“I-in the pockets?” Jepoy stammered.
“Yes! I hid them there so they’d be safe! For building our house and for your tuition! Why didn’t you check first?!” their mother cried.
The siblings looked at each other. In an instant, they ran out of the house without caring that they were still wearing house clothes.
“Sir! Mr. Garbage Man!” Jepoy shouted as he ran down the street.
But the truck was already far away, turning the next corner.
Jepoy ran as fast as he could, faster than an athlete. Rica hopped on a tricycle to chase the truck.
They caught up with it at the dump site itself. The garbage was about to be unloaded.
“WAIT! STOP!” Jepoy screamed, gasping for breath.
They stopped the truck’s hydraulics. Rica and Jepoy climbed onto the mountain of trash, not caring about the smell, the worms, or the filth. They searched desperately for their mother’s box.
“There! That’s the box!” Rica pointed.
It was already mixed in with rotting vegetables. They quickly pulled it out and opened it. Jepoy picked up a faded denim jacket—the same one he had earlier refused to touch.
He felt inside the pocket. Something thick and hard was there.
He used his teeth to tear the stitching.
Out came bundles of blue bills—thousands upon thousands.
Rica grabbed the old socks. Inside them, gold jewelry sparkled.
They collapsed in the middle of the garbage dump, clutching the “old clothes” that smelled of mothballs and their mother’s sweat. They cried loudly.
They realized then that those clothes—old, faded, and unfashionable to them—were the very clothes their mother wore while scrubbing toilets, doing laundry, and enduring hunger in a foreign land just to save money.
The true value of a Balikbayan Box, they understood, is not in how nice its contents look, but in the love of the one who sent it.
They went home dirty and foul-smelling, but carrying a lesson they would never forget. They called their mother again, and this time, they apologized—not because of the money, but because they failed to value her sacrifices.
From that day on, whatever their mother sent—even if it was just soap or toothpaste—they accepted it like gold, because they knew that every single item was paid for with their mother’s life, sweat, and love.