thing-a-week 16: tunnel book

This is my first attempt at a tunnel book. It was my original plan for part of an anniversary gift, but I went with something else instead. :) I'm not going to share photos of that, though, so you get this tunnel book.

The top-view photo is actually older; you can see in the front-view photo that the flaps in the back have been cut off.

Tunnel books can be flattened for storage. Some of them have cover flaps — which I guess is why they're called "books", but I opted to leave this open. You can read more about tunnel books on Wikipedia.

The scene, for those of you who may not be familiar with the place, is inspired by the Kalsangi golf course and its view of Mt. Matutum.

Letter No. 18

Somewhere near B Street.

I'm looking for home in the trees of another town. I'm looking at the sky above and through the leaves and wondering if it's as blue, or if, like the trees, it's just a shade of what I've just left behind for the hundredth time.

It's supposed to have gotten easier. But there are always corners of home I didn't spend enough time in, people I didn't spend enough time with, and things I didn't get to do, or do enough.

You'd think it would be easier to have your loved ones in one place, but over four short days, I've realized that it can just make your choices clearer and thus more difficult. You want to keep your boyfriend company on the bank rocks, but that means not playing with your younger cousins down-river. You want to hang out with your brothers in the living room, but that means not chatting to your lola as she putters around in her bedroom. You want to check in on your childhood haunts and remind yourself that the past really happened, but that means not being present with everyone else who stayed indoors.

Meanwhile, the future and the city are just three days, two days, one day, and then one plane ride nap away. And if you take even just one moment to stop and change your mind about one of your choices, or even if you don't, you will always wonder if you're making the good ones.

In the city, I look for home in shorter, thinner trees. I tell myself that good or bad, the choices were made, and mine. Cris says, "Hey," kisses my hand, makes me laugh, and brings me into the present. The sun is shining. Traffic is light. The sky, despite everything else, is blue.

Cris squeezes my hand, and I know that at least one of my choices has been a good one.

Letter No. 17

In a few days, I'll be taking Cris home with me to Socsksargen. He's been pretty busy with work and other things, so he says it hasn't sunk in for him yet. But I've been looking forward to it every day this March, because I've been looking forward to bringing him home since last year, and now we actually have a date, and that date is in sight.

I don't expect him to like everything, of course. In fact, I really don't know what to expect. A lot of good-natured ribbing from my brothers, to be sure. A lot of walking, maybe some hiking. Definitely some swimming, as my parents want to drive straight from the airport to a Sarangani resort for the first two days. Dad's birthday. Maybe Nadie's chicken and some blackened tuna. Cousins over for Easter. A little church.

I'm most looking forward, though, to the walking — taking Cris to all my favorite places, showing him my school, walking under the old trees, and basically giving him the grand tour of my home planet.

Home is a part of me that I, unlike a lot of people I know here, can't just show people by asking them to come over later for dinner. It takes patience, cash, good timing, and a copy or a bookmark of one of those long weekend calendars floating around, especially if you have to watch for airline promos. And ever since my job made me more office-bound, it's become harder to plan trips home. So, every trip I get to take is precious, and the people I get to take with me are precious, too.

When I do invite friends to fly home with me sometime, or when my parents say I should bring them with me, I always warn my friends, "There's nothing to do there. There's no nightlife or anything like that. If you want to go to a bar, you have to drive 45 minutes through the dark pineapple fields to General Santos, about 60km away. We will probably just walk around a lot, eat, and sleep. You'll probably have all the pineapple you want, though, and we will probably get a tuna jaw for lunch or dinner sometime." Walking around a lot, eating, and sleeping is basically my dream life, but of course, it's not for everybody.

The timing for this trip is actually not that great; between Sarangani, the cousins coming, Dad's birthday, and church stuff, I don't really know how much time I'll get to walk around with just Cris. But it's the best we could get, given how unpredictable this year promises to be. I look forward to it all the same; for however briefly, I'll be home, and he'll be there with me.

Letter No. 10

The other day, I realized that this is the longest I've been home in about two years. For the last two visits, I was here for just three to five days. This time, I'm home for ten.

