Every Wednesday at 4:30 AM I wake up briefly when my sister Remi comes down her elevator, walks across the compound to my sister Alice's house, and rings her bell. I listen to the sounds they make as my sister Alice comes out her door and shuts it behind her, locks her iron gate, and both sisters get into the Grab car they booked to bring them to their religious service.

This weekly experience takes me back to many, similiar times in the past: to my early boyhood in San Fernando, Pampanga, when one of my aunts rose every day at dawn to get ready to report for work at Clark Air Base; the times I came home after a night-long videotaping for Lino Brocka Presents while my sons Nelson and Chito were still sleeping in their beds, the rosary playing on Radio Veritas; the times before I retired, when I dressed and took breakfast to Hoy, Gising! and hurried to catch the train that would take me to work.

Today, at 69, when I wake up at dawn, I roll over and drift back to sleep with all of those memories in my mind, glad to be retired and glad to be alive in a world that must rise before sunrise in order to get things going.