensive in the Philippines and children absolutely go crazy for an apple or orange. Those men chased our tricycle all the way from the other side of town just to make sure Jerry got to eat his mandarine.

Little pieces of joy. Thank you.

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• Daily Post: Evoke
• I’m part of Post A Day 2018
• Location: Estancia, Iloilo (Philipppines)

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