I haven't been back since my father's funeral seven years ago. What I wanted was to visit together with my daughters, but that proved too complicated to organise and as the years dragged on, I saw that waiting for things to be perfect means I may not visit for years so I decided to visit solo -I can't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I should visit now and visit again when I get my children's papers sorted out.
Day 1 Sunday
To be more precise, first night as our flight arrived on Sunday evening. We were whisked away to my mother's ancestral home as soon as we were collected from the airport. The house was located in the rural town of Bustos about 50km north of Manila, although the place is so built-up and densely populated, the only thing that reminds me of how provincial it used to be are small plots of rice paddies that remain as most of the farmland have been sold for industrial and residential use.
The house itself had undergone a renovation as sections of it were already falling into disrepair. The last person to actually live there was my Tita Ine (aunty ''ee-neh) my mother's youngest sister, my nieces and nephews addressed her a Lola (grandma) Ine. She passed away just before the COVID pandemic.
My cousins who still live in Bustos have become de-facto caretakers of the property and for that I am grateful. It gives us all a place where we can gather as a gi-normous family and have feasts and celebrations spanning four generations. It's a reason for all my cousins scattered all over Metro Manila to make the trek to Bustos and share dinuguan, menudo and San Miguel beer, with the option of an overnight stay at the renovated ancestral home we affectionately call Villa Remedios (Remedios is Tita Ine's full name).
It was 4am by the time my sister, my bayaw and I called it a night and ended the party.
Day 2 Monday
Unsurprisingly I woke up with the mother of all hangovers and totally missed out on the family breakfast. Last night was the welcome home party for us, the freshly arrived Aussies. It also so happens today was a national holiday to remember Ninoy Aquino whose assassination 40 years ago triggered the downfall of the the Marcos dictatorship, In a biblical generation, the Filipinos have gone from ejecting a kleptocratic tyrant, to electing his son as President. As much as this shits me, the people have spoken, people like me who have migrated out have no right to judge.
The long weekend was also an opportunity to have a family party with pancit and lechon. More cousins arrived for this party. I was unable to enjoy this party as my liver was working overtime to get my systems back to normal operations. Like a zombie I just ambled at the edges of the party, watching and listening to my nephews and nieces laughing and teasing each other as we and my cousins, their parents, used to do. It was clear the next generation is in great hands, and my role in it diminishing with each year. Sad as that sounds, I'll dismiss that as the hangover talking.
By 430pm this party had wrapped up, all of us taking our share of the leftovers home back to the pockets of Metro Manila we called home. All must return and resume their work and school commitments tomorrow. Villa Remedios emptied out, cars and SUVs pulled out of the gates, and silence descends, the house settles into slumber awaiting the next family gathering. Which just happens to be next weekend due to another long weekend, as next Monday is also a national holiday..
On the drive home I watched the landscape scroll by, I struggled to identify familiar and significant places and landmarks from my life here decades ago. Freeways, billboards, and high-rise towers dominate the major traffic arteries of the sprawling megalopolis. Juxtaposed with the familiar ramshackle dwellings that have always been there. There are overgrown and abandoned industrial parks, alongside working ones. It doesn't take long for the jungle to start reclaiming unoccupied land in the tropics.
Caught a glimpse of my old high school in Makati, fenced in by tall condominiums; Magallanes cinema had long been knocked down and redeveloped, South Supermarket had long ago moved really south to Alabang; I almost missed the entrance to the subdivision in Taguig where we lived when my first daughter was born; in Bicutan I failed to locate Basilica of the Immaculate Conception as I strained to keep my bearings; the semiconductor assembly plant in Muntinglupa where I used to work before migrating; the MacDonalds at the top of the hill that used to be the site of the decaying Madrigal mansion; the entrance to Concha Cruz drive where the old Philippine Standard plant was; the site of the ARCO paper and cardboard factory which we used to be able to smell and hear from our subdivision. I catalogued the updates to my mental Google Street View and filed away old memories in my nostalgia baul.
Like my village, my own ancestral home had also changed and adapted to the age and lifestyles of my family who still lived there. Half the prized lawn which my dad kept as a vanity project (even arranging for regular tanker deliveries of water to sustain) have been given over to growing, fruit, vegetables, and herbs. The clan of shih-tzus had passed on, now it;s one dachsund in heat and a frustrated pomeranian unable to fulfil its biological imperative because of the height difference (admittedly not much of a gap, but just enough to deny all attempts at coupling).
But I was finally home, to my family.
Day 3 Tuesday
It was time to reconnect with friends. I reached out to them so they could find room for me in to their busy schedules, after all I was on vacation, they were not. Whenever they were available is when I would see them. First was a very close friend from high school who suffered a personal tragedy in the past year. I learned about it via social media last year, but I never got around to contacting him and offer my condolences. Somehow, writing a reply to their post with stock expressions of sorrow and a sad / care emoji felt trite and grossly insincere. I wanted to be there personally and offer comfort.
We spent an evening dining in Makati's 'Little Tokyo' updating each other on what's happened to us in the last seven years since we saw each other. In times past we would've hit a beerhouse and wrapped up the the night iat a massage parlor, this time neither of has had the desire nor inclination. Like the Goldilocks on Pasong Tamo, such indulgences had receded into history. We bid each other goodbye before boarding our ride-share cars for our respective homes.
I was surprised to find my mother still playing mahjong with my niece, bayaw and sister. I normally would get home around 4am every time I was out drinking with "the boys".
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