The Warmth of a Cold Season

My mom used to wake me up way before the sun rises so that I could walk with her to join a horde of people in a traditional daily celebration before Christmas. It was like a procession from our neighborhood to a Church which was some blocks away. The air was cool but not frozen. The breeze was gentle and clean. No need for cars or tricyles. Walking was the best way to go to Church. Meanwhile, bells vibrated with classic carols in an old era of familiar faces, dingy corners and strayed cats. The urban roosters have not yet crooned. Darkness will soon be light. For nine days during those years, I steadfastly did the Catholic routine. And those were years I was closest to my mother. Together, we shared “bibingka” and the “puto bungbong”. Together with the “pinipig”, the Philippine Christmas scent has all been etched in my nostrils, embedded in my memory. The shadows of the past have never left me. It is the season when I remember my home the most.

Amidst the economic fiasco of this Season, I am caught in an ambivalent atmosphere of gladness within a misty creek of sadness. I guess this is typical of first generation immigrants whose own kin never had the need or the dream to leave the comforts of their home. Almost every year, every time I call home, they always ask me: “When will you go home?” As a cliché goes, home is where our heart is. But my pockets did not allow my heart to travel. I only roamed through my mind. Plane tickets are quite restrictive. Meanwhile, in this “new home”, there are hundreds of homeless families and unemployed bread winners; an aftermath of the mortgage fiasco and the economic crisis that paired with it. Sometimes I wonder whether it is better to be poor in one’s soil than do well in a foreign land or be well in one’s own land and forget about the greener pastures at the other side of the fence.

Nostalgia is a scintillating feeling of simultaneously being in two places; a dichotomous sense of belonging and being lost; the flux that transpires between departure and arrival; the price we paid for when we first boarded a plane and bid farewell to those who were left behind. Immigrants will somehow have a heavy heart amidst this Season’s joy, because the remnants of the past cannot be smothered. The joy will always be tinged with a pinch of sadness because of the past that we cannot forget. The links of our DNA cannot be severed.

For them whose genealogical links have been completely relocated, this will sound irrelevant. Many say that it is not the land that is missed, but the people in those lands. Hence, when every kin and friend had joined the migrant bandwagon, there are no old faces to recall with fondness. Yet for those whose families who had no reason nor motivation to migrate, we hear a symphony of thoughts every year, amidst the dearth and brutal coldness of winter, as if to mock us in our self-imposed exile, as if to challenge us in our passage of life. Yes, no matter what age group we belong, it seems that immigration is a continuous passage of life, an incessant adaptation and a persistent evolution. Because no matter how much endurance we muster against the elements of nature, no matter how much we lose the diphthong of our native tongue, we do everything to nurture the identity of our race, the values of our nation.

As first generation immigrants, we tell this tale to our children. We relay to them the many anecdotes of how we made it to this country, of how we survived our first winter, of how we established ourselves across the years through so many struggles and challenges. And they too will relay it to their children, and then to their children’s children. Our stories will change, the details will alter, the attitude will evolve. They will listen, but they will never know, because only those who lived and breathed in the growth of a specific place will have ownership of those memories. The rest are mere echoes of those thoughts. Memories have a single existence. No matter how detailed we relay to others, it is only a clone of the past. Despite all these, at this time of year, even the miniscule recollection of a faded past is heightened and transformed into an awareness of who we were and who we are. In this tandem of joy and pain, we move on. Amidst the nostalgia of a family we left, we show gratitude for the new family we have built. Growth is a one way trip. Memories are linked to all the reasons that passed, as we become critical of the present, in preparation of things to come.
Pasko na naman, o kay tulin ng araw. Paskong nagdaan… tila ba kung kailan lang…..