One of the happiest events in rizals early childhood

One of the happiest events in Rizal's early childhood was the journey with his father to Antipolo,
on June 6, 1868 in order to fulfill his mother's religious vow which was made on his birth, who at
that time of this trip, had given another birth, his sister Trinidad. He was very thrilled with the
Antipolo, they went to Manila to visit Saturnina who was then studying at La Concordia in Santa
Ana.
He experienced his first sorrow when his sister Concha died in 1865. He cried bitterly over the
loss of a sister, who was then only three years old.
Even his early age, Rizal manifested artistic talents and at the age of five began to draw
sceneries, objects and people using pencil. Later he would mold in clay, objects that caught his
interest and fantasy.
Rizal also showed the potentials of a scientist. He loved nature. Being sickly and likewise
introvert, he had much time to reflect and look at the objects surrounding him. He found great
joy in looking at the flowers as they opened their petals to the warm rays of the sun, or the
growth of a beautiful plant as it increases its height or as it beams or sways itself to the soft
blows of the wind. A poet and an artist at heart, it was easy for him to see beautiful things and to
admire them. It was at this point in time of his life, that he manifested his talents as a writer,
poet, an artist and a scientist. It was also at this point in time of his life, when he made
prophecies about himself. For when his sisters and brother would taunt him for spending so
much time on making images, he said that: "Alright laugh at me now! Someday, when I die,
people will make monuments and images of me (2)."
His early childhood revealed that Rizal was not only a poet or one endowed with artistic talents,
but also that of a magician. He had dexterous hands, and learned swiftly various tricks or do acts
faster than the eye, such as making a coin appear or disappear in his fingers, or making a
handkerchief vanish in thin air. He could twist his fingers in various shapes of animals and
person and have them reflected against as shadows on a white screen.

Rizal's childhood and memories of Calamba and Laguna de Bay were happy, marred only by the
views of uniformed Spanish soldiers across the Bay and their cruelty. The Guardia Civil
lieutenant had a daily activity of canning and injuring unarmed villagers. His reactions to such
events revealed his deep concern and seriousness of the situation and his insights into the future.
Such scenario would always come back and taunt him that the birth of a dream of setting his
country free was beginning to formulate in his mind.
To this Rizal says (3):
We saw no restraint upon brutality. Acts of violence and other excesses were committed daily... I
asked myself if, in the lands which lay across the lake, the people lived in this same way. I
wondered if there they tortured any countryman with hard and cruel whips merely on suspicion.