I thought the fact that I took the briefness so well before meant that I'd adjusted to life away. But it turns out that the longer you stay, the longer you want to stay, and the more painful it is to think about leaving again.

Maybe it's just as well. It's a test of the heart, and it's been a while since I've thought seriously about what I want to do. I thought I'd been doing just that toward the end of the year, but somehow, sitting on top of the monkey bars and listening to the birds and the wind and the bugs sort of stretches out your vision, so you see more paths, and more branches to those paths, than you thought you had.

I can't help rethinking my childhood dreams whenever I'm here. More than ever, I see that I had no clue what getting those dreams entailed.

For some reason, I've been thinking about one of my classmates who seems to have settled here. I imagine her driving her truck to work past the pine trees, working in the same little hospital where we had our school physicals as kids, and maybe having dinner with her boyfriend (who works at the plant? in the next town?) before driving home to her family in the house where she grew up.

I know other classmates who've also stayed home and who also say that this makes them happy. And really, I can see why. It wasn't really that long ago that I wanted the same kind of life for myself, and the jungle gym alone is enough to remind me that some part of me never really stopped wanting.

Last year, one of my friends said something on Twitter about deciding what to leave behind and what to take with them into 2012. I actually thought it was silly; this person had a great life. But here, I can see that even a great life needs re-evaluation. That scares me.

I wrote the above two days ago, and it's now just 45 minutes into the new year. This year's celebrations are even more low-key than the last. At midnight, I kissed my parents and my lola to greet them Happy New Year, and then Cris called to greet me, too. All of my friends are gone for the holidays, so, with no one else to hang out with after the fireworks at the neighborhood party, I decided to go home.

The stars were out, and the wind was a little chilly, but I was warmed by thoughts of my family, friends, and Cris, even if they weren't with me. I walked under the trees and past the playground, and as if on cue, I looked up and saw a shooting star. When I got home, I let the dog in, made myself some hot chocolate, and knew that the feelings of the past several days were what I wanted to take into the new year.

I want to stay conscious of the way I relate to my family. I see them less and less every year, so every moment counts. I want less twinges of regret over something I said, however small, or the tone of my voice, and more certainty that I'm treating them the way they deserve.

I want the mixed rush and relaxation that comes from being outside — from spacing out on the monkey bars, taking a long walk around my tree-filled neighborhood, hiking across the pineapple fields and up and down gullies with my family, watching the clouds drift over the swaying trees as the sun sets, and finding that weird balance between calm and inspired twitchiness under the open sky. This is something that might be really hard to recreate in the city, but I'd really like to try.

I want more openness to doing things for other people, just because.

I'd like Cris to be able to share more of these things. Things have been going at a pretty comfortable pace, and for the most part, it feels like we're still getting to know each other. For the past few days, I've been getting back in touch with parts of myself that he's just begun to see, and I can't wait to bring him back with me later this year.

There's more, but it's now 2 in the morning, and I should get some sleep. For now, here's all hope for a happy new year.

Moved Out, Moved In

I was sad when I first heard that my family was moving, but I can't deny that I was kind of excited yesterday to come home to the new house. While it was once the home of my oldest friend, and it felt strange to turn onto her street and down her driveway instead of ours, as soon as I went up the stairs, I knew that this was now my family's home, too.

It's not just because of the same old position of the couch relative to the dining table, of my bed relative to the door, or of my mom's blue-and-white cabinet to the stairs, though these little details are kind of funny. My family didn't just transplant everything as-is, either. Old cabinets and shelves in new corners, an unfamiliar coffee table, and maybe the biggest change of all, my lola sharing a room with me, all pointed to one thing I realized before falling asleep in my (our) new room.

This is a good change. The new house somehow suits us. My family is growing older and mellower. Our habits are shifting. We are throwing or putting away things we no longer need. And the things we keep, from the broken elephant lampstand to my dad's penchant for funny dances, are for us to enjoy. We are still home.

Moving House

By tomorrow, if not this evening, my family will have moved out of the house where I grew up. My folks were given a week to get everything out and over to a different house on a different street. The news came one week ago and was short notice for everyone—too short for me and my brother to fly home suddenly, help with the move, and say goodbye to our old house.

