Almost everything is ready. The luggage has been ordered from Amazon and is making its way across the vast country via UPS. The tickets are long bought, passports received, medicine in order. Relatives are waiting. Lists get smaller and smaller.
The more I hear about the Philippines today, the more I realize how long it has been since I have been under that white hot sky. Thirty-four years. It might have been a lifetime. I’m glad it is not.
What then, have been the turning points that combined into a symphony, a tidal wave of decisions to break my own self-imposed exile? There were many.
My family can cruise a few weeks without me. Put a check in that column. My time has some looseness to it. Is it really as easy as making a decision? At a certain point, being away starts to seal you off from the past.
Then, on New Year’s Eve I found myself standing in an auction house in New Hampshire, bidding on my husband’s family artifacts. It was there, standing at the front of a hall filled with old things of other people, that I was overcome with the twin feelings of alienation and incongruity. What was I doing there? I was so very far from home. So very far away.
Yes, I have a home in New Bedford. It’s a happy home filled with children, pets, and books. I am a queen of my castle. My happy marriage makes it so easy for weeks to roll into months and into years. But I miss where I grew up. I want to see it again.
Sometimes, on the way to the supermarket, I have thought, “By this time tomorrow, I could be in the Philippines.” One by one the obstacles have fallen away, and all along I realize they were obstacles of my own making. All I needed to do was decide. That’s all. That’s what I did. That’s all it took.
To make the decision, I had to move past the losses. There were huge losses. Happy memories. Painful memories. Home is gone. An earthquake took one, a typhoon wrecked another, a volcano buried a third. Humans ruined a big chunk. The beach of my grandmother’s dream is gone. My city has been deforested and overbuilt.
I have told myself about these losses when I used to give myself reasons not to go. I didn’t have to go because my cousins came here. I didn’t have to go, because seeing the change would be painful. I wouldn’t want to see it.
But I felt the call. It was a pull, a real yearning. It was a feeling that my heart was connected to a string and this need to go home was pulling the string. It became an illogical yearning. It became the thought that grew and grew.
I bought tickets. I ordered a passport. I’m ready to go. One more week and one more day. I can hardly believe it. I broke my own spell, and now I can go back every year or more. I’m free!


