Kuwentong Peyups atbp.
Atty. Dennis Gorecho
When Life Gives You Tangerines: a tale of shoes and cabbages
When I was younger I always had dreams of flying through magical shoes.
In Greek mythology, shoes, particularly sandals and winged sandals, symbolize various themes including speed, travel, divine aid, and even power or authority.
Shoes, far from being mere functional items, possess deep symbolic resonances.
Shoes symbolize universal experiences of protection, transition, and identity as these tell stories of our journey, our aspirations, our status, and our connection to the earth.
“Maybe I want to buy shoes so much because I grew up poor. I wanted things, but we had no money. I grew up yearning for so many things I could never have. So now, I don’t hold back at all. ” , a dialogue between Ae-sun (Moon So-ri) and her daughter Geum-myeong (IU) in the Netflix Kdrama series “When Life Gives You Tangerines” (WLGYT).
WLGYT is a heartrending drama on the lives of three generations of women — Ae-sun (Moon So-ri), her mother Jeon Gwang-Rye and her daughter Geum-myeong — spanning from the 1960s to the present day against the backdrop of Jeju Island.
It revolves around the love story between Ae-sun and Yang Gwan-sik (Park Hae-joon) which started at a tender age and went on to blossom into a lifelong tale of setbacks and triumphs while experiencing poverty and hardship.
The scene on shoes highlights the idea of finding joy and satisfaction in unconventional ways, often associating it with a past when desires went unmet or were often denied.
With more resources, there is now an opportunity to make up for those past experiences and an urge to fulfill those long-held wants and desires.
It is not about excessive spending but about reclaiming and enjoying what was once out of reach, making peace with our past, finding joy in the present, and taking care of our inner child.
As we grow older, we buy what we once had to let go of. Not just because we want to, but because a part of us is still trying to heal.
People wonder why we have a lot of stuff in our house that my father did not want to dispose, especially the shoes.
Papa justified this by saying that while he was growing up, he never had the luxury of owning new ones since both he and my mother came from a family with very modest means.
Long before ukay-ukay became famous, we were already wearing second-hand shoes and clothes, sleeping on beds, sitting on chairs and sofas that Papa bought from the shops in Bangkal, Makati.
He tried to instill in us the value of small blessings.
Seldom did we wear brand-new clothes, except maybe during Christmas when our aunties bought us clothing on an installment basis—one Tita would buy us pants while another took care of the shirts. The shoes were usually sourced from Bangkal.
We became the real-life models for ukay-ukay in the 1970s until 1990s.
If WLGYT has Ae-sun selling cabbages in the market, my mother’s version is the “tomato” story.
When we were growing up, I remember the lines every time when Mama would scold us, “Buti nga kayo hindi ninyo naranasan ang magtinda ng kamatis sa palengke.” Perhaps, this was her way of saying that whatever the benefits we were enjoying then were due to their hard work.
If mama would say the “kamatis” story, Papa, on the other hand, would tell us stories when he was still a security guard in a government agency before they got married in July 1968.
Papa was a security guard by day and a student by night taking up library science. When he graduated, he proceeded to be a librarian in the same office until he retired in early 1990s.
Papa was like Gwan-sik, a steadfast husband and father who remains devoted to his wife and their children through hardship.
Gwan-sik is someone who quietly protects and cherishes those he loves. He embodies the spirit of a man who rarely speaks but expresses love through action.
Gwan-sik is the embodiment of devotion—adoring, loyal and unwavering. He dedicated his life to the happiness and the well-being of his family , quietly enduring hardships and heartaches.
Tanghalang Pilipino’s re-run of Sandosenang Sapatos by Luis Gatmaitan is a heartwarming musical that follows the journey of a child who wishes to fulfill her shoemaker father’s dream of having a ballerina for a daughter. Unfortunately, the child was born without feet.
Each year, on her birthday, the child enters the world of enchanting shoes, where the Shoe Fairy gives her a pair of feet, allowing her to dance to her heart’s desire. However, every time she leaves the enchanting world, she loses her feet and faces her father’s disappointment. It takes a tragedy for her to truly understand the depths of her father’s love.
The shoes scene in WLGYT is a testament of the great sacrifice parents will make in giving their children a better life.
Shoes frequently symbolize crossing into new realms, acting as gatekeepers to transformation as they indicate the wearer’s preparedness—or lack thereof—to navigate the terrain ahead.
Every step reveals where we’ve come from and where we are heading.
(Peyups is the moniker of the University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho is a Junior Partner of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan Law Offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09088665786.)