That's the mixed blessing of living in company housing, I guess. My family will still be living in Kalsangi, but when I next go home, it'll be to a different house.

I wish we'd known at Christmas; I would have taken more pictures. In recent years, I didn't take so many pictures of the house, because I'd always believed it was the same house I'd always return to; all my family's trails led back to one place. Now, I'm making do with what I can dig up from my computer and my old Multiply account.

If I had to pick just three photos to share, it would be these.

The front door, of course, and the beginning and end of everything (sorry about the light).

My brothers in the sala, before dinner. This space was the most alive part of the house. After I started working, I spent more and more time here than in my own room whenever I was home.

Half of the view from my bedroom window in the morning. It never failed to make me feel glad to be where I was.

When I next go home (I don't know when that will be), someone else will have this view, and I'll have something else to wake up to. I feel a little sick thinking about it.

I had always believed that we would live in our house, and my mom had once told me that we would likely turn down any offer to move to a nicer house. As far as we were concerned, we already had the nicest house in the neighborhood. I'm having trouble understanding now the reasons we have to move.

To me, the house was a physical space that contained my past. While I knew we wouldn't have that space forever, I'd always believed that I'd have time to go back and be the one to empty it. I knew where everything was, waiting for me, and I knew how I'd carry it away. But, I don't get to do that right now. Next time I go home, everything will be in mysterious boxes, or in the wrong box, or on the wrong shelf, and it will feel like visiting a museum of myself that someone else has curated.

When my brother and I got the news, we both told our parents the same thing.

"Don't throw anything away."

Back from Mars

On my last day home, I took a walk around Kalsangi by myself.

I ended up somewhere on the golf course between the 9th and 2nd fairways, and as I looked at all the trees and the space and listened to the birds and insects, I was overwhelmed with heartache and loneliness.

Dramatic, maybe, but those are still the best words for the feeling.

I kept thinking of the Martian Manhunter.

Image source: Comics Alliance

I haven't read any of the comics he's appeared in, but in the cartoons, J'onn J'onzz is the last surviving member of his race and now lives on Earth as a superhero.

"Kind of like Superman?" you might ask. Well, yes, and no.

Superman was sent to Earth as a child and grew up more or less an American boy. While he has his own angsty, "I'm too different; no one understands me," moments, to me, they're kind of on the level of the identity crises every young adult goes through.

Martian Manhunter, on the other hand, escaped a horrible plague as an adult. Upon his arrival on Earth, his Martian identity was more or less fully formed.

That's why I think he feels the loss of Mars more keenly than Clark/Kal-El would for a Krypton escaped in infancy, and the alienation, no pun intended, that J'onn experiences among his adopted people must also be much, much higher than Clark's. More than any other superhero, Martian Manhunter is separate from the people he has chosen to live with and protect.

I hope this explains why, as I stood where I took the 360-degree panorama below, three thoughts kept repeating themselves in succession:

1. the magical, fearful, reverent, "I am in a place that is unique in all the world."
2. the slightly more self-centered, "Because I grew up in this place, I am also unique in all the world."
3. the similar, "No matter how long or far I live away from this place, I'll always be like Martian Manhunter."

Click to enlarge.

Hear me out. I know I'm not the only person who grew up in Kalsangi nor the only person who had an idyllic childhood. I'm also deeply aware of the other truths about Kalsangi: it's a middle-upper-middle-class village for a multinational company's senior management, and it has all the comforts of a Manila executive's provincial summer home, year-round. The only thing I really lacked was consistent and prolonged exposure to the larger world outside.

But, that's precisely the reason I'm writing this now, and why I wrote this post last year. That's why I feel like J'onn J'onzz or John (the) Savage, even if on a much smaller scale. No matter how easily I've come to function outside of Kalsangi, I've never felt like "one of the people." I may be thriving and even happy in Metro Manila, but it never feels like home.

Maybe the best way to explain the feeling is not to see myself as a born Martian, like J'onn J'onzz, but a made Martian, like the children of "The Million Year Picnic."

