My Lunch with Hillary Clinton, June 8, 2012

for the next POTUS 

School was out at the University of Miami.  I was at the salon down the street and I decided to get my nails done in orange--bright, electric, and hot--just like South Florida.  What the heck.  Whose gonna see how bright they are.  It's summer.   Just then, my phone dinged and I looked to see an email from the U.S. Department of State Protocol.  Hillary Clinton was inviting me to lunch.  I thought it was spam. And I almost deleted it.

But then I took a closer look.  And no, it was not spam.  President Benigno Aquino was going to be in DC on June 8, 2012 and then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was having a lunch for him.

It would be the first of two special visits to Washington DC that summer.  The first would be this lunch at the State Department and later that month, on June 21st., I would be among the 100 invited to a White House Briefing for Filipino Americans.

When we arrived there was a string orchestra playing and a red carpet.  The late Senator Daniel Inouye welcomed us into the room.  And when a writer friend of mine realized we were not going to have an audience with Secretary Clinton, she came to my table and suggested we introduce ourselves to her. 

We waited until dessert.  I noticed that while the rest of us had pretty chocolate custards with fancy cookies, Hillary was having a fruit cup.  We stood in line and had to introduce ourselves first to President Benigno Aquino.  Formalities.  It was Hillary we wanted to meet.  I wanted to tell her so many things.  I wanted to tell her about the Lolas of LILA--Filipina Comfort Women of World War II.  I thought I'd get it all in there in that moment.  But all I said was, "You're good friends with my boss."

"Who's your boss?" she asked me.

"Donna Shalala," I said.

"Oh, I love her!"  Secretary Clinton said.

Me, too.

And then my time was up.  I would not get to say a word of substance.  And so I wrote her a note and sent her this photo of the Lolas.  After all, writing is what I do best.


Always With Me

They work like guardian angels -- they follow me and guide me like a river of hands -- they whisper stories and prayers and words of advice.  Today I imagine they follow me into the dining hall -- not just the Pinay but all of them -- all 200,000 of them -- the living and the dead -- their light spirits of brown and yellow skin -- floating right behind me, attending to each guest, whispering in each ear, hovering like grannies who have just cooked each of us a meal.  A little love, a little justice.  A little integrity.  And when the meal is over, they will follow me out the door and right down the street.  My angels of justice.  And I will do the same for them, until their stories are told.  Until justice prevails.

In Search of Inner Light

for the cab driver 

Last night we went ikot-ikot up and down Pasong Tamo, looking for my meditation center, a center I’ve been to for years.  You’d think I might have been able to tell the cab driver.  But it was nighttime in Manila and rain was pouring everywhere.  I haven’t been back since 2008.  Manila changes fast when you’re gone that long. 

We have been traveling with friends or visiting family.  We have been running all over to readings and museums and literary summits on islands far away.

We have been married now for one month and two weeks and we have not spent a moment alone since before the wedding.

 

So we wanted this moment to ourselves.  To close our eyes and go deep into quiet.  To think of nothing and to see the light that shines so bright.  We wanted to meditate.

Our cab driver chatted us up, had us check with Siri to make sure we knew where we were going.  Made a joke when Siri refused to talk.  “Na wala ang boces niya,” I said.  And though he tried, he could not find the meditation center in the dark.  Could not find it in the rain.  Back and forth we went.  Ikot-ikot.  He must have asked five security guards on the way, “Nasaan ba ito?” And everyone pointed fingers in contrary directions like Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.  We took so long the cabbie had to say, “Sandali, umihi ako” as he threw the cab into park and ran out into the street to pee behind a telephone pole.

Round and round we went. 

“And what if we can’t get a cab going back,” my husband asked me. 

“Relax,” I told him.  “Trust,” I said.  I knew there must be a reason we were not finding the meditation center.   

So did he. "Maybe we should just go back," he said.  I could tell he was trying not to get irritated.

“Just breathe," I said.

When we got to the center, I leapt out of the cab and asked the guard if the people were still meditating.  He pointed to a lady under an umbrella, walking to her car.  “Wala na sila, Ma'am”  The very last yogi was leaving.  We had missed everything.

On the way back to the hotel, I rested my head on my husband’s shoulder.  Our breathing relaxed.  We watched the rain roll down our window.  I counted the drops. We squinted at the jeepney lights coming at us in the dark.  We held hands.  My husband’s eyes went small and his smile wide.

