It is to the din of bombs dropping during the liberation of the Pacific from Japanese occupation where our story starts. Boy, called in endearing terms by his parents and siblings "Pamboy", is being carried across a river like a basket of fruit on his mother's head, fleeing the onslaught of the American aerial and artillery bombardment of Bataan. New to the world, Pamboy's stub of an umbilical cord is still attached, lovingly recounts Nanay, his mother and my grandmother. She survives him to this very day. They cross the river to seek out the safety of a cave, without the necessities of life, save for a goat to provide milk and its familiar bleeting companionship. The elder siblings, no older than nine or ten, make do with the reality of the war which was about to end. But this they did not know, and it was impossible to know or care if the occupation and the world war were all they were born into. All they have to do is survive and wait and hope and continue to hope that the brunt of the war will move on. It is February 1945. The Battle for Manila has only begun.

I've always known that I was going to write about Boy, my dad, not out of love or hate or the usual father-son motivations, though in fact these are ever present, but because he did seem to have lived his life so that I may write about it. It was some kind of a deal between me and him I think. Or perhaps now that I consider it it is because a writer must write about what he knows and my case is no exception. I already said that I've always known that I was going to write about Boy. How I have come to that knowledge I am not sure, but maybe in the course of this activity it will become more recognizable or at least less mysterious to me.

Already it is becoming difficult to form the story, where to start, how to tell it, how much to tell. For sure the telling will be fragmentary, quite fictional, inventive and prone to jumps in narrative. Should I start from what I know or remember, or should I attempt at least to manage to tell a normal story? Alright then, I will simply allow the archeology of this story to begin, for I too am part of this story and the writing is to occur in the flow of time, as does Boy's story.