“Kuliik-kulik”

The slow and almost-taken-for-granted physical development processes of a child and the all-the-more taken-for-granted thinking skills developments, could well be sumed up and attributed, as I ardently believe, to God the Father’s ongoing mysteries of creations. He allows a child to come on time, on time as according to human reckoning, while He allows others to come pre-maturely. On time or pre-maturely, as according to human reckoning of the time it waited in its mother’s womb. The length of time a child spent growing up and subsequently ageing and ultimately dying is reckoned the child’s age. People may have formulated formulae to ascertain the brain physical developmental stages, but to God, those are follies. It is said that man’s cleverest concepts and ideas are mere foolishness to God.

When I was about three, probably, four or five years old, my own wild guesses as I do not remember any event to countercheck any of my guesses, save that I was certainly not at school yet, I used to get bedtime stories from my mother. But in those days, a child was not strictly sent to school at the age of six! Or, if I was indeed a young schoolboy then, I would not have been permited to study long in a small kerosene lamp light at night. There were many stories she told me, different stories, at least one story or parts thereof, for each bedtime at night. The famous stories often repeated or heard was the Ongkol-Ongkol and Anak-Anak, a story portraying the qualities of goodness and roughness in a person. Other stories were the Buu and the Bouvang, Naau Naau Pinang, The Monkey and the Buu and, undoubtedly, many more others. My mother could not read western story-books otherwise she could have read to me stories the like of Hansel and Gretel, Snow white, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and so on. In fact my mother could not read nor write. She did not go to school. Maybe, her mother, my grandmother, did not allow her to go to school. But I still can remember, my mother helped me complete my homework which was to colour zig-zag patterns in my pattern book. My mother was very crafty in telling stories, folk stories she might have heard told and retold during her own childhood and growing-up times. My mother was also very crafty in inventing her own suniba’ (susuzan toniiba’ or short stories) to fulfil an overnight promise of a story or to please a son.

One of her suniba’ which I can still clearly remember, even now when she had long gone already, was concerning the sky eagle which used to fly in circles very far up in the sky over the Koduntut house, my and my sisters and brothers growing-up house. It must have been our own eagle for it came everyday without fail for a long time. I used to wait for it to come and felt sorry for it when it said, “kuliik kulik” so distinctly. My mother told me, “It’s looking for a chicken to eat. It must be hungry.” I knew the meaning of being hungry, for I had occasions of being hungry. I could not imagine how a bird like the eagle could experience hunger. Sometimes there were more than one eagle flying in circles up there in the sky. They were more redish than any other colour. They always said, “kuliik kulik”, as if in search for something. Maybe a lost friend, or, a lost young eagle, a young son?

One evening my mother told me her Suniba’. It was about the hungry sky eagle looking for something to eat. She ended her suniba’ by saying, “When I die,” she said, “I will turn into an eagle, like that eagle. An eagle, like that eagle you have grown to love, would be me. When you hear it sounds, ‘kuliik kulik’, that would be me calling you from far up in the sky. Sometimes I won’t be there. It doesn’t mean I was gone. I had only flown to another place. I will always come back to see you from far up in heaven.” That night, I cried to sleep. I did not want to lose my mother. I did not want her to turn into an eagle. I did not want her to go away. I did not want her to fly up into the sky. I did not want her to leave me.

Now, fifty eight years after hearing my mother’s memorable suniba’, whenever I hear the high-up eagle sounds ‘kuliik kulik’ I use to think of my mother, especially now that she had long passed on. Like what she had once told me in her suniba’, she could be that one eagle, up there in the sky, telling me something with her, ‘kuliik kulik’.

In Tintapland I used to get white-breasted eagles visits from time to time. They were not the ‘kuliik kulik’ eagles, they were the always-full fishing eagle. They fish freely from my fishponds. But whenever I saw an eagle, or anything like an eagle, I always think of the ‘kuliik kulik’ eagle. At Tintapland, whenever it flew low, I had the tendency to shoot it down. When it flew higher up, I would put down the gun. When it flew high-up in the sky, I would unloaded the gun of its cartridges and memories of long ago rushed back to my mind. But now I seldom see an eagle flying in circles high-up in the sky. Even more seldom do I see and hear an eagle says, “kuliik kulik”, these days. If the ‘kuliik kulik’ eagle was indeed my mother’s turned-eagle spirit, then spirit-time must have erased her spirit-memories of me. But human memories could not be easily erased. Not yet.