OF NEEDLES AND BLOSSOMS

I remember the morning because of the smell.

The saliyaw was in bloom around the star apple trees near the plaza, and the morning air was fresh and sweet. Across Plaridel Street stood our Gabaldon school building, where something unusual was happening. Health workers had come to vaccinate us, accompanied, as I remember it, by men in uniform.

Even as they were caught by surprise, my classmates were quick to concoct other plans. Some of them scrambled out through its Capiz windows. I watched them from near the Sunny Hillside Arch, amused by their ingenuity and perhaps a little proud of myself. I had nothing to fear. I was already vaccinated. My mother was the midwife.

I was five and was a “visitor” in Grade 1.

I did not know then that I was growing up under Martial Law, or what Presidential Decree No. 996 had to do with the government that had sent the health workers and the soldiers to our school. I knew only that my classmates were escaping a needle, and that I was safe from it. That morning held a strange paradox: laughter and fear, blossoms and needles, health entangled with the heavy hand of command.

Today, that old Gabaldon is gone, and the star apples and saliyaw no longer grace the plaza with their sweet scents. New structures rise, but the Sunny Hillside is still watching, still remembering.

More than half a century later, I found myself sitting in a public hearing in Balete, this time talking about a proposed local measure—the Expanded Balete Mandatory Immunization Ordinance of 2026. The report from the Municipal Health Office was sobering: only 43 percent of infants and children in Balete were considered fully immunized children (FIC) in 2025. That figure is far from the 95 percent coverage that the Department of Health seeks to achieve in every community.

We looked at the numbers on paper, knowing that behind every percentage are children, parents, health workers, and the community's responsibility to protect them.

And suddenly, the Grade 1 boy standing by the Sunny Hillside Arch came back to me.

The circle had closed. But this time, the needle is not a command born of fear or coercion. It is a covenant of care—a community remembering what it owes to its children, and passing that protection down to those waiting in our barangays.