Imagine that Martian Manhunter helped a bunch of Earth scientists set up a colony on his wasted home planet. That environment would be both manmade and wild, reachable and isolated, comfortable and spare—all the things I knew Kalsangi to be, at least before Internet access, better cable TV, and Gensan's current economic boom. Imagine that human families had children and raised them in that colony. Barring books and a few field trips every now and then, that would be all the world to those children.

Then, imagine that some of those children were told to leave, to go "home" to Earth and make a new life for themselves there. Imagine the taunts and the funny looks they'd get because of their diction, their cultural clumsiness, and their general lack of fashion sense. They would be expected to do and talk and live as their fellow Earthlings—it should be easy, as Earthlings!

Except, inside, they would also be Martians, always and forever.

I can see my house from here.

....

Whenever I came home and found that home had stayed the same no matter how I'd changed, I felt reassured. This Christmas, it's home that's changed, and it feels like for good.

The other day, I had just an hour to spend with some of my oldest friends. My family had to go to church in a bit, Kim and Kriselle would be leaving for Davao again the next day, and I wasn't sure if I'd see Mariel again in Kalsangi after Christmas (I'm flying back to Manila tomorrow).

Of the four of us, only Mariel has lived in Kalsangi longer than my family. In January, she and her family will be moving away.

This vacation has literally been a nostalgia trip. While going around the neighborhood, I haven't been able to stop thinking, "So-and-so used to live there. I used to climb that rock. I used to go inside that shop and look at the bracelets. My friends and I once called that cluster of trees Narnia. I used to go to that pond and catch those tiny frogs."

I wish there was more time.

In our family, Christmas has rarely been just for us. My mom is so involved in the community that she's buying, baking, cooking, wrapping, and delivering presents till well past Christmas day. It's a lot for one person to do alone, which is why the rest of us get roped into helping her. I guess it's selfish of me to wish that just one Christmas Eve, she could have nothing to do, but I wish it all the same.

Then I remember that I live in Manila; if I didn't, she'd have an extra pair of hands leading up to the holidays, and maybe by Christmas, she'd be chilling on the couch and listening to her favorite CDs, instead of begging my brother to get away from the computer and deliver this tin of fruit cocktail cake to the Parcons.

Things have settled down now, so I think it's safe to "plan" today on doing nothing but letting my memory catch up and settle itself also. I just wish there was more time.

The Save Point

Many video games have what's called a save point. It can be an object, like a hoop to jump through or a glowing star or crystal to touch; a place, like the plaza of each village you visit or a sparkly bit of grass along your way; or even a person, like a healer, guide, or good fairy waiting at just the right point in the game.

Whatever form the save point takes, it's a typically a point where you save not only your progress but also your character's current state. If it's the last save point before the next big battle, it's a good place to assess your character's skills and equipment and prepare as best you can for what's coming next. And if your character is injured or killed, you simply reload the game at the save point to try again.

So it wasn't such a stretch for a high school crush to once write that life has its save points also. For him, the save points were moments when life was good, he was in a good mental and physical state, he was aware of these things, and he felt ready for anything. If he went through trouble in the future, he had only to recall his last save point to remind himself that things were once better and could be again.

I've never called it a save point, but that's what my childhood home has always been for me. Because it's a place, though, my save point is a little less like my schoolmate's and a little more like a video game's. I go home, see how my family has grown older while my bedroom still looks like a 15-year-old's, see how some trees have been chopped down while others have grown taller, think of what I've left in Manila and what I'll return to, ask myself how I plan to handle it, and steel myself accordingly.

This time, though, I realized that my capacity for acceptance had increased before I'd even arrived. While I was eager to be home again, I knew in the back of my mind that it would only be for a short time and that because my family was older—my parents' and lola's age showing more than ever, my youngest brother a high schooler in a big man's body—things would not be as I remembered. I just had to be glad for the time I did have and go with the flow.

So, I spent my first day shopping with my mom, partly to wait for my dad's flight to come in after mine and partly to reacquaint myself with the idea that getting new clothes isn't always a waste of money.

