| 10/5/00 - ENC3310 Maligayang Bati The sun peeked through the cracks of the chintzy venetian blinds in that teasing, “c’mon, wake up” way. Damned sun. Groggily, I turn over – it’s so hard to turn over upon awakening – on the makeshift king-sized bed I share with Mom and my sister. Flipping over in the middle of two twin-sized beds pushed together causes a crevice to form and a tired rump, my tired rump, to fall into the chasm. Damned bed. I manage to get myself out this predicament, and after that little bout of what felt like lazy girl’s boot camp, I look at the clock. 5:03 a.m. Damned clock. The Philippines’ sun seems so much more eager to start the day than America’s. I reposition my head on the seductive pillow only to have the love affair interrupted by my mother’s voice. “Gising na!” Wake up now. Sigh. Damned day. I’m out of my element on these islands, my parents’ homeland. I’m used to driving my own car, cooking frozen dinners, worrying about school and shopping in organized grocery stores. Here, you pay 15 pesos to be driven around in a tricycle (a moped with a sidecar, essentially), eat weird meats cooked in oddly-colored sauces, worry about the stares everyone is giving you because they can just tell you’re American, and shop in the palengke, a putrid-smelling market where you can buy anything from pig snouts to panties. I don’t know how to speak Tagalog, the national language, but I can understand most of it. This doesn’t really aid communication, and therefore I must always have a translator (Mom) around. It’s this constant dependency that irks me. I’ve become a 19-year-old Third World baby. In Uncle Manny’s house, which is now temporarily shared with 16 other people, it’s best to get a head start to the shower. Stepping over my dad and brother’s cramped places on the floor, I tiptoe into the hall and toward the bathroom. Closed, locked, lit. Figures. I eventually take my turn in the sacred room, but it seems that everyone is taking an extra 10 minutes in there today. Today is the day of Grandma’s 75th birthday celebration, the reason all nine of her children flew here from all over the globe with 20 grandchildren in tow. We held a big party for her on her 65th birthday in Virginia, when she used to live in the States. She decided she wanted to return to the Philippines, where she could live in her own house and only be responsible for herself and not play babysitter to the grandchildren in whose house she happened to be staying at the time. Her children thought it would be a good idea to chase her and hold a party for her there, too. My mom is the second eldest of the lot. It’s funny how relevant seniority within siblings is, even when they have children of their own and are thinning, wrinkling and sagging. When they get into arguments, solutions (judgment) are found starting at the top of the ranks, with the exception of Uncle Freddie, the eldest, whose passivity and lack of self-motivation demote him to the rank of Private. That makes my mom the head honcho. General Mom – Funny, that’s how she’s always run her household. Except now, when a solution isn’t reached that way, ranks change to whoever happens to be more “successful” (rich). I wonder if they played “grown up” this way when they were little or if old age causes lack of imagination. When we’re all ready, we pile into three vans and make our way to a small monastery for Mass. We must remove our shoes before entering the chapel, because dirt must not enter the House of the Lord. Having been secretly agnostic for the past couple of years, I take a humorous view on this and the serious expression my mother gets on her face when she removes her pumps. I’ve forced my doubtfulness into seclusion for her sake thus far, she being a devout Catholic. After the sermon and the passing of the Eucharist, the monks present Grandma with a special song and two dozen roses. It brought tears to her eyes. There’s something about my grandma that makes her tears on this occasion so much more meaningful. She used to be touched so easily, tears of joy coming to her eyes whenever anything remotely nice was done for her. When I talked to her when my family first arrived in Cavite, the city in which we stayed, she seemed to lack that purity of emotion. I’d ask, “How do you feel about all of your kids and grandkids coming?” She’d shrug slightly and say, “I’m happy,” in a very unenthused way. Great. But after the special number, I start to question the cynical attitude I’ve taken about the whole trip. |
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| propaganda My Worldview 5.26.98 Maligayang Bati 10.5.00 The Devil, the Grape- fruit Diet and Fat Pants 11.14.00 Lies: Kid-tested, Mother-approved 8.6.01 |
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