Afternoons peeling
A red gate, a green gate, a black gate, stood between me and the road. It was painted black when I was eight and brushing my way past guests and children in party hats, posing in front of gifts like a proud mother with her children. Then, it was red during the People's Revolution, when, inexplicably one day, I woke up and heard loud cracking sounds, shouts and my uncle telling me to stay indoors because it was not safe. It was originally green before the gate had started to rust, and I spent many afternoons peeling the paint with my shirt off, then jogging around the neighborhood with my father. He'd hoist me onto his shoulders for the victory lap. People would think I was his son.

When I started school, about half an hour away with the Manila traffic, my job was to tell my mother to stop the car so I could run out and open the gate. This required some careful planning because she didn't like to wait for too long while I went inside, unlocked the gate, then swung both heavy, metal doors open. Before we discovered there was such a thing as an automatic garage door opener, I became intimately familiar with the rusty squeaks, hinges and smell of our "garage door". Even after all the paint jobs and the weather, it still smelled like new to me.