Writing Our Way Home II (Define "home")

for the organizers of the Filipino International Book Festival in San Francisco -- in gratitude.

All I know is that I was born in Pennsylvania and we didn’t stay there long enough for me to know the city of Harrisburg, the landscape of our neighborhood or color of the sky.  Right away I moved, a transient newborn, flying off to Wilson and Baltimore and Manila and Saskatchewan, Peoria, and finally Milwaukee, no finally Brookfield.  All before I was ten.  All that was constant in my universe were my mom and dad, my two brothers, my sister and finally the little brothers born in Dairyland.  We were a family that roamed the earth in search of a house, but we were always home. 

I have a memory of waking up on a plane at the age of three  My brothers and I were lying on blankets on seats turned down into make-shift beds.  I remember wetting that bed. We were traveling from the Philippines to Canada.  And there I would see the snow pile tall as the horse of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  There it would snow in the middle of my birthday month, April.  And I would ask my mom to invite Gidget (aka Sally Fields) to my birthday party.  And there would be a memory of my mom in the hallway of our little apartment, a phone to her ear, the long cord swinging back and forth in the shadows, taking that call from Gidget.  "You know, I'd love to, but I can't make it. Wish her happy birthday for me."  I’d hear my mother thanking her for calling.

I was just beginning to acclimate to the snow, when the family packed it up again and moved to Illinois.

My fiancé, a man from the hills of western Virginia, has the mountains in his heart.  There are days in Miami where he will breathe sadness, longing for the land he grew up on.  He calls it homesick.  He feels the need to hike up and down the sides of mountains, reading the deer tracks, the turkey trails, the brush in the valleys.

But me, when I am homesick, I am dreaming of the noise that comes from the voices of large families.  I long for morning talks with my mother.  I long for the honky tonk piano of my father.  I long for the embraces of all my nieces and nephews.  I want to give and take shit from my brothers and sister and be in the company of Galangs. 

Dalaga Na Ako (Writing Our Way Home I)

for preteen Evelina

Dalaga na si Evelina.  Dalaga na ako.  Back in those days when my hormones were just beginning to move about this body, grow these legs that long, shape these hips out, draw that waist in, fill up you know where, I was quiet and moody.   I had feelings.  I was in a house where the boys were loud.  My dad played all kinds of piano by ear and his voice filled our home with stories.  My mother ran a household of eight. The little ones, smaller than the loud boys ran from room to room, doing their thing.  I babysat a lot. During the day I followed my youngest brother about the house to make sure he wasn’t into anything.  At night I bathed him and powdered him and wrapped him up in diapers and footy pajamas. In the quiet moments, I read.  I was not the wild American girl of my day dreams.  I was not the girl boys wanted.  Those girls had blonde hair and blue eyes and their skin was fair.  I was not that girl.   

I found ways to express myself.  I played piano in the dark. Classical music.  And I am not sure if I swayed with the music because its what I felt or if I thought the drama of rocking back and forth, hair falling into my eyes, shoulders sliding down close to the keyboard, was romantic. 

I had notebooks I scribbled in late at night.  I wish I had those notebooks now.  I tried to hide them from my brothers who would find them and quote from them, sing from them, embarrass me about the latest crush I had.  When the rest of the house was quiet, when the last diaper had been changed and all that I could hear was the faint sound of late night television coming from my parents’ bedroom, I’d sit at my little white desk, bent over a nightlight and I’d scribble my heart out.

In my notebooks, I was beautiful. I did not babysit, change diapers or cook rice for the family dinner.  I wrote stories.  I imagined I was Jo from Little Women.  I dreamed of writing books and publishing them.  I found ways to ground me to the earth, to feel comfortable in my skin, to meditate on life and God and everything I knew I was to become.  I’d write until the only sounds were crickets from the backyard, until moonlight filled the bedroom, until I found my way home.

San Diego Mountain Dance

for Jen Derilo

I stood under a tree and I watched the dancers move like mountain birds, flapping wings and skipping to the beat of the gangsa.  They circled the green in follow-the-leader fashion.  I have seen this native dance and heard these bells rung always oceans away from las Islas Pilipinas.  The dalagas dancing reminded me of my nieces, of my friends, of myself (as a geeky awkward teen in Filipino costume), dancing traditional dances in nontraditional ways.  Then the leader of the dance troupe invited the community to join them.  I didn't think they would.  But then this blonde mommy in a ponytail, with toddler on hip ran across the hill to join them, and then a kid in shorts stumbled after the line of dancers, then one of the Pinay dancer's tall white boyfriends, hairy beard and all, arms up and hollering danced his way into the line.  In a moment there was a swarm of people coming out from under the shaded trees, from the canopies beyond the green, from picnic tables and from under rocks, from ribbons of blue sky and out of thin air, all coming out of nowhere, swirling like a flock of mountain birds, laughing with their heads thrown back, calling out to seven thousand islands on the other side of the world.   Everybody coming home at once.

Our Lady of Kings Court, Kendalia

For Mercedes and her Children

On the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy, I take my non-Catholic, non-Spanish speaking fiancé to the Church of the Little Flower to celebrate Mercedes Don Varona.

My friends José and Maria, children of Mercedes, organized a beautiful service.  It was a mix of Cuba and Miami and Italy and Wilmington.  It was the story of a mother’s journey home.  She had climbed back onto the boat that floated her spirit from Cuba and was traveling to another realm.   Even as we were sitting in the pews of the Church of the Little Flower, we stood at the shores and watched the boats go by—Noah’s arc, the ship to Ithaka, a passing image of the wedding at Cana.  We listened to musicians invoke the spirit of Cuba, a memory of the beautiful and complicated Mercedes.  (“Son, they have no more wine.”)

