Balikbayan-ing
After observing the longest Yuletide season on the planet, starting with Christmas carols on the airwaves and malls as early as September, we are so blessed as to continue the engagement with kinship and pleasant environment as the year turns.
January turns idyllic for its balmy weather, cool and dry for the most part save for the unseasonal climate-change deviations as what struck parts of our deep South. The skies are so clear at night that last week what proved phenomenal was the sudden social media outpouring of appreciation for a moon halo. It could only have meant that for once, more than the usual stargazers had bothered to look up and recognize lunar attraction.
Eschewing air-con dependence at nighttime could go on until mid-February, at the very least. Years when we’re most lucky, the relatively cool clime even lasts all of that month. Remember, in 1986 we had the nippy weather to thank for a peaceful revolution.
The last three weeks of January also feature what has become standard for a lot of families. And that is the positive balikbayan experience. For US-based relations in particular, the off-peak drop in air rates allows for vacation breaks back home. And it isn’t hot and humid weather they have to contend with, nor the gruesome metropolitan traffic of December.
Thus, family and clan reunions transpire almost just as much during this month. In our case, the two reunions we tradtionally enjoy on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve now get replicated the following month, when cousins from the USA and the MidEast arrive, following their balikbayan boxes that were shipped much earlier.
This year, our branch of the clan had particular reason to celebrate. After an absence of over two decades when she couldn’t fix up her green card all that time in LA, my one and only sister Victoria a.k.a. Girlie finally managed to make it back. And to make it doubly memorable, our youngest brother Alan a.k.a. Dindo, who’s based in Chicago, timed his and his wife’s visit to coincide with that of Girlie’s. And so for the first time in ages, us five siblings finally find ourselves together again, if only for a fortnight.
And what a special fortnight it’s turning out be for our special balikbayans. It’s been non-stop cruising around the metropolis to marvel at all the heretofore unseen infrastructure and commercial enclaves, for one. Another brother, Rico, made sure to apply for office leave so he can serve as their host, guide and driver as they make the rounds of old friends’ homes and new shopping and entertainment places, from Eastwood to Rockwell to Bonifacio Global City to Resorts World to MOA, and then some. And of course there are still Binondo and Divisoria, Greenhills and Tiendesitas, etcetera. Plus of course the de rigueur stops at cemeteries, memorial parks and columbaria.
A nephew and a couple of cousins also came home to visit this month, from Tokyo, Riyadh, and Virginia, USA. When we first got together upon Girlie’s earlier arrival, why, the clan with all of its third-generation kids with some unfamilar names numbered over 50 for a raucous luncheon.
It’s still been non-stop daily gallivanting for Girlie and Dindo. Yesterday I would have hosted for dinner at home, just our branch of the clan, but already totalling a couple of dozen.
This coming weekend, the grand activity before they depart will be an overnight bonding escapade all over Hamilo Coast. Why, I can’t even remember the last time my four siblings and I all romped together on a beach, or enjoyed sun and surf. And we’ll be doing it in oh-so-pleasant January weather — with grandkids to boot. Well, knock on wood, barring any crazy LPAs later this week.
I foresee nostalgia sometime this weekend. I will scan the faces of my three much younger brothers, with Armando Jr. a.k.a. Arnel as the middle child in their set, maybe through the glow of a bonfire on the beach after a Batangas sunset, or of burning coals setting off that precious all-Pinoy aroma of prawns, clams, squid and fish a-grilling.
And I will look back all of many decades ago when I took them as a near-avuncular big bro, while they were still in their pre-pubescent years, to a picnic adventure in Pateros, where we fished for nought at the river back of the home of the Lacaba brothers Pete, Eman, Tony and Billy.
We didn’t catch any, but a vendor came around peddling a lot of fish. We grilled some in the Lacaba backyard, and took the rest home, proudly showing them to our dad and claiming as a joke that we had caught them all. He didn’t appreciate it. I could tell that he may have felt I had usurped his privilege of taking his sons fishing. But we kept laughing secretly to ourselves over our little joke.
That was a long time ago, when we had no balikbayans but the select likes of Gen. Carlos P. Romulo. Today nearly every other Pinoy family can look forward to the homestay visits of all of our hobbits-turned-magi. We eat and drink and laugh and do videoke together. We share stories old and new, mostly old. And we all smile, trying not to make it wanly, when we say we miss all the old folks who have gone on ahead after setting the foundations for our special, intimate camaraderie.
Then we thrill to the array of token contents of balikbayan boxes: sports shoes, shirts and pants, tees and jerseys, dresses and bags for the sisters and aunts and nieces, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, assorted chocolates, cheeses, Spam (yes, still!), pistachios, gizmos, expandable hoses, coffee, ice wine, vitamins, Biofreeze packets, music CDs, Blue Ray DVDs, PS games, and all the other counterparts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for stables of family that will always hold together.
We will take them to the airport. We will hug. We will say yeah, we’ll visit you soon in Van Nuys and/or Des Plaines, but we hope you can do this again next January. As it will always start the year right — when we Pinoys of the otherwise perennial plaints can always count our manifold blessings. Together.
