Of Missing and Moving Away

There are places and people in our lives that we can never do without.  Like brushing our teeth, or taking a daily bath, they are very much a part of ourselves that we are not who we are without them.  The attachment is so strong that it pains us to be away from these people and those places.  And sometimes, this pain can be paralyzing that even when you want to move somewhere, spread your wings, see new faces and experience new things, you just can’t because moving out would take you far from the people and things that defined, used to define, your comfort zone.  Without the people you are familiar with, you cannot risk living the ‘unknown.’

When I was a 15 year old college freshman living home for the first time my greatest fear was not college algebra which I really waged a bloody battle with, but missing my mother especially at night.  I remember when I was a kid, although I was never the type to cry and cling to my mother’s slacks every time she leaves for work, I would be right there by the door past 5PM to wait for her return.  Sometimes my mother would arrive at 7PM because she had to finish what she was writing and my face could hardly be drawn.  Every time she would be away on a seminar, conference or personal business, my father would instruct the help not to wash my mother’s clothes so I could wear them and smell her in my sleep.  In those times that she was away, 7PM was my hour of agony as I would start missing her then and would not stop crying until my father take me out for a walk and buy me a bottle of Sprite, or take me to our favorite restaurant, the one where I used to eat with my mom, then to the local movie house.

When my older sister moved to Manila, I cried a bucket of tears–something I did not expect because when I was small, she was this looming, constricting presence in my life who forced me to take afternoon siestas when all I wanted was to play, cut my nails close to the flesh, combed and yanked my hair to its sleek perfection, forced me to eat all my food when I was already full, forbade me to scratch my head and my legs, among all the things I hated.  But when she was gone, all those juvenile irritation faded as one memory of us walking together one summer afternoon she was home from med school kept popping into my head.

Missing my older brother was another kind.  We were playmates.  I was tagging along with him for years.  We were conspirators, I was on his side when he ran into trouble, he was on my side during my own troubles.

Technically, I had never been far from my parents until now.  After college I went straight to grad school but as always, I would go home every weekend.  When I got myself a job, I got my own place but almost every weekend I would go home to check on my parents.    Sometimes, they would come to my place and have dinner with me.  So, it seemed like I was never really far from them.  Must be the reason why when some of our friends knew about my going away, they expressed concerns about how I would cope far from my parents.  Some of my officemates thought so too, especially the senior ones who thought I had adjustment problems (they just didn’t know).

I also thought of that too–What if I would miss them so much that I could no longer concentrate with my studies?  What if missing is even stronger and pronounced in a foreign land than the kind of missing that you feel when you are just an hour drive away from home?  What if I would miss our dogs and cats?  Would I also miss our place and our neighbors?  The last time I was away job hunting in Manila I was surprised to discover I even missed our neighbor’s dogs.  And this time, it would not be as easy as flying home the moment I feel I can’t bear being far from home anymore–but not too much, to be honest.  Deep inside me I was longing to get away from my job before I would start having ambivalent feelings about it.  I longed for the challenge of learning new ideas.  I longed to be somewhere far to test my resilience, to test the strength and sense of independence I knew I have in me.  And for all what I would learn from being far from my own land, I was willing to embrace the experience of living the unknown and missing people and places.

To my realization, missing is only strong and painful when you are still contemplating of going beyond the boundaries of your ‘known.’  But when you are already on the other side, you will feel the pain of missing for sure but not as chronic as you imagined it to be–nothing that you can’t handle, really.  In fact, as long as you have already established a routine in your new life, you will start feeling comfortable.  And who knows, when all these must come to an end, I would find myself missing this place and the people who, at present, are becoming a part of my world.

When I left home, my mother told me how my father cried inside my room.  Somehow I had the feeling that my father would–he is the epitome of the feminised male who is not ashamed to shed tears of joy and sadness–but still it was new to me.  I miss my father too which is strange knowing how I loved to pick on him and argue with him whenever I am home.  I miss my mother, that competitive woman who would not let me win any of our scrabble matches and debates.  I miss our place especially the way the flowers light up in the golden showers of the sun.  I miss my mother’s dogs, the way they jumped and reached up their paws to touch me as soon as I closed the gate.  I miss my cats, those aristocratic, snobbish cats who always managed to sneak into my bed and sleep with me at nighttime.  I miss my neighbors and our Saturday morning exchanges.  I miss my desk in the office and my job, surprisingly.  I miss making critical decisions, I miss asking critical questions to my boss, I miss giving lectures to co-workers, I miss playing adult, I miss my friends from the office and the trust they had in me.  I miss home every time I ride the bus at night and pass by brightly lit houses that reminds me of another brightly lit house ocean’s away from here.

At the same time, there’s exhilaration in being away.