On the second day, we went to church, then to sing hymns by my lolo's grave, then to our favorite roadside grilled chicken place, then home for an afternoon indoors because of the rain.

On Monday, we went to a secret beach—no fences, no signs; you just drive right off the road and pay some lady P10 per head—to snorkel against the current over a patch reef.

On Tuesday, I finally got to take a walk. I took Buster, because he'd been cooped up recovering from a sprain, and my brother Mon, to hold Buster's leash. When it started to rain, though, they both went home (but not before I had to chase the dog chasing the neighbor's pet rabbit—fun for both me and the dog, though his limp returned afterward). I stayed outside, took a dizzying turn on the tire swing, then walked.

This was the walk I knew I had to take before I left again. I went down my street, up the main street, across the back grass to the quadrangle of my school, down to the pavilion and then back up to the high school, then down again the back way, on the route I'd take with my friends in our uniforms. And while I walked, all the sights I knew, every house and tree and shrub I'd passed hundreds of times on hundreds of walks, runs, and rides seemed to wink and wave at me. My homecoming was complete, even as I was to leave the next day.

I felt happy. I think I was happy that though my life, short as it's been, was behind me, I had lived it. I looked forward to getting as old as my lola, and not all my memories were nor had to be sad. My home and my family would always be there, even after my parents retired and moved away.

And near the end of my walk, under a tree between the houses of my oldest friends, I found blooming some yellow wood flowers I thought had died out, and their seed blossoms littered the ground.

--

When I got on the plane again the next day, I cried a little, not for the home I was leaving behind—I wasn't leaving it behind—but for a person I'd left before leaving Manila. I hadn't thought about Martin much over the weekend, except to note that he wouldn't have been able to enjoy something my family and I were doing at that moment, but he came to mind then as the crew readied for takeoff.

I cried because I was witnessing the dying gasp of what we were together, because I knew in that moment that I didn't want him back at all, not if it meant more of the hurt and more of the past. A lot would have to change first.

Time now for the present and the future, for takeoff and flight.

Time for Time

I'm flying home this Saturday to spend the long weekend somewhere quiet, green, and familiar.

Maybe it's just my brain flipping out over the clean oxygen, but something magical always happens to me whenever I go home after a long time away. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing my family, my oldest friends, my favorite neighborhood haunts, and the dog. But I'm also looking forward to taking a long walk alone around the place, just to reacquaint myself with myself.

This is usually done by any combination of the following: looking for the kinds of leaves and seeds and rocks I played with as a kid, crossing the gully bridge to the high school campus, visiting the abandoned pond behind the Grade Two classrooms, standing under any tree in the ballpark, taking the pine-needle-covered path to the Clubhouse, and/or sitting on a half-buried boulder in the backyard of an empty house, just on the edge of the eight fairway.

At some point in the middle of all this, I can expect to be blindsided (every time) by the general feeling that all is well, my life has a purpose, and even if it doesn't, all shall still be well. If I'm feeling particularly low at that moment, some crying may be involved. If I'm especially lucky, it happens at that odd hour in late-mid-afternoon when the sun hangs an golden veil over everything, and walking feels like a swimmy dream, or a Florence + the Machine song.

Possibly this one (thanks for the share, Meg).

It's like Adam Young having one last perfect summer day in Lower Tadfield, or perhaps Ruth Belville going to Greenwich just to set her watch.

I can already feel it in my ribcage; this is going to be the best time.

A Reintroduction

This is more for myself than anyone else.

I was born in General Santos City, South Cotabato in 1987. My father was (and still is, really) an engineer at Dole Phils., Inc., and my mother, a homemaker overqualified for the local job market at the time.

I went to Dole Philippines School, which some people remember as an international school (it isn't anymore) and others think is in Bukidnon (which I will always rebut, and often vehemently).

After I finished first grade, my dad got a transfer to the Dole Fruit & Nut Co. in Fresno, California. We lived there for three years.

