Coconut or lubi is a member of the palm tree family and the only living species of the genus Cocos. Coconuts are often considered as the “tree of life” in Philippines because of its many uses.

 

I grew up surrounded by coconut trees at Lola Viva and Lolo Santos's place. My cousins and I would try to climb up the coconut trees; but we never really got too far, because we would just slip down.

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We would use the leaves to build an outdoor fort. The narrow leaves can easily be tied together to create windows for our fort. We would play pretend in the fort as spies and create spy gadgets like watches and rings using the leaves of the coconut.

 

Once the leaves turns brown, one could easily pulled away it from tree. The dried leaf base were often wide and smooth, so we would use it to slide down this steep hill by Lola Viva's house. We would slide down so fast that we would sometimes get hurt. But ain’t no rest for the wicked, so we would just do it again and again until the adults call us back for lunch or afternoon snack.