Culture and Food

Food is a function of culture–the processes involved from preparation to presentation is a part of the ritual that defines the life and identity of a group.  As such, the experience of food is cultural.  Thus, so big was my shock when in my first venture to eat outside, a service staff of one campus pizzeria served me a slice of greasy pizza that covered my whole plate!  I was wondering how am I gonna eat it all as I walked my way to a table.  But the size wasn’t the only problem for me–the oil (from the melting cheeze perhaps) which looked like puddles of water on an empty street after the rain turned my appetite into a low gear and suddenly I wasn’t feeling hungry anymore.  I forced myself to take a bite from my slice, passing the chunks from the left side to the right side of my mouth while chewing to savor the taste but there was nothing in it except the taste of a pizza crust which did not even come as close to the old reliable pan de sal back home.  I took my second bite and closed my eyes hoping this time something would excite my taste buds, trigger synaptic reactions in my neurons, activate my brain and bring me to a heightened gustatory experience which, as other people would describe, is almost like orgasm but my sense of taste was disappointed.  Three bites into my pizza, I gave up and just stared at it for 20 minutes.   I looked around and saw other people seemed to be enjoying theirs and I told myself, “This is unfair.”

I have never had problems with food before.  In fact, compared to my older siblings, my taste is eclectic–my father’s preference for Spanish and Chinese dishes, my mother’s taste for anything and everything native, my neighbors’ taste (as I used to eat a lot in my neighbors’ dinner table as a kid), and the taste of those farmers I was in contact with in the course of my job.  But nothing prepared me for the pizza that tasted like s–d–t in my mouth.

The problem with me was I had my own expectations of how a pizza should look, smell and taste like–lots of green, red and yellow, less grease, thin crust, spicy and sweet and just enough to satisfy your craving.  I came to the pizzeria as a Filipino and was disappointed.  Then it dawned on me that the first time I came to our dinner table as a baby with the rest of my family, and all those countless dinners that followed after, programmed me to be receptive to a particular taste and aroma which defined the way I am going to experience food, many years later, as a foreigner in another country.  Now, I was the one being unfair.  Since then, every time I eat outside, I try not to give in to the vicious temptation of comparison and enjoy the food as they are enjoyed by a culture as distinct and unique as my own.  There!

(Filipino favorites: Greenwich, top, and Shakey’s, bottom, pizza)

Photos from: http://www.chartherct.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/greenwich-barkada-delivery-specials-1-double-greenwich-special-classic-pizza-dsc_4762.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_aEQLNTFH_iU/SQ5miaxCoZI/AAAAAAAADPA/quu7fUq5Fyc/s320/shakeys.jpg

Feeling Stupid

Talk about feeling stupid and I have a story to tell.  A week after my arrival in MI, my adviser brought me, along with a male classmate, to a cafe where I had a pastry with a name that already eluded my memory.  I was quiet the whole time, just a few words here and there, an “uhum” when needed, a nod or two…which was really unusual given my propensity to rattle and just fire away with my mouth back home.  But that day I was abnormally quiet, my guardian angel was practically looking for my people skill under the tablecloth.  Anyway, the conversation (between my prof and my classmate) turned into kids and, without warning, my classmate asked me if I already have kids.  My mouth was filled with a chunk of the pastry but my reply was clear and crisp like an ice cube hitting the bottom of an empty glass.  “No. I don’t have kids. I’m not married yet.”  Then, I receded back into silence, and in my silence I heard my reply coming back to me and, I admit, I’ve never felt so stupid in my entire life.  “What a stupid reply, Nelfa.  Where are all your readings?  It doesn’t even take an elementary logic to understand that you could not be married but still have kids.”  But believe it or not, I was impotent in the face of stupidity.

Just nothing…

Straight from class I went to a bookstore, pulled a book from one of the bookshelves, got into the bus and headed home.  The drive to the apartment from Michigan State was 20 minutes, yes 20 minutes and I didn’t want to stare at the leafless, lifeless trees we were passing by, didn’t want to stare at people either so I got the book, opened it and read the preface.  Ten minutes into reading I caught the eyes of a young woman sitting in front grazed from my face to the book I read and back to my face, not just once…many times.  I started to get conscious and suddenly I had difficulty making sense with the words in the book.  In my mind I had all those hypotheses of what was in the young woman’s head while she watched me read.  Then I realized the book I was reading had this black words emblazoned on the cover “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” by Judith Butler.  (What choice did I have,  the other one I had in my bag was “The Red Queen, Sex and the Evolution of  the Human Nature.”)  Uh-oh.  Surely I didn’t look like Susan Sherman.  I was the typical type who could get lost easily in a crowd.  She must have trouble reconciling my looks with the hard-hitting ideology that the book spelled right before her. Or she might have been thinking “It’s not a good idea to read books inside a running bus and how stupid this woman is for doing that.”  Or worst, “She’s not really reading it, she’s just trying to look legit.”  Haha. I did read the book that night and stumbled twice on “Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity.”

