Goodbye, House

Sophie lying down on a bed of paper roses

Tonight I am sitting in the middle of my living room – or perhaps a room that looks like it had been lived in quite well until recently. Right now, partially empty with boxes ready to go and forsaken things strewn across its floors, my soon to be ex-living room looks like a limbo room.

Remember my old post Missing My Old Cave (An Ode to Merville)? Well, the inevitable has happened. Through the assistance of my continuously amazing and supportive in-laws, we were able to purchase a lovely, humble little piece of real estate we can really and truly call our own. As our first payment has already come through and our lease in our current home expires by the end of the month, the last few days have been spent either hauling our things to our new apartment or giving things away.

For the last few days, I have conditioned myself to be a ruthless, rapid she-robot, sorting, discarding, grouping, and packing. Sometimes I have reached such a manic, speedy, unrelenting rhythm that for several times I have forgotten to eat, drink, or even take a bath. (Eep.)

But tonight, I can write. Perhaps not the saddest lines as the poet Pablo Neruda did, but still sad, wistful, and poignant ones all the same. For I shall greatly, deeply miss this house.

As I gaze around this quiet, lonely, limbo room, I remember so many things. I remember my first reaction to Pipo’s breaking the news that he had decided to rent the house some two months before the wedding. “WHAAAAT? WE’RE MOVING TO QUEZON CITTTTTTTTYYYYYY?” (It may as well have been Greenwich for this overzealous Merville girl.) I recall entering it for the first time and cringing at the strange, orange and green cabinets and walls, and listening to my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s reassurances that they would have it fixed in time for our wedding. I remember entering it once more a few weeks before the wedding and gazing at the pretty white walls, the drop lights on the side, the lovely beige painted-on tree at the corner, and the soft mint green blinds on the windows, and feeling a quiet happiness not just for how pretty it had become, but because I felt as if I was truly known by my in-laws. It was as if they were able to look deep into my heart, see my hopes and desires for my first home, and make it look almost exactly as I had dreamed. That day, I felt truly known, and even more loved by my new family.

This living room, and this house, has been witness to so many things – my and Pipo’s first attempts at a home cooked meal (both with pretty good results, if I may say), our first argument (and succeeding ones) as husband and wife, the beginning of Sophie’s home schooling journey, her reading through an entire book for the first time, presentations of short dances and plays she directed (and forced me, her father, and any Tita sleeping over to perform in).  Perhaps one of my most favourite memories was when the three of us were stuck inside the master bedroom because the door refused to budge. We had bolted the front door so it was useless asking my in-laws for help. Seeing then that there was nothing else to be done, Pipo climbed up our wall, squeezed himself through the window connecting our room to Sophie’s, back flipped onto Sophie’s bed and kicked open the door from the outside. In this house, I realized that I hadn’t just married an ultrastrong kalabaw, but that I had in fact married Spiderman.

We only lived a little over a year in this sweet little house, but for the love and laughter we shared, the tears we wept, the memories we keep, its feels as if it were more. If we measure it in love, we have lived lifetimes, epochs, eras in this home.

Looking back, I find that there is always something that stands out for each home I remember. For Daffodil Lane in Staten Island, I remember Rebecca, my first best friend. In Windham Loop, I remember thrilling, independent walks home with my brother from the bus stop, where Mom would be waiting for us on the balcony of our third floor apartment, ready to drop the key into our eager hands. For Tokyo St, Merville, I remember the sweetest, most fun girlhood ever spent with my crazy wonderful, salt-of-the earth friends. In Bella Villa, I remember Sophie’s early childhood years, her learning to walk, and her speaking the most sacred word I have ever heard in my lifetime, Mama.  For this house, I will remember this as the place where Pipo, Sophie, and I first and truly became a family. It is where I became a wife, and discovered what it was to be the light and love of a household. If Tokyo was the house of my girlhood, this was the first house of my womanhood.

It almost is unbearable thinking of this living room, this house, empty and void of everything that made it our home. I don’t know if I shall be able to say goodbye to it then. But in one of the amazing books by my favourite author L.M. Montgomery, her heroine (whether it was Anne of Green Gables or Emily of New Moon, I can’t remember) dreamily wonders whether the spirits of those who lived in a house will continue to affect it and its ‘disposition’ because of how they had lived. If this were true, this house will not be a forlorn house because we have lived in it. It would be filled with echoes of laughter, footsteps, leaps, and words and moments of love.

And that is how I choose to leave you. I leave knowing that you are not truly empty, because we leave a part of ourselves with you.

Goodbye, House. 

Perfect Love from a Perfect Stranger

What better day to resume writing in this long-neglected but still beloved blog but on the day of hearts?

Today I remember a gesture of love I witnessed when I was seven-turning-eight years old (Sophie's age, I realize) and during the great San Francisco earthquake of 1989. My family and I were on our way home to Manila after having lived in the United States for 7 years. From New York, we were to stop over at San Francisco and stay with my dad's brother, Tito Manny, for a few days, before taking our final connecting flight to a home I had often heard about but had never really known, for I was a mere one year old when we had left it.

On our last day in San Francisco, my Tito Manny took us to a nearby mall to shop for what I would eventually understand as pasalubong - gifts to family and friends from one's trip abroad. After buying us a few gifts as well as his own pasalubong for our relatives in the Philippines, my Tito Manny went his own way, as did my mom, so that she could accomplish more without her brood slowing her down. The brood - me, my older brother Ramon, and my younger brother Regis (one year old at the time) - was left with my father, who humored us and took us into stores that captured our fancy.

As we were walking through the hallway of the mall, I suddenly heard a frightening, deafening, pounding sound. It then felt as if the building had been ripped from its very foundation and was literally jumping up and down. The noise grew louder and louder, the pounding stronger, and as I squeezed my eyes shut, I imagined stone slamming against stone. The sound quickly grew unbearable. Ramon screamed, and I whimpered into my father's trench coat. We both panicked and shouted at my dad to make it stop. He rushed us into a shoe store, with a table we could hide under in case the ceiling collapsed. We clung to him tightly.