Dearest Chase,
You were named Chase (by your father) from a leading global financial business, JP Morgan Chase and Co., in the hopes that someday you will become a multi-billionaire and have a financial business or a bank named after you. What would yours be? I wonder. Superficial Bank doesn’t sound good. Your father’s family name suggests a meaning not beneficial for business. Mine isn’t catchy for business either plus my family name doesn’t sound ‘international’. Let’s try initials. Chase PS Bank. Hmm that would do for now.
I don’t pressure you to own a bank. I just WISH you will. To inspire you, I bought you a piggy bank on December of 2007, a month after you were born. It’s not an ordinary piggy bank – not the 50 php plastic piggy banks that come in different colors. Those were cute but I wanted yours to be special. I was thinking of a porcelain piggy bank but I thought otherwise. You are young and there’s a chance you will break your porcelain piggy bank. Of course, I don’t want that to happen – It is bad omen.
That particular evening, I was bent on finding a piggy bank for you for two reasons: 2007 was the Year of the Pig and 2007 was about to end. I have to find a piggy bank and bring the luck over the next year. Thank God I was able to find one. I bought your piggy bank from a Chinese stall in
From then on, I made a promise to myself that every day, all my 5 and 10 peso coins should go to your piggy bank. Your father would even deliberately change a 100php bill into 5 or 10 peso coins to feed your “baboy-baboy”. And this we did until the 6th of August 2008. That afternoon, we couldn’t insert one more 5 or 10 peso coin. It means only one thing – your piggy bank was full. Excited, we – your dada and I – pulled the rubber stopper at the bottom covering a hole fit for the coins to spill out. We counted the coins, piled them up in hundreds, and ended up with – 9,980 php! I deposited that money in the rural bank, Chase. I surmise if we yield that same amount from your piggy bank every year, by the time you will be ten, you will have more or less 100,000 php! (but I wonder what is the value of that money by then?) Never mind, at least you will already have something when you’re ten.
2008 was Year of the Rat. That year, I bought another piggy bank for you but it’s not a pig. This time, it was a rat. Smaller in size than your piggy bank and it’s made of porcelain. You called that “Mr. Rat”. But true to a rat’s nature as a scavenger, your rat for a piggy bank scarcely has any coin in it as days and months passed by. Until one day in January of 2009, you spotted Mr. Rat in the dresser table, took it and – crashed! Down it fell. Its shattered pieces mixed up with few coins scattered on the floor. And that’s the end of Mr. Rat.
After this sad fate of Mr. Rat, I took out your piggy bank from the cabinet where I stashed it (the coins kept on coming out of the hole.) With a tape, I reinforced the rubber stopper that covers the hole. Your gold piggy bank is not yet full by now. We – your Dada and I – are not as keen as the first time in “feeding” your piggy bank. The reason is not entirely the scarcity of 5 0r 10 pesos in our pockets at the end of the day, but we shifted our attention to your yellow piggy bank.
Your yellow piggy bank, the one you have chosen for yourself. You saw that plastic yellow piggy bank at SM Delgado and you wanted it when you first saw it. Your Dada didn’t want to buy it; you already had one at home. He was so resolute. But I’ve seen in your eyes how badly you wanted it and your wails! You made all the sales person and shoppers looked in our direction. So I had this mama-will-take-care-of-this plan up in my mind in an instant. I requested your father to buy a box of Dentalflo wipes (you were too lazy to brush your teeth then!) in the lower floor. Once he was down the escalator, you and I hurriedly lined up in the counter, paid 20 pesos and your yellow piggy bank was securely wrapped in a plastic bag! When your Dada saw you clutching that yellow piggy bank, he just looked at me with a look that I know too well.
I now laugh at you – how clever you have become for your yellow piggy bank to have some coins in it. You will sometimes come up to your grandma and grandpa and say “Wowo, Wowa my pig is hungry…” And like all doting grandmas and grandpas, they both would fish coins out of their pockets and clink – there the coins go down your yellow piggy bank.
My letter ends at this point Chase. I will write to you again. I park my pen now – rather I lock the keyboard keys now – and hope that someday you will write the same letter to your own son or daughter (that would be lovely!) and tell them not only about your piggy bank but how you came to have your OWN bank.
Love much,
Mama (with Dada by my side, grinning)
