Homesick

A repost. As originally published by EV Mail News for the week of June 20-26, 2011.
http://www.evmailnews.com/eastern-visayas-mail-digital-issue-of-june-20-26-2011

Moving to Chicago was an exciting time for our family. It felt like we were starting a new life all over again. A new beginning with endless possibilities. Everything was brand new -- the surroundings, the weather, the language, our church, our new jobs and a new school for our son.

And although we have been speaking English for most of our lives in the Philippines it's very different when spoken in a new place. It also felt like we were newlyweds again as we try to set up a new home. We were happy to be in a new place and we can't wait to explore our new town.

As exciting as it was, it was also a bit scary. Homesickness was something I've never understood because I haven't been away from home and from my parents and siblings before Chicago. We've traveled and vacationed in other places but we eventually came back home to stay.

The first year when we arrived in America was the hardest. I was so homesick that everything I touched seemed bland. It was like the opposite of King Midas and his golden touch but just as terrible! I missed my family, the environment and the culture I was so used to all my life and I even missed the pollution. That's when I truly grasped what the saying "There's nothing like home" really meant.

God has been so gracious and merciful all that time. He is true to His promise that He will never leave nor forsake me. He was my comfort and my peace during those moments of sleepless nights (primarily brought on by jet lag) and loneliness due to the physical absence of the people I love. I was so thankful I had my husband and my son with me during those trying times because without them I would have flagged down a 747 at the Chicago O'Hare airport just to go home to the Philippines in a heartbeat. It was an experience I don't want to go through ever again and it's something I wouldn't wish on anybody.

Yet here's the twist: I still remember how it felt like to be so homesick when we first came to Chicago and how we started making this new place our home. We tried to fit in, soak in the culture, do some of the Chicagoan ways and sometimes even emulate the way they talk. We found a church, gained new friends, work new jobs. Life was relatively stable again. Then it was time to go back home to the Philippines for a visit. Would you believe I was a little homesick for Chicago the first week I was in Manila? So true! Now my heart is divided in two because I have two wonderful homes. How more blessed can I be?

It's sad how we take some things for granted. Then we find out the hard way how special and important those things are to us once they're gone. It happens all the time yet we never learn. When I lived in the Philippines, I took my homeland for granted. All the beauty of its landscapes and the hills, the grandeur of its mountains and the waters and the magnificence of its flora and fauna! I'm ashamed to admit that although I've already traveled halfway across the world but I've never toured the Philippines yet. Such a disgrace!

Whenever I show my friends here in Chicago photos of my home country, they are in awe. They ask me why I had to leave to stay in metropolitan congested, crazy Chicago? Well, I know they only see half of the picture. They have to know the whole story for them to understand. For example, when they say that Chicago is congested they mean as compared to the countryside of America. They haven't seen Manila or Tacloban City yet.

There's another place which I'm homesick for and it's called heaven. Even though I don't fully understand yet why, what, and how I'm homesick for a place I've never been to before, of which I've no recollection and of which my mind can't fully grasp the totality of its truth but my heart and my soul know it for sure.

"For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." -1 Chronicles 29:15

"Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation." -1 Peter 2:11-12

There's no perfect place here on earth and there never will be. The grass on the other side of the fence will always look greener. The sun on the other side of the world will always seem brighter but it's not always the case. It's just a matter of perspective and how we make the most of what we have.

It's always fun and interesting to visit new places. To travel the world is an amazing way to enrich our outlook, to spend our vacations and to occupy ourselves at retirement but we have to go home sometime, somewhere, right? It's up to us which part of the world we will allow to make us homesick.

As for me, one thing is for sure, God has placed a void in people's hearts and souls that only heaven can fill. We were made for that place and for Him alone. But we were also given a choice since the beginning, and sadly, a lot of us choose the other way. Yes, we do get homesick for our earthly abode but all these are temporary. I know I was made for something permanent and eternal. I was made for heaven and my soul is homesick for it though fittingly, I can't prove it yet, I can only tell.

Stateside "Pinay"

A repost. As originally published by Eastern Visayas (EV) Mail News for the week of June 13-19, 2011.

http://www.evmailnews.com/eastern-visayas-mail-digital-issue-of-june-13-19-2011

Not a lot of people are familiar with the story of the bitter waters of Marah in the Bible (Exodus 15). On how the Lord Jehovah told Moses to throw in a tree branch into the waters to make it sweet. Also Naomi in the book of Ruth changed her name to Mara for she was bitter over the deaths of her husband and all her sons. In the end, God eventually gave her more blessings than what she had before. Biblically, Marah or Mara means bitter. There goes the origin of my name.

But by the grace of God and with His mercy and salvation He has made me "sweet" thus the name for this column: Sweetened Waters. It is my hope that as I open my heart and mind to all of you that you'll see that I'm not bitter about anything -- my past or anything that will happen to me now or in the future.

This column is actually one of the most exciting things that has happened to me in a long time. I love to write and I've been writing since I was in high school but I often wrote in secret. I had journals, diaries, poems, short stories, and even plays, which I've no idea where they might be now. Oftentimes I also talk to myself as I try to express some ideas before I put them on paper. I'm not crazy, I'm sure most of us talk to ourselves once in a while. It's perfectly normal, right?

I'd like to thank Tita Lalaine Jimenea for giving me this opportunity to write again. It's a dream come true for me and now it's more "official" because I can read it on print. I used to write news stories when I was working as a reporter for PRTV-12 in Tacloban City. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

I think writing for TV and writing for a newspaper are two different animals. Television is temporary and fleeting while newspaper writings are recorded in indelible ink and can be filed or stored for future reference. No one records TV newscasts, I don't think. Yet I'd also like to say that being a TV news reporter was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I wouldn't trade those two years of TV reporting for anything else.

As for this column, I'm so excited to share my thoughts with you readers, who can be thousands of miles away. As the title of this article suggests, I'm Filipino-American. I'm no longer an amerikanang hilaw! Some of the kids I grew up with used to tease me and I didn't understand it at that time.

I knew I was different compared with everybody else around me. I had fair skin, curly brown hair, I was tisay, I was mestiza and I've always felt bigger compared to the next girl. It made me feel awkward sometimes but I got used to it and also to being called a hilaw. But it didn't offend me. It hurt a bit because as children we don't quite understand a lot of things and I didn't understand how kids can be cruel sometimes.

When we moved to Chicago, I felt right at home. I saw a lot of people who look exactly like me. I wasn't a hilaw anymore! But I look more like a latina than an americana here in Chicago. A lot of people come up to me and speak Spanish at once and my standard reply is, "sorry, no habla español!"

I remember the first day I reported for work when a Puerto Rican lady came up to me and asked me if I was also Puerto Rican. I told her I was not and she said "What do you mean no? Of course you're Puerto Rican!" We're close friends now and we laugh everytime we look back to that day. She said she was so sure I was a latina and I was the one who was completely confused about my own heritage. Ha!

For all it's worth, I'm still a Pinay in heart, mind and soul. No matter how we look like or where we happen to live we can never deny our own true heritage and where we came from. We cannot escape our own culture, the traditions we grew up with, the food we are used to since the time we let go of milk and lugaw, and also the dialect we think and dream with.

I've never really thought much about it but an American friend asked me once what language do I think with? I'd guess not a lot of people have given much thought to this peculiar question either. So I started to "observe" myself thinking. Hah, surprise, surprise! I do think in my own native dialect!

Then of course there's family. As the saying goes: "Home is where the heart is." These are some of the reasons that make us people of our real nationality. And yes, I'm American but my character and my heart will always be Pinay, specifically a Waray-Waray.