I often wonder if that time period is too brief for me to still have an accent, but there were other factors:
- English was my first language.
- Even before we left for the States, most of my playmates were Americans and/or English-speaking Filipinos.
- No one else my age spoke Filipino when we went to the States, not even the kids at the Filipino church we attended (where the service was in English).
- The three years abroad were what child development folks consider part of a person's formative years.
- When we returned, it was to a place where few people spoke Filipino/Tagalog; the local vernacular was either Bisaya or Ilonggo.
- When we returned, Americans and/or English-speaking Filipinos were the ones who were most friendly to me. I quickly associated the vernacular with bullies and so wasn't keen to be like them.
- All of the young adult books in our school library were in English.
- The only teacher who gave me one-on-one help in learning the national language was my Grade Five teacher, the first Filipino teacher I had upon returning to Kalsangi--which is probably why my grasp of the language is still Fourth-Grade-level.
- I wasn't an attentive student. Sometimes, I would look away from the board for a moment and then look back, only to find that it had completely changed--plus 20 minutes had gone by. I was really more interested in library books, computers, and imagining pulpy stories than in studying for any subject, much less Filipino.
- I was consistently in the top three of my class (I usually was and eventually graduated #3), so I didn't really feel pressured to work any harder.

We came home. When I wasn't out with friends or holed up somewhere reading, I was outside--biking, hiking, climbing trees, and swimming.

In my senior year of high school, I read a spare copy of "The Purpose-Driven Life" lying around the house and gave my life to Jesus.

I went to the Ateneo de Manila University for college. The greater brains, talent, and/or initiative shown by many of my batchmates there made me feel worthless. Church, prayer, journalling, blogging, books, philosophy and theology classes, shifting out of the School of Management, and joining the school's literary publication put me back on my feet.

In senior year, I became disenchanted with the church I was attending and frustrated that it didn't have adequate answers to my questions.

I read an essay by a guy I hadn't met yet and, under some compulsion, had an imaginary conversation with him while alone in my dorm room that night.

I graduated from college and got my first job at a different church, for two reasons: I was getting desperate, as there weren't many job openings that weren't outsourcing- , broadcasting- , or sales/marketing-related, and I wanted to see if this church might have the answers I sought.

After one year, I left, also for two reasons: I wanted to write more, but more importantly, my beliefs had become increasingly liberal. It was clear to me that my beliefs (and questions) didn't fit in with the teachings and culture of that church--or any other I had attended thus far--and that my employers deserved someone who truly shared their vision. I left as quietly as I could, without telling anyone there of my second reason, because I was afraid of being judged.

Between graduation and early this year, my self-esteem went up and down in what's fashionably known as a quarterlife crisis but could generally be described as me feeling wasted and rootless. I missed home with my family, fresh air, grass you didn't have to keep off, trees, insects, nearby sea, and big sky. I also fidgeted for something to keep me busy outside of books and writing (I've been too drained by work), until I found a craft I could really enjoy.

Also between graduation and early this year, I was reintroduced to the guy who wrote the essay I'd read and, over the course of the next few weeks, heard the other half of that imaginary conversation. We've been together two years, four months, and six days. Among many good things, he's helped me to believe in myself again.

A few months ago, I went to Singapore for a week with my family, and for some reason, I'm still not over it.

I have been working at this company for nearly two years (full come September). Last month, I was promoted to assistant editor.

Today, I'm bracing myself now for more changes at work. I'm looking forward to catching up with my brother and moving to a bigger apartment. I'm taking things with Martin as they come. I hope to get better at my new craft. I'm still unchurched, but secure in my faith. I still miss home or long for places like Singapore, but it doesn't get to me as it used to. I try not to regret my "wasted" youth, because it isn't over yet.

All things considered, I am happy, and thankful.

Priorities 1

It started to rain just as I was about to step out of the office, get groceries (i.e. a carton of milk, a bottle of water, a can of tuna, a can of soup, and a bag of potatoes), and go home, so I guess I'll post an update while waiting out the rain--which is getting stronger as I type.

The other weekend, I went home in time for Kalilangan. Pictures here.

The funny thing was that all the thinking I usually do during a one-or-two-week homecoming, I managed to do in two-and-a-half days. The usual is basically:

1. My life in Manila, and having to return to it
2. Martin
3. My career
4. Stuff I miss about my family

The other funny thing was that I left with my head clearer than it usually is after a homecoming.