Wishes for My Close Friend on her Wedding Day

Today, a close friend of mine back home finds her way into the altar right through the arms of the man she will now call “husband.”  The moment she told us about the wedding plans, we never ceased making jokes about it, inventing hilarious and wacky stories to lighten the feel of an important event which could get a lot stressful for the bride-to-be.  We even went to such length  as looking for a wedding theme as if it is going to be a costume party—“Under the sea…Melinda, you have to be the jellyfish and your daughter the plankton,” I once cracked while we were dining out and a roaring laughter ensued.  Then, we thought about a song for the bridal march which was a pretty depressing song it really talked about the pain felt by a person watching her loved one tie the knot from afar.  Again, we almost choked on our sundaes.  Fortunately, the bride-to-be was never short on good humor she laughed with us.

But tomorrow all these jokes are going to end, finally our friend would be at peace with us leaving her alone.  I am pretty certain a male friend who hangs with us would say, “one down, three more to go,” referring to three of us who can’t seem to make plans like that.  There used to be four of us, plus Melinda who is married but is “technically single” as her husband works abroad.  Oh, those times we headed to the beach straight from work to catch the sunset and talked about the many things that mattered to us—annoying co-workers, exasperating superiors, life-drowning system and our individual dreams.  Drinking strawberry daiquiri was the farthest we went for a digression.  Four single women who could afford to engage an argument with the boss but too careful not to go beyond our comfort zones.  Tomorrow, there’ll be three of us and with me away, there’ll be two left.  (Wait, there are actually two absentee members of our club who moved somewhere.)

I know I would be missing my friend so much, no, the single friend whose time we almost seemed to own.  Before I left I told them I love hanging out with them and would still want to do it even when we are old at sixty.  But time has a way of surprising people and we would never know what will happen tomorrow.  Maybe we could still hang out together but not as often as before or maybe we would go separate ways to chase some of our dreams.  One thing I am really sure about though is that I am so happy that this day has come into my friend’s life.

Finding and falling in love, and really loving are glorious experiences, so they say.  If Luis Buenaventura’s blog “Finding Your Soulmate: A Statistical Analysis” is to be believed, there is a 58:1 ratio of getting yourself lucky enough to find your partner—that is, if one has “fifty-eight times of reliving his/her life, s/he will cross path with his/her soulmate once.” (Sounds pretty depressing isn’t it?  ‘might as well forget about it.)  A great many people all over the world longed for it and not all of them were lucky enough.  It’s not because of the ratio, no.  Sometimes people seem to connect with each other at the wrong place and time and wake up finding they have so much to catch up with life (perhaps) on their own, not with the other around.  Others got it the second, the third, the fourth time, but not before they get themselves burnt.  There are those who are almost on the verge of it and then, like the light of the candle was snuffed by the wind and faded into the night.

My friend is blessed.  After a few failed relationships, she finally found someone who could say to her today he’s willing to hold half of her skies and finally she found the courage to declare herself capable of holding up someone else’s half of the sky too.  I’ve been watching couples who are happy with each other for years now (that’s what I’ve been doing these days, watching couples with the hope that if I could immerse myself into their world, I might, even for a fleeting moment, experience that magical and mysterious feeling they call “love.” No, I’m kidding.)  I am amazed how these people fit together like a puzzle, and I don’t mean just the physical side of things.  I refer to the emotional, psychological and spiritual levels.   There is something about them more than mutual trust…that they understand each other, able to anticipate each other’s needs just by a glance or gesture.  I love seeing this in married couples with so much love for each other.

I wish for my friend to live this experience and for this experience to live forever.  I know that the journey towards establishing this kind of connection—marriage—would not be easy.  No matter how people like each other, there are bound to be differences.  The key there is how to even out these differences without killing each other’s individuality I think.  Well, I am not so sure…who am I to know about these things.  But I really do hope that they would not easily give up on each other without exploring a number of ways where conflicts can be resolved.

I cannot see her now.  But I know she’ll be good at it—the multitude roles of a married career woman which could drive the weak nuts.   She has always been the motherly shadow to my volatile and unpredictable personality.  When we blew our top off, she’s the voice of reason telling us to take things easy.  She’s the listener to my jokes; she’s the audience to my shows.  She was the one person who made me peel some layers off myself, in those unguarded moments I felt totally free.  With her around, the person who can be extremely private and withdrawn found a way to unload her vulnerabilities and fears and even had her taste of a few adventures.  I am full of hope that they can make this work.

They have to—she sacrificed a great deal for the relationship, with her giving up the chance to pursue graduate studies in the States as I do now—because she knew that life is about making choices.  I haven’t really met her husband, I’ve only heard of him from my friend.  Yet, I know they will take care of each other till they are old and bent.  After all, to live for each other, to give for each other, to take from each other without killing each other are part of what marriage is all about.

Finally, I hope Ian (her husband) would still let her drive with me to the beach and watch the sunset to talk about old times, the joys in life, even when we are sixty, wrinkled and gray.