Going Home Again

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!

St. Valentine’s Day

I’m not quite sure who St. Valentine was, except that he was a Roman martyr.

I’ve always believed that marriage is a piece of heaven on earth. We started our story on uncommon ground. I had been widowed by suicide, and was (still am) a devout Catholic. His story was unique in its stability. At the altar of his childhood church, we pledged our lives to each other. His side of the church was filled with relatives from this region. My side of the church was from around the world.

The great thing about marriage was that we both felt that we had come home at last. Years tumbled by, we had children, we moved once, twice, thrice and more. We acquired pets and a mortgage. Our kids went to college, they started moving out. Some came back. The youngest became taller than me.

Somewhere when we weren’t looking, gray hair came, and wrinkles stopped disappearing after a frown went away.

The years are flying and I want to slow them down.

It’s all a miracle, isn’t it? Every single day is new. Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!

 

Going Home

It came upon me at odd moments.This memory of a train station in a small town in the Bicol Region of the Philippines. We were the way to sing near Mount Mayon, the most perfect cone in the world. A man took out his violin and started playing, “Hating Gabi”. It was a serenade. We started singing. Then, I felt my heart crack open and all the sadness and hope I ever felt flew out of it and swirled around the room. That moment has not left me.

Another one takes place at the beach. We took our siesta in the old hotel where the rooms looked out over the ocean. Going to sleep with the sound of the waves was heavenly. I woke up and went out onto the balcony.  The sky was split in two. On one side the dark back of thunderclouds extended from the horizon to the mountains behind us. On the other side the sun shone brilliantly on the water. The contrast startled me. I have never forgotten that sky.

I remember walking down near the swimming pool and the sea sparkled with millions of diamonds. A band played and everywhere was the sound of a summer afternoon. The kitchen staff and waiters were our allies. We knew all their life stories.

There is a large tropical bungalow with a wraparound porch and several acacia trees in the yard. Down the street is the officer’s club. Across the street is the base library where I spend the afternoon with books. A block away is a parade ground, green and majestic.

All my modern life in America, I have been visited by memories of the Philippines. A lilt in a voice, a snatch of music. The names of my children, the food we eat – all come from my past.

I could never outrun it, it was a past laden with more loss than anyone I know who hasn’t been through a war. The losses are not scars anymore, but beautiful locked gardens in my heart. Certain keys open up the garden gates – a song, an image, meeting with old friends. Then inside all the pent up sadness flies out like a flock of sparrows. They fly high up in the air, set free. I see that the pain has turned into a deep and precious memory. A picture book that I can take out again and again.

A few months ago, on the feast of La Naval de Manila, I sat reading an essay by Nick Joaquin on that ancient feast. Seeing the procession in my mind’s eye, I burst into tears. Outside the autumn light gilded everything. From my kitchen came the aroma of a delicious dinner. I was sitting at my husband’s desk and I just prayed. “Please, please find a way for me to get back. I just need to go home now.”

Last week I decided to go back. Everything fell into place. My family here will continue in its orderly fashion for the three weeks I am gone. I’m bringing two daughters. I’m going home!

We all have multiple homes. This house in Massachusetts is my family’s home now. For some of my children, it is the only home they can remember. My Philippine life had three homes. One in Baguio, and one in Bauang, La Union, and one is Clark Field, the old US Air Force Base. These places live in memory,, but the bonds of love and place are pulling me back to stand in their ashes and see the ruins. Clark will still be recognizable. The other two places will be an archeologist’s confrontation with personal loss.

I can hardly wait to see their old bones, and lovingly say hello to them again. I hope to show my daughters the things that remained. There is a view of the mountains behind our Baguio house, the forest of pines across the street. There is the ocean down at the beach, and the ruins will be like a gothic storybook. I’ll be able to show them where I learned to ride a bike, and where we, as young cousins would sing and dance in the old restaurant.  And at Clark, the old house is an office now, the building is intact, and that is a marvel.

The winds of change blew me into this marvelous life, and now the winds of memory are bringing me back with gratitude.

