I met her first on the 12th of June (2)

Assigment #1; 315 words

I first met her on the 12^th of June.

It was early still, but the morning promised a hot, sunny day. Perpetually early, I was an hour or so early for class. A girl sat there with a familiar smile. I walked past her, checking out the empty room only to be greeted by the overwhelming heat and smell of it. I return to her. We talk shallowly, but we get along.

In class, the first activity is to choose a partner to get to know. We leave the room to talk. She lost her dad when she was two. She’s twenty-six now, still the youngest of six siblings. She’s back in school, taking up what she really wants. She had already finished Interior Design, but had known for a while that she preferred something more expressive. She tells me she’s worked, though outside of the field she studied for. It was in these jobs that she realized she wanted to write, to express herself. It was in her story of those jobs that I got to know her more.

She directed programs and handled students for the Center for Pop. After that, she worked for Vera Files, focusing on Voter Education. I guess it comes from her mother being a school teacher once, that she sought to educate, and that she actually could. But she later on qualifies that it was in fact in her nature to care for others. I found it strange that the youngest child would do that. I was once the eldest and only child in our family and thought that the job of caring for others came from being the Kuya. I realized that it was actually from being treated as the youngest that molded me more. We were here caring for others because we knew how to be cared for. We wanted to share—to pay it forward.