In 1956 a seven year-old boy takes the train from Manila to Dagupan to meet his mother, a hawker selling seasonal mangoes, woven slippers, and candied peanuts along side streets and church yards. At the bangketa – a spot which frequently changes, bustling with people en route to somewhere important – he tries to look for his mother, spots her long wavy locks held together by a crimson bandanna. Every weekend that year, save for Todos Los Santos and Semana Santa, he would search the nearest vending grounds from the train station, lost in a sea of strangers. He listens as her voice grows near, and always, the boy finds a gentle scene amidst the dissonant crowd: Masamit ya mangga¹, his mother calls, and he runs toward this petal of her—a memory tempered by repetition, enduring for the next half century.