We can go home again.

Castle of Memory

Castle of Memory

 

 

I’ve lived in the United States country for 40 of my 55 years. I was born here, and left when I was four. We moved back to the US in 1966, boomeranged back to the Philippines in 1968. I stayed for ten years and left in 1978. There’s a funny thing about a place where one grows up. It never leaves you. Images daily come into my mind while I am engaged in 21^st century pursuits. I will hear the rooster’s crow at Cresta Ola, the resort my grandparents built in Bauang, La Union. I will return to the task at hand. While I open up the fridge to get a piece of cheese, something will change the pictures in my head. I will remember walking into my house in Baguio, on a sunny day.

I remember Casa Blanca, the house my grandparents built before World War II. I remember the smell of floor wax and adobo, a heady concoction, and how my leather shoes clicked on the mahogany floor into the red tiled dining room.

While cooking dinner in 2012, I will remember the sight of sunlight on the ocean at Cresta Ola, the way it sparkled on the waves. A band would be playing “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” or “Yellow Bird”. Around the pool guests sat at tables and Efren and Luis, the intrepid waiters, would hustle the trays of food.  I never thought it would end.

Coming back to the U.S. was always an option, but I didn’t think of it back in the 1970’s.  Life was new every day and what better thing was there than to be young and in this unknown corner of the world, anchored by two outposts of the American Empire, Camp John Hay and Wallace Air Station?

When I was a little girl perhaps eight years old, we lived at Clark Air Base. There were buses than ran up to Camp John Hay every day. My grandmother was sick. One day my mother asked me to go with her up to Baguio. I gladly went. I remember looking out of the blue bus going past neat rice fields and villages. How was life in those homes? I wondered about everything I saw.

Up Kennon Road we went and the magic started. A little while later, the atmosphere had changed completely. We were in the pine forests. The ground turned to red clay. Then we took a turn at Military Cut-Off Road and the bus stopped just in front of the Main Gate of Camp John Hay. My mother and I stepped off the bus, and crossed the small street – all of five steps. Down a little moss covered set of stairs we went- I remember three. We were in front of the Pavia’s house. Then down the driveway of our house, Casa Blanca.

In the small front yard was the statue of the child with “Give Us This Day, Our Daily Bread” embossed and moss covered. Up the stairs we went – under the iron scroll work that bore my grandfather’s initials- FGJ. The door opened, “Ay Senora Pat! Nandito po si Senora Pat!”. My mother, shed her officer’s wife identity and stepped into her childhood home.

I stepped into my grandmother’s bedroom to greet her, and was surprised at how thin she was. She was still smiling. My grandfather asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go to the market and buy rings. He looked slightly amused and said we would go later.

But first, I ran through the house, opening doors and looking in drawers. I looked at the magazine rack in the living room, then went into my mother’s childhood bedroom, where we would sleep in twin beds that night. There was a mural across the top of the wall, Mickey Mouse on one side, the Three Little Pigs on the other. It had survived World War II

That afternoon I went with my grandfather to the market  and we walked to the part that had all the jewelry in the world. For me, I may as well have been in the souks of the Middle East. I chose a silver ring with a blue glass stone. It made me very happy.

We went to mass at the cathedral that afternoon, to pray for Lola’s health, and I was bothered by the intensity of the praying – it was then that I knew things were seriously wrong.

That evening, Lolo and I stood on the steps of Casa Blanca and Igorots (members of the indigenous mountain tribes) came into the yard next door. There was a small bonfire, and the dancing began. With  arms outstretched, they danced  with graceful steps and swayed to the music of the gongs.The firelight casts shadows on the ground and turned the dancers bronze.I Although I was small, I knew I had to remember that moment. It was going to be over very soon. My grandmother would die, my grandfather would become interminably sad, everything would be lost.

But in my heart, the images, sounds, and impressions seem to grow stronger every year. What I loved does not exist, yet I cannot escape it. It shaped me and sends me chasing sunsets and fogs, old houses full of books and trees.

