The morning starts the way most with Joseph do—familiar and full of the small wonders only he can bring. We’re sitting in a McDonald’s booth, a warm glow of sunshine cutting through the fast-food ambiance. It’s just past eight AM, the lull between a wake-up grogginess and some minutes of slow walking. The clatter of trays and the hum of conversation swirl around us, but Joseph is tethered to the tablet screen in front of him, fingers swiping with practiced ease, eyes locked in concentration.
There is a quiet here that’s deceiving, a bridge between generations. I watch as his brows furrow, his mouth parts slightly—just a sliver. It’s one of his habits when he’s deep in thought, navigating his favorite cartoon, or maybe it’s a you tube video that’s drawn him in this time. I sip my coffee, taking in the gentle steam rising from the rim of the disposable glass. The moment is precious in its simplicity.
“Joseph, here comes your chicken fillet with rice.” I reach out and push the tray a little closer to him, the smell of hash browns and gravy lifting slightly from the paper plates. He snaps out of his digital daze and looks up at me with eyes that hold a child’s boundless energy and the growing awareness of the world. He grins, dropping the tablet, hands reaching to uncover the tiny plastic cups of gravy. “You eat the egg Ninang, I don’t like it, it’s burnt.”
The click of the tablet locking is a sound I’ve come to know as a tiny victory—technology yielding to the present, even if for a brief moment. Joseph eats with focus, but between bites, he pauses. I follow his gaze to the patterned tiles of the ceiling, speckled white with rows of recessed lights and the occasional shadow of a duct.
“I can’t find any sprinklers here Ninang.” McDonald just renovated their site and we are still adjusting ourselves to the new look and ambiance. Joseph was very serious with his comment as if he were a detective and this ceiling, the latest mystery.
“Probably they hid them behind the walls” I say.
“That’s funny, how can they hide the fire alarm and sprinklers?” He snapped, slightly annoyed, even as he bites a mouth-size of the fillet.
“You find them anywhere anyway. They’re the same anywhere.”
He ignores my remark and finishes his food. Breakfast disappears between his comments over his imaginary friend, Spidey, this finger crawling creature who always has to climb a water spout. Joseph has invented many iterations of this spider, giving it a raincoat, an umbrella and goggles so the rain water will not wash it away and drown it. This, aside from hunting sprinklers, is his other obsession. And he has given sun and clouds various expressions depending on his mood. He cuts colored paper into sun and clouds, gluing them one on top of the other, marking the clouds with sadness and a frown, and the sun, with glowing brightness.
As for the sprinklers, he takes pictures of those using his tablet camera.
After breakfast at McDo, we’re on our way to the condominium garden area, where we will just sit down and laze away the hours until eleven AM, when we can finally proceed to the mall. To Joseph, the mall is more than a hub of shops; it’s a sky filled with secrets, a landscape of fire alarms and sprinklers waiting to be spotted and studied.
When we’re finally able to walk into a mall, the cool blast of air conditioning greets us, carrying the smell of fresh donuts and new shoes. Joseph’s steps quicken, his head tipping back until he’s looking straight up, eyes wide like an explorer charting unmarked territory. I slow my pace to match his, each step deliberate so as not to rush the sacred ritual of discovery.
“There!” he says, pointing out a cluster of sprinkler heads. He snaps a picture of the silver disks gleaming faintly, as they are caught in the glow of the recessed lights. Joseph’s face is lit not just by the ceiling’s reflections but by something more—a bright and earnest joy. I look up too, my neck craning as if seeing them might let me share a fraction of the wonder that fills him.
“See the little glass tube in the middle?” he asks, his finger tracing a tiny arc in the air.
I nod. He tells me the brand of that sprinkler, and holds me like a captive student in a classroom. It’s easy to miss the magic in something as mundane as a fire alarm or a sprinkler system, but here with Joseph, under this sky of steel and plastic, it’s impossible to look away.
An older couple shuffles past us, and I catch their curiosity as they follow our upward gaze. I smile back at them, without apology. This was an unspoken acknowledgment of a moment that feels ordinary but isn’t. As the two of us walk further, each corridor of the mall became a constellation of ceiling features. For Joseph, it’s a quest; for me, it’s seeing wonder through his eyes, the pure, undiluted kind that makes any day feel extraordinary.
We sat on a bench near the fountain, the gentle rush of water mixing with the distant melody of a store’s playlist. Joseph climbs sits cross-legged as if he’s at home on a couch and goes back to his tablet, picking on the new snaps of sprinklers. He will use them later to copy and paste and give a color in a new canvas of his own making. The ceiling above is vaulted, a marvel of steel beams crisscrossing each other like a web, and sprinkled—no pun intended—with tiny red fire alarms.
“There are more of them in malls than anywhere else,” he says, sage-like as he swipes at the new pictures, his voice mingling with the sound of splashing water. I chuckle, ruffling his hair as he bats me away with a grin.
“I will count them.” Then, he’s on his feet, again, eyes sweeping upward, already counting, one, two, three… His voice fades as my gaze drops back to eye level, taking in the scene, the people milling around us, oblivious to the universe above them. But Joseph isn’t. And because of him, neither am I.
Time stretches, an elastic band that holds us together, anchored in this shared ritual of ceiling-staring. He’s at twelve when he pauses, tilting his head like he’s just realized something new. He turns to me, eyes sparkling with a blend of excitement and sincerity.
“They’re amazing, they’re everywhere. Look!” His voice gets louder. “What happens if there’s a fire Ninang?” He asks.
“You know, the sprinklers will put away the fire.” I answer.
He nods grinning, “I know.”
There’s a beat of silence, the kind that wraps around you when you’re aware of the time passing, even as you savor every second of it. The mall spins its seamless life cycle, but this—this is a moment. Joseph counting sprinklers, the two of us here, together. It’s not the grand adventures or the orchestrated outings that stick, I realize. It’s these fragments of shared awe, where the world is suspended just long enough to notice.
“Come on,” I say finally. “Let’s find more.” And with a grin, Joseph nods, the mall stretching ahead of us like a map of hidden treasures, ceilings included.