My plan now is to enjoy today. I have a sort-of-distant date in mind for a much longer return home, but that's not going to be an excuse for me to do well where I am right now. Nor will I pass up on special opportunities as they come by--even if seizing one might actually mean putting off my return for an even later date, whether that's by two or three years or indefinitely. I won't let my desire to go home keep me from finding something worth staying here for.

And speaking of things worth staying for, I feel like I can finally just enjoy being with Martin without worrying about the future. Last year, setting my sights on the future, however clouded, helped dull the difficulty of the present. Now that the present is much better, I'm slowly relearning not only how to accept it, but also how to enjoy it. Already, I'm much happier for it. I'm glad for Martin's patience, too.

There's a part 2 to this post, but it's stopped raining, so I'm going to take off now. Cheers.

Between the Lines

After this morning's rain, the line that separates the sea from the sky is starting to reform. I'm supposed to be looking up things that I can use for my articles, but instead I'm looking at my family photos, reading, and watching Martin's face.

I don't know if they were there before, but there are deeper lines at the corners of his eyes when he smiles. I remember, nearly two years ago, I held his face in my hands and stared, imagining how he would look in thirty, forty, fifty years' time. Now, I can't help but think, It's starting. It feels too soon.

I guess I'll make no secret about it. I'm thinking of going home. It won't just be for vacation, but for--well, however long it takes for me to come to terms with having to leave again. The darkening on my father's cheeks, the weariness in my mother and grandmother's eyes, and the gruff voice coming out of my youngest brother's yet unlined face--I want to be there to see and hear them over time, to get used to age at all its stages, and not for it to surprise me every time I come out of the baggage claim. More than mere escape from the self-absorbed city, I want this.

Martin is better than I at this diving deep into work, this tuning out stuff, stuff. I don't know whether I'd like that gift--maybe then I'd be keeping tabs on the International Consumer Electronics Show, studying Android, or reading up on aftermarket car alarms, instead of writing this--or if I just need more time to tamp down these feelings, bury them under my more everyday concerns.

I'm a little scared of what would happen to us if I did go home. While I don't doubt that he would be a better long-distance boyfriend than my first and last, I'm afraid that being apart, and in such different places, would only further underline our differences. I particularly mean those that have come about because we've been so shaped by these places.

(Dooown't stop! Beh-leeeeeeaven!)

I'm afraid that when I come back (because I have to come back), I'll come out of Arrivals and also be at a loss, at the sight of whatever new lines are there on his face.

I wonder if it would in fact be better for me to stay here and just keep trying to get used to it. If I'm going to end up back here, anyway, I might as well. But then, it's been three years; you'd think I'd have found a way by now.

Hang on; it's time for lunch.

Note to Self

There are things you should remember from the past almost-two-weeks, such as:

1. Walking to the gully with your dad, dog, and brothers on Christmas Day; Mikko cool in jeans while we wore old PE pants too short to cover our ankles; taking a turn at a long root to scale the gully wall and having a rock land on your knee--the ugly purple and yellow bruise that formed afterward; opting for the slippery fallen tree instead of the concrete bridge over the ravine that cut through the golf course; Buster under the faucet.

2. Going again to the gully on New Year's Day; looking at rocks and things and swinging a natural wooden "finglonger" around while they stuck piccolo firecrackers in the cracks of the gully walls; the way the white dust fell like water from the wall after a little blast and then became a cloud once it hit the gully floor; the lab foaming at the mouth and straining at the leash as the fuses burned and then galloping across the sand to sniff at ground zero.

3. Tracks on the fairway shortly after sunrise; the short grass under your bare feet because the slapping of your slippers sprayed your back with dew; Dad; Dad's back and the dog trotting at his side as they walked before you toward the early morning sun.

4. Lola worrying herself into illness over her siblings and the family land; a pot of lugaw at every meal because she no longer eats regular rice; a long duster, blue and tawny batik, a knit sweater and a scarf from her eldest grandson; repeated refusals to go to hospital; sitting alone on what used to be the family church pew.

