Story: Fiction

 

Lockdown

A swarm of magical sceneries had bedazzled Gregor’s mind at his first spoonful of his mother’s peanutful sweet corn maja blanca. The coldness was of vivid blue of the twilight sky above a calm pool that can cool his roasted skin in this hot of a summer weather. The flavor was savory milky heavens, the coconut milk and the condensed milk in it was blended perfectly just for him. The corn and crushed peanuts were scattered in a pattern of the bright dots in the sky he sees at night. His first bite was like no other bite he had before. The food had twirled elegantly inside his mouth, dancing from teeth to teeth as the taste buds of his tongue relished the grace of the flavor. When he swallowed his food, there was only one conclusion to all the story plots he had in his mind as he was eating. It was love.

Gregor understood now why it tasted so perfectly that no expensive restaurant can compete with the pudding we ate that day. He felt the love in the hands of the person who had prepared it for him.

His heart had gotten cold over his mother once as she described her as a neglectful parent before. He had never gotten to know her as he chose to focus on the hate he had felt for her.

After the President had announced the lockdown, he had already anticipated the worst year of his life. He had never gotten used to being with his strict, uncompassionate, unempathetic mother. Home had never felt home whenever his mother was there. He had gotten used to spending his life all by himself without the nagging voice of her every time he is with her.

He never even paid attention to what she had been doing since they were quarantined together. She had been too immersed with all the recipes she had seen on Facebook. She tried preparing the Dalgona coffee for this son on the first week. On the second day she invited her son to help her cook the tuna pie she had recently learned. But the boy was too busy with his videogames to pay her attention. She wasn’t even sure if he had enjoyed it when he ate it.

They didn’t have much money for his birthday this April, but she had tried to cook his favorite cheesy spaghetti macaroni. Or was it even still his favorite? It has been a long time since they had dined together again. Her son however didn’t look too excited that night.

On the second week of May as she was preparing the maja blanca, Gregor had been observing her while he pretended to be busy with his phone. He seemed quite excited of what next dish his mother is actually going to cook for him. As he had realized his mother has been busying with herself cooking new things for both of them to enjoy.

Eimear, quietly observing her son as he eats the maja she had prepared thought of the years she had wasted without her son. She had spent the few nights ugly crying thinking how much her son had grown. There were so many words she doesn’t hear from him anymore. “Mommy I missed you.” says the little three-year-old Gregor who had been waiting for his mother who had just come home from work. The first laugh she heard from him while she carried him in his arms. She wished she had spent all those years prioritizing him. He just turned sixteen. They didn’t speak much anymore. It made her sad that it took a force to let her stay at home with him. He cannot reprogram what impression she had made on him since the past few years. But this time, this very time, Eimear sincerely prayed that she had made a difference.

“Mom, this tastes amazing. Thank you.”

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Storytelling or story reading in a classroom is a great way of communicating with your students. They listen most intently when their teacher has something valuable to share with them in a form of story. They get to experience life in the perspective of the characters in the story.

It is essential to introduce first a topic to my students before they learn about the story I have written. It is a way of immersing the students to the atmosphere of the story and I can connect them into the concept by asking them motivation questions that relate to the covid19, quarantine, and family.

In this story that I have written, the very important lesson that I am going to teach my student is that some calamity in our lives can be a blessing in disguise. Apart from taking care of our health in this time of pandemic, it teaches us to spend most time of what we take for granted most – ours home where our families live.

After the storytelling, the students can have their discussions about their family and what the pandemic had thought them in their personal experience during the lockdown. In this process, the students become storytellers from listeners. This will help them relate to one another and reflect with their real-life learnings and can motivate them apply what they had learned.

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P.S.: I'm not much of a story teller. I wrote this story as fulfillment of the requirement for the course: Children and Adolescent Literature. This story was inspired by a personal experience.