An Expat Remembers

Nothing makes Filipino expats long for the old country better than Christmas time.  I wrote this blog a few years ago and as Christmas nears, the longing for my birth country comes once more.  

A Whimsical Song

The drive across the Golden Gate Bridge from the San Francisco end to Mill Valley never gets old with me.  I have not seen many pictures more beautiful than this three-minute drive across the world-famous bridge.  This particular morning, as my usual schedule, I was on the bridge shortly after 6 am.  There was hardly any traffic.  The sun had risen on the eastern sky, glistening on the bay, but midspan, a layer of fog hung slightly above the bridge and rays of sunshine pushed their way through it turning the bridge to a magical golden color.  Feasting on this beauty I reached down to the CD controls on my car’s dashboard, pushed button #5 and was greeted by an old, familiar song from my youth.

                  “Sa twing madaling araw, kok-kok-koro-rok-kok-kok

Ang aming puting Texas, malakas tumilaok.

At nang nagdaang linggo ay may pista ng bayan

At sa sabungan dito, malaki ang pustahan.”

Strangely, I heard myself singing with Sylvia Latorre, and even more strangely, I still remembered every word of the song.  As I came to the Marin County end of the bridge and easing onto the land traffic in between the hills and down Interstate 101, I felt tears streaming down my cheeks.  How could Sylvia’s song do this?

It has been over 40 years since I left my country of birth.  The years have swiftly flown and my life has taken turns and detours that I have never dreamt of.  I have been so very busy making a life for myself in this adopted country.  Don came into my life, we got married in 1974 and together we have raised a family, been in pastoral ministry in the Bay Area and Christian foreign mission in Indonesia, moved about in the US, worked in various companies and City government.  In the early years away from the Philippines, I tried to stay connected with friends there.  As I became aculturized to things American, I found myself torn between the culture I was born in and all that I have held dear, and falling in love with my adopted country.  It had not been easy.  There was pain as I hung on to my old ways.   The memory of friends and kin, joys of childhood, the security of being in my country of birth, amongst people whom I knew and who knew me, gnawed at me. And yet, before me is this generous, beneficent country that so graciously took my family and me in as we searched for a better way of life.  I was beginning to fall in love with her but what do I do with my old love?  Is it possible to be loyal and faithful to both?

December 1969, First American Christmas

 Experiencing my first Christmas in the US, I stood at the corner of Market and Powell in front of the big building famously known as Woolworth’s, taking in all the trappings of the season that stores and shops gaudily adorned themselves in pursuit of the Almighty Christmas dollars. Shoppers, in sweaters, wool coats and scarves scampering about with their bundles and boxes, fought the cold, the jampacked sidewalks, and traffic jams that would not quit. Perfect Currier & Ives scene.  As a young girl in the Philippines, I would have given my eyeteeth to be part of this, but as I took in the scene before me I felt intense sadness.  My eyes started to tear up.  How could I be sad in the midst of such excitement?

And here many years later Sylvia Latorre’s whimsical song about cockfights, which I have not heard in more than 40 years, made me cry.  The amygdala in my little pea brain was responding to some stimulus long suppressed – the memory of the country of my childhood. Once again the balmy December breeze in the faraway little Philippines city where I was born and raised was caressing my face.  I could hear the lilting Christmas sounds of Ang Pasko ay Sumapit, the smells coming from little stands offering tea, coffee and puto bumbung during the early morning masses of the Roman Catholic and Aglipayan churches in Cavite City beckoned me.  The remembrance of playful sounds of little Cumbancheros trying to squeeze out Christmas carols from the little gas cans, bamboo maracas and tiny harmonicas harked back to Christmases of long ago.  Through the tears I could see in my mind’s eye the brightly lit star lanterns hanging from windows.  And once again I was a little Filipino girl, with my Filipino friends, in my Filipino home.

As I drove north on 101, Sylvia’s song about cockfights, memories of town fiesta’s and childhood friends, the little elementary school I went to, the high school which still stands, came rushing back, pushing out thoughts of the moment.

"You Can Take the Girl Out of the Country, But . . . "

The old cliché “You can take the girl out of the country, but not the country out of the girl” rings true.  Forty-one years in the United States, much longer than I have lived in my birth country, but the notes of one little whimsical song transported me back instantly to my home of so long ago.  In the mid-seventies Don and I lived in Indonesia for almost four years.  In that period of time I hardly spoke Tagalog because I knew no other Filipino in my area other than one woman whom I didn’t see much of, anyway.  But coming home to my relatives in New York City, I spoke the language perfectly despite my lack of practice.  It has amazed me how fellow Filipino expatriates often inquire of each other, “When was the last time you were home?” referring to the Philippines.  When we talk of visiting the Philippines, we often talk of these visits as “going home” regardless of how long it had been since we left.  My father joined the US Navy when he was 13 (at that time it was easy to falsify one’s age, he signed up as a 16-year old), spent 33 years traveling all over the world with the US Navy, and spent more time in the U.S. than in the country of his birth.  Upon his retirement, he chose to go home to the Philippines. He wanted to die and be buried there.  Like a homing pigeon, he went back to his birth country. 

For whatever reason we have left the country, a great majority of us get a longing to go back, back to where we first saw the light of day, back to where we were raised with all the pleasant memories of childhood. But more significantly, we long to be back in our country of birth where there was never any question as to our identity. We knew who we were and as the guys in TV's "Cheers" sing, "Everybody knows your name."

For years I have dealt with the problem of being torn between my birth country and my adopted country by straddling the two cultures, melding that which were good from the two into a third culture all my own. But the memories of who I was as a young person intrude into my consciousness every so often, triggering the longing for what I used to call home.