5. Your complete inability to remember (or believe) the fact that your grandfather spent his last Christmas in the hospital, in 2004.

6. Mom needing help to stand up and complaining about her knees upon entering an air-conditioned mall; keeping your head down and smiling as she hands you task after last-minute Christmas task; being tekky, e; Christmas dinner at the Hapit Anay carinderia; giving up the computer so that she can work on the liturgy; squash seeds.

7. Riding in the back of the pickup with your brothers after buying fireworks; the pineapple fields in various stages of planting; the air getting colder as you drew nearer to home.

8. The first time you decided not to go to the Clubhouse to watch the fireworks with the rest of the neighborhood (excluding years in which holidays were spent outside of Kalsangi) at midnight; late lunches and dinners.

9. The unspoken acceptance that Momon is no longer too young to watch what he has long understood; 3 Idiots, Rancchodas Shyamaldas Chanchad (zubi dubi zubi dubi pum parram), Mithter Rathtogi; returning briefly to the days before everyone had a laptop and jockeying for turns, when Mon put Spore on the only computer with a graphics card good enough; Bosher; good questions, smart answers, and sharp snark; watching the DVD of his performance at the high school battle of the bands just minutes before you had to leave for the airport.

Caught in the Roots

Home usually waits till I'm about to leave to tug at my heartstrings and make me wish I could stay, but just two days after Christmas and four days after I flew in, I'm already torn up inside.

My mom is getting older. She still doesn't look a day over 30, but the usual holiday stress is starting to wear her down. She was about to crack on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day, she was running a fever and had to go to bed. For the first time ever, we ate Christmas dinner out. We ended up at a roadside carinderia that night (not to sound picky, mind you; our first choice was some other roadside spot that our family has loved for years, but they were closed for the holidays).

I kind of envy my friends who are also daughters and get to stay at home all year. If that were my situation, then I'd be around to relieve my mom of some of her usual Christmas "duties" as she got older, and she wouldn't be too stressed to really enjoy the holidays with us. Instead, I live on the other side of the country and fly in at the peak of the rush (and the stress), and the most I can do to help is not much at all--wrap last-minute gifts, tidy up, set the table. I can't even cook.

Then, there's the news that a friend of my mom's wants to start a daily newspaper in the city and could use some help. The reason I always gave for moving to Manila--there's no jobs for people who aren't entrepreneurs--is starting to look less and less correct. There's also all this outsourcing stuff that lets you work from wherever, and that could be home.

And then, there's just the fact that when I look out of the window here, I see more trees and flowers in two seconds than I ever see in my entire commute to and from work in Quezon City. When I look at the sea, I know I'm not separated from it by a huge cement barrier and miles of garbage. When I go for a walk, I don't have to watch for passing vehicles--I don't have to watch for anything, except maybe the occasional trigger-happy guard who can't tell a friendly collared dog from a rabid stray.

Why don't I stay? It just gets harder and harder to answer whenever I return.

Counting Down to Halloween

It's only August, but I've got Halloween on the brain already. My parents just sent me plane tickets to go home for that weekend plus the two days of the dead that follow--despite my telling them I'd go home for Christmas. It's nice to have folks that miss you. :)

Halloween has always been a fun time at Kalsangi because of the annual trick-or-treat. It's a big neighborhood thing, to outdo one another with decorations and scary sound effects. I've gone from going from street-to-street for candy to sitting in the garage and giving it out, but the feeling of fun and mischief is the same.

I may have missed a Halloween or two; if so, I don't remember those. Since I left for college, Halloween has become synonymous with homecoming. It helps that, while my mom is always pretty active in getting our street to come up with a really original theme, we always use the same old decorations at our own house each year.

I have a good excuse to walk around my crazy neighborhood at night (though really, I don't need an excuse). I get to see which little kids I used to fawn over are now strangers in puberty. I still like to dress up, even though there's no one in particular I'm looking to impress anymore. There's still the food and drinks in the Clubhouse at the end of everything with my family and friends.

Hay, it's only August, but I can't wait.