Mercedes always welcomed me into her home like family.  She kissed and sniffed at my skin when I entered.  She sat me down and her little dog ran circles around me and barked and she would wave that dog away. “She loves Pepe,” she’d say.   She told me stories of  her boy when he was young.  She opened up albums and pointed at photos of family she wanted me to know.  And the house was a gallery of Pepe’s paintings.  Once she ordered food from Carreta.  Pigs feet with garbanzo beans and rice.  I ate it.  I could not disappoint her.  I would not.

Last night, she must have been watching as words from the readings carried her away.  Some readings in Spanish and some in English.  Some readings missing. An oral storytelling from Father Ernesto.  At one point, I looked over to my fiancé, wondering if he could understand anything that was going on. 

“You’re smiling,” I whispered. 

“I’m charmed,” he answered. 

Mercedes must have been delighted. I will miss her and her beautiful ways.  Our lady of mercy, the mother of my friends, the Cuban grandmother I never had. 

She is Over the Moon

for Angel

Angel de la Luna and the5th Glorious Mystery was born of three major hurricanes.  Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.  I was supposed to be writing from my more than 30 hours of interview tapes, documenting the lives of 15 surviving Filipina “Comfort Women” of WWII for my book of essays, LOLAS’ HOUSE: Women Living With War.  I was supposed to be transcribing, translating, and writing down history.  But the hurricanes came one after the other and my 2005 sabbatical spun fast in the debris of all that rain.  I was living at Hecht Residential College on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami as a faculty resident master and every week, 900 freshmen, twenty-two residential assistants and two other faculty families and I went into lockdown.  So I wrote this book instead, a book that allowed me to work under hurricane conditions, a book that was probably brewing for years. 

Yesterday I came home late in the evening.  I was exhausted and the only thing on my mind was a quiet bath.  I had taken my kitty to the vet that morning and spent the whole rest of the day in meetings and administrative report writing.  I wanted rest.  I wanted silence.  Just as I pulled into my driveway, I saw a cardboard box sitting on my porch.  I knew what it was.  It was this, the moon rising and the spirit going from dark to light, from exhaustion to elation.  My book is here, everyone.  My book is now.  I am not too cool to say it, “Hip-hip-hooray!”

9/11

For the Boy

That morning, the television was on, as it often was.  My brother was zipping up his son’s jacket, getting him ready for kindergarten.  It’s not that there was a loud boom that drew them to the screen.  It isn’t like someone said, “Look!”  But they did.  They watched the smoke fill the sky.  They saw the plane smashing into the buildings.  The fire lashing out from the windows so many stories above ground. They must have imagined the sound of glass splintering, metal crunching. Voices crying out.  

Weeks later, when I was visiting them I watched the boy running around the basement with his arms stretched wide.  Zoom, zoom, zoom he called out.  Crash!  He hissed.  And then he ran into the wall.

A year goes by and sometime in the summer, we went to the library to check out stories.  The librarian stamped the books and told us when they were due.  And the boy looked up to me, said, “Oh, I know that date.”  What is it, I asked.  And he said, “The saddest day in all the world.”

Five years later and he was writing stories for school.  My novel One Tribe had just come out and he said, “Auntie Evelina, I’m writing my own book and it’s bigger than yours.”  Really, I asked.  How big is it.  He thought about it.  He squinted.  Then he said, “So big it has more pages than people who died on 9/11.”

The image of that morning must have seeped into his skin, crawled right into his memory, become the reference point for all things good and bad.  Just all things.  Never to forget.

  

Canvassing Little Havana, November 3 2012

for the President: 
Felicidades on your birthday 

Here is a piece I wrote last November 3rd.  That day was Chauncey's birthday and what he wanted was for Obama to be reelected.  We went door to door down the streets of Little Havana.  Even if neither of us could speak Miami-Cuban-Spanish (más despacio por favor), we knew the only way to make his birthday wish come true was to engage our community.  So we did.  I re-post that day here.  Happy Birthday, Mr. President.  What do you want for your birthday?


ONE: I met a little vieja with hair dyed jet black. She has a picture of the Obamas in her cabinet along with other family photos (I know because her door was wide open). She was VERY excited to go out and vote. She thanked us for coming by.

TWO: I met a guy named Fidel who tried going to his polling place at the Polish American Club three days in a row and found it closed because no one else told him better -- go to la biblioteca on West Flager -- that's where early voting ends today (Saturday), so he said, OK, I'll go right now.

THREE: A young Christian girl who is voting for the first time and undecided because of the abortion issue -- so I told her -- I'm a Christian too, a Catholic -- and even if I might not have an abortion, I don't think anyone has a right to decide for us. Each woman should decide for herself. She said, that makes so much sense!

FOUR: A 30 something man, ineligible to vote said his dad was too old and frail to stand in line to vote. So I told him he could take his dad to the polls and they would seat his father, if he stood in line for him and he said, I'm glad you told me. We'll go on Tuesday!

FIVE:  La Viuda tried to vote twice that day.  The lines were too long and by the time we got to her door, she had taken off all her make up.  She had put her hair up.  She was calling it a day.  The month before, her husband died.  Leaving the house was not easy  Standing in the heat too much.  She was an opera singer in Cuba.  She was elegant even at the door without her face on.  When we offered to call a car for her, when we offered to have one of our volunteers stand with her at the polls, she closed her eyes.

Mi cara, she said.
Linda, I said. You can put your face on while you wait for the driver, I said.
You're beautiful, Chauncey said.  You don't need make up.

Later at the polls, the sun had gone down and the lines were long.  We marched up and down the line leading chants and we spotted her there with a volunteer at her side.  Her beautiful face completely done and smiling.