The Philippines - Life List

On March 16, I will mark two items off of my life list: Trace my roots in the Philippines, and take my parents back to their home towns. I've got all these swirling emotions of excitement, fear, anxiety, anticipation, welling joy, and fitful doubts. When I booked the trip, I was unsure of why, although I knew it was right. Something was telling me it was time.

It's been 28 years since I made the long journey with my mother. I was a child then of a tender 5 years, visiting a place I never knew for a bittersweet visit for mom, who came to bury her father.

I have flashes of memories from that trip: a sleepover with my cousins, playing coffin, falling asleep on mausoleum stone during the funeral. I was too young to understand my mother's grief, and she was too hurt to explain to me. I haven't asked her how she felt that day, and so now I have the chance to ask her again. I met my grandmother for the first and last time, I still remember her glasses, and her dark complexion. I'm sure she kissed my fat cheeks, and she knew that this was hello and goodbye. It was all a blur then, and it is now, and I seek to remember and perhaps feel something real from that point in my life.

As for dad, he's always been a mystery. A quiet man of peculiar eccentricities, the way he spits, and clears his throat in an obscene way. His thoughts he reserves only for himself, and have only ever been revealed in stories of lost years growing up on a plantation harvesting sugar cane and coconuts. I never met his side of the family. I'll only have the chance to see an aunt or uncle or two of which 4 of the 13 still remain. Dad left the hard life of the farm to find an education, he broke the mold, and role he was supposed to take as a laborer. I hope dad will let me in one more time again and help me see a glimpse into what drove him to leave, and change his name to hide in the city.

Marvin