A Time for Everything

CEBU, Philippines - The sky last night was so beautiful, it took little Sue away for a while from the lessons she'd been studying and the assignments she'd been dying to finish.

With pencil still clasped in her hand, she gazed at the moon and the stars outside her window.

Suddenly, her Grade One teacher came to mind. Ma'am taught the class about the different sorts of lights God created on the fourth day.

The memory brought a smile to her face as she recalled how her classmates applauded as she perfectly enumerated, to their teacher, all the lights that God created on the fourth day of creation.

Biting the eraser of her pencil, an automatic habit with her when engrossed with something, Sue kept staring at the sky above.  Her eyes swept slowly from right to left, top to bottom, not missing a single detail.

Sitting on her bed, the heavenly lights reflected in her eyes, she sensed the cold night wind blow and caress her, from her arms up to the back of her neck.

The coolness of the wind seemed to have touched a part of her mind where the memory of last year's summer vacation remained. Sue suddenly felt sad.

She was quickly transported to a day in the beach with her family. She saw the sand castles she made with her little brother and her parents. She saw the water rising inside the hole she made deep in the sugary white sand.

She saw again, in her mind, the boats that carried them close to the butandings (whale shark), and the boatmen feeding those huge animals.

Then she saw herself biking, swimming, and climbing up the hill at the back of her grandmother's house in Bohol. The pictures came rushing like the wild waters of the Cagayan River.

Finally, she saw herself finishing off a glass of haluhalo. She became a sadder.

"Sue!" The voice of her mom brought Sue back to the night sky and the heavenly lights. "Why are you sad?"

"I'm not sad, Mom. I just remember the things we did last summer!"

"Oh, there's always a time for everything, Sue," Mom said softly, rubbing the girl's back.  

"I know, Mom, I know. But the thought of last summer just popped out from nowhere and now it just wouldn't go away!"  Sue explained.

"It will, my little girl, if you go back to your book and continue studying your lessons for tomorrow," Mom said.  "I told you there's always a time for everything."

"Yeah, right."  Sue went back to the books scattered on her bed.

"Besides I can already smell summer in the air, Sue, can't you?"  Mom added.

"I can't wait for summer, Mom, I can't wait," Sue said excitedly, twiddling the pencil in her hand.

"Oh, yes, you can little girl!"

"Okay, Mom, I will wait."  Sue spit out a speck of pencil eraser to her hand and threw it away through the open window.

Then mother and daughter looked at each other, smiled, and chorused, "There's a time for everything!"