When the doorman at our hotel swung the cab door open and said, “Welcome back,” we laughed.

It took a night of rainy Manila traffic, a series of turns and U-turns to isolate us, quiet us, and give us a moment to breathe.

To the National Treasure in the Front Row

(Who arrived in the middle of my poet friend’s reading and disrupted the room in his outside voice)

For Zack, Lara, Fedilto, and Amalia.  

Photo Credit:  the amazing Krip Yuson

Thank you for taking time to be with us, Sir.  We are Filipino American writers.  We have come home to the islands where our ancestors still inhabit the land, the province, the war-torn city of their childhoods. We are in search of our origin stories, looking for the details of where we come from.  We have heard stories from our parents and our lolas and lolas.  We have been imagining the tables where they sat to eat their meals, the paths they walked to and from their schools, and the mother nation they call “back home.”  We have been wondering where the stories were lived.  We have come home and we have been invited to this stage to share our written works. 

Our experience is different than your own to be sure.  Our writing concerns and reasons to write will be different.  But let me ask you this: Have you ever imagined what life might be like if you were raised to be a Filipino far from these islands?  Have you ever imagined what it might be like to grow up and read the stories of the people around you and never see your own?  To be writing in a nation that has traditionally washed the walls white and made our own stories invisible not only to the culture at large but to ourselves?  Of course we have a longing to be back home, even as we have never lived here. 

What a complicated identity we have.   Unlike you, a National Treasure in a nation where you are part of the dominant mainstream culture, our stories and poems in the United States are not and might never be mainstream.  We write from the space of the Other.  We write our stories because no one else will. No one else can.   We document our existence so there is a record.  And for whom?  Probably ourselves first.  Then like-minded readers after us.  And if the whole world wants to read us, then they too.  Do we think of audience?  If you mean you, sitting there thumping your nails on a desk top as my friend reads, if you mean you, then probably not. 

Stop the program! You, who have walked in late, who talks loudly and huffs and puffs in the front row, you announce you are bored. The work we read bores you.

Had I been a younger writer, you might have shaken me. 

But I am not.  One of the lessons I do my best to impart on my students is to have a strong sense of self.  To know your strengths and weaknesses and to believe in your own work.  So no, you do not shake me. 

“What role does your Filipino identity play in your work?” you want to know.  And if you took a moment to listen you might hear the answer in our stories and our poems.  You might see we write from the position of naming our identity and occupying the space we have created, to suit not the masses, but our individual hearts.  You might hear we are not here to compete with you but to honor you and the writers of this literary nation.  We are here to write a story that is different than yours, but born of a long tradition that, like it or not, we are a part of.

I was not offended when you interrupted.  We are all family.  And you, dear National Treasure, are behaving like the doddering uncle who has lost his filters.  It is okay.  We understand.

Smartypants

for Ligaya

On the occasion of my 50th birthday, a few years ago (yes), my nieces came to Miami to visit me.  Ligaya must have been eight.  And for years, I knew she was looking at me askance, wondering what was wrong with me.  Soon as she learned to speak she was asking me why I wasn't married yet.  Once when she was three, she wanted to know if I had put an old boyfriend into time out.

"Did you tell him to think about it?"

"Yep."

"Did you tell him that even if he thought about it and you disagreed you'd still love him?"

"Yep."

He was on permanent time out.

So when I turned 50, I took Ligaya and her sisters to my office at the University of Miami.  I was now the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing.  I had written several books and had many on the way.  The sisters ran their fingers along the spines of all the books.  Picked up photos and knick knacks given to me by my students, nephews, and nieces.  I thought it was a pretty cool office.

After a long moment, she asked me again.  "So why didn't you get married?"

I'm sure she's not the only person to wonder.  I told her that not every woman wants or needs to get married.  I told her I was having a great time writing books--because I was--and that it took up a lot of my time--which it did--and that I didn't want to get married just to get married--that was a no brainer.

I thought of the book I gave her long ago--it was the story of Princess Smartypants, a feminist take on fairytales, kingdoms and the institution of marriage.

I thought I was Princess Smartypants.  And in the end, yes, I am.  I want it all.  I want to be in a job that I have chosen (check) writing books about the stories I want to tell (check) and if I marry (and I will in 30 days) I will do it because I choose to.

When I began dating my fiance, Ligaya looked at him and she smiled.  When I announced the engagement she said, "Just so you know, the cousins talked about it and we knew it was going to happen."