When I was very sick in 2005, I had something like a vision. It was a very clear dream. I was coming off of sedation drugs. I’ve never had a dream like that. In the dream I was with all my children and Bud at Casa Blanca. I remember walking up the stairs and going into the old house. Everyone was there, all the aunties and uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters and grandparents and my parents. We were all there. There was a feeling of delight and beauty and it was so real I was surprised when my mind corrected itself. Many of the people are dead, and the house is long gone, finally felled by a terrible earthquake. Ruins sit overlooking the mountains, still  full of memories .

Perhaps in heaven, we can be given the glorified version of things we loved most. Perhaps.

 

When I finally meet my great-great grandparents

All my life in the Philippines, I would listen to the stories my Daddy told me about Georgia. He left the South as a young man with my mother, two babies and one on the way. He moved his young family to California  where the discriminatory marriage laws had faded into history. A few years later we were in the Philippines, and as soon as I could sit and listen, he started talking.

I think talking about the South was a way that he could process the incredible bond and incredible conflicts he had about his birthplace.

Against the first backdrop of those mountains in the Philippines, he told me about Sherman’s March to the sea, and the wake of utter destruction left behind.

Mary Elisabeth was strong. John Michael died in a skirmish on the South Newport River at the end of the war. A little more time, just a little more, and the war would have been over.

They were yeoman farmers, not slave holders. They farmed the same land that came to them after the American Revolution a little  inland from Savannah. John Michael left a handprint on the wall of his log cabin.

Mary Elisabeth won in a war of will against Sherman’s soldiers.

The dialog was one I heard more times than I can count.

Mary Elisabeth’s brothers were the bane of the Union Army. They were known for beheading enemy soldiers while riding at full gallop on mules, not horses.  They were wanted men.

The Union soldiers came to the farm. John Michael had been killed just days before this. He was shot while on picket duty on the river. His body was brought home in an ox cart and buried under an old oak tree.

“Tell us where your brother is,” they said. Mary Elisabeth said nothing. I suppose she glared at them.

One solder took a step closer to her. He pointed at a tree with an overhanging branch. “We’re going to catch your brothers and hang them from that tree.”

“I hear it’s catchin’ before hangin’”, said Mary Elisabeth.

“We’re going to take your boy,” said the Union soldier.

My great-grandfather, George Vernon, only seven years old,  froze.

“Go ahead,” said Mary Elisabeth calmly, “you haven’t left me anything to feed him with.”

The Union soldiers picked up George Vernon and put him on the back of a horse. They rode to the end of the lane and set him down. Forever after, he had a fear of guns. His son, my grandfather, Dr. John Felton Burkhalter, didn’t.

They all survived the war, and the family came back, with scars and stories. The old farm was bought by the government and became part of Fort Stewart. When the time came to move, they dug up the bones of John Michael and moved them to their present resting place, Antioch Cemetery, where the family awaits the Second Coming of the Lord.

There was another family story, of a portrait Mary Elisabeth and John Michael and visitors who came to see family members. There was excitement in the air, back in the 1950′s, the picture had never been seen by our branch of the family.

There was an argument, (my family is not known for self-control)  and the guests packed up and left and the breach was never fixed.

On visits to Georgia, I would sit with my dear aunt and wish out loud for the picture. She would soothe me and tell me that it was a pity the argument sent the relatives with the picture packing. There had been accusations of altered headstones in the cemetery.

I had my children and the stories were passed down to my children.

Then there was the internet, and Ancestry.com.  Time passed and anger died, and people died and the picture  was uploaded a year and a day ago. It took us moments to find it.

What a wonderful full circle moment, to see their faces, and see the resemblance. The story is still being told. My Daddy used to tell me when I would say that I couldn’t take the stress of a tribulation, “Remember who you come from. Remember Mary Elisabeth.”

And so, dear Mary Elisabeth, we finally meet. I see your face and see John Michael’s face and feel the years compress and fall away. My son and my daughter bear your names and now I can show them your faces. This is a great day.