Going Home

The best part about traveling is going home. And so for this long weekend, that is where the backpack gang have gone. Home.

I am savoring the last day of the longest time we’ve come home to Aringay. Four days of pampering and being well-fed. Four days of good old bucayo and panutsa. Mom filled a jar each of the sweet delicacy I’ve come to associate with coming home. We took a Victory liner bus coming over, and few minutes before arriving at the unloading station, Arnold called home to ask for help with the luggage. As soon as we crossed the main road into the path going home, I saw Dad, rushing, towards us. What could be a better welcome? Two years ago when I first met Dad, I saw for myself how selflessly he serves his family, especially mom. When everyone else is taking a good nap right now after a lunch of fried yellow fin and dinengdeng which Dad cooked, I can still hear the old man doing the dishes in the kitchen, humming a tune or two as he works along. Dad has an undeviating character of goodness and self-sacrifice. He has lived all these years working hard to serve his family. He’s not a bad cook, too, if I may say so myself. Arnold is not a fan of fish unless Dad was the one who cooked it.

Here in Aringay, life is simple, uncomplicated. I know these two words can mean the same thing, but I decided to put them together for emphasis. This family has seemed to manage to survive in keeping life simple despite the complexities around them. Their simplicity is expressed in the way they know relationships are to be kept. Husband and wife stay together and do not separate. Parents provide love, guidance, and comfort for their children. And children get a good education, honor and obey their parents, and start their own families in the future. Such is the circle of life. While some may deem it predictable and boring, truth be told, the essence of things is simplicity. Mom, Dad, Manang Lorie, and Kuya Dan just got to maturity and realized this beautiful principle sooner than others did. They are so unlike the manicurist Juvie. Once married, now in a common-law relationship, Juvie has 4 children and has no intention of getting an annulment and marrying her current partner. “Getting married can be limiting. When you have a husband he can stop you from seeing your friends and from having fun,” Juvie goes. I feel sad for her.

Marriage is ordained of God to man. It is a gift. Celestial marriage is attaining the highest order of the priesthood and making the everlasting covenant. The key is in finding the right person to marry. Literally, one has to ask herself “Is this the man I want to share forever with?” If one is to be happy with this love while on earth, wouldn’t he or she want to aspire to keep that happiness forever? Further, the late prophet Gordon B. Hinckley counseled, “marry the right person at the right time, the right place, and by the right authority.” When the marriage is not taken into the eternal perspective of things, I say it is a waste of time and must be corrected. But once that celestial quality of marriage has been found, wo be to that Adam and Eve who would not do all they can to stay together.

There’s a part of my personal history I am not proud of, and that is the many mistakes I have had in having previous relationships, to this, my eternal relationship with Arnold. All the wrongs stop here. In him I have found that one person to be with eternally. I love everything about him, including his imperfections. And I love his family.

We cannot underestimate the support a good in-law relationship gives to the spouse relationship. Quite honestly, before making the decision to come over, Arnold and I have been having a misunderstanding. I only started feeling good about the trip when we arrived in Aringay town and were greeted by the beautiful Aringay river. Because right then, memories of our last visit flashed back. It was last year, we went to see Manang Lorie at the school where she teaches and had a picnic over hotdogs and fishballs that sold in ubiquitous stalls across the school. Those were simple joys, but it was the memory of just having fun encircled in love that made it magical. Remembering that, I felt good to be home again.

And then there was Dad, rushing to greet us. Seeing Dad deepened my love for Arnold. The man I love is, indeed, borne of goodly parents who love him. I am someone his parents trust to take care of their son. Who am I not to do a good job, after all, they have done an excellent job raising a good son?

There is also that comfort of coming home. I am grateful to Arnold because through him I have an Aringay home, a home filled with simplicity, love, and caring for one another. Through him, I have a Dad and a Mom, a family who cares for me and for Chizzy additionally. That is a wonderful blessing.

It didn’t take long for Chizzy to warm up to Lolo when she saw him again. She wore that smile of being happy, and at the same time, being shy to admit that she was happy. It was a cute smile, alright.

We were supposed to have gone to the beach but typhoon Parma destroyed the resort and the place has not recovered yet. We stayed home the whole time, just catching up and eating lots of good food. Did I say crab, shrimps, and sour soup? Good food, indeed, because Dad goes through all the pain preparing them.

Indeed, there is no place like home, and there is no happier travel than that going home. President Monson said it well: People are most of the time in the thick of thin things. I traveled home, and I didn’t miss the point. It was of being encircled in the love of a family.

The late bloomer finally gets started

My hands are literally cold as I write this, my first blog. Seriously. I remember sometime in 2005, PJ Cana, a former GMA 7 colleague who, I should say, was more web-savvy than the rest of us in the newsroom, started his "web log." I remember watching him punch away on the keyboard, euphoric that someone had read his "post." I wondered what was there that hooked him into it. Unfortunately, I left GMA7 before I could find out. My next job took me farther away from the blogging world. I was into so many things, learning more about my religion, producing films and magazines for our Church organization, that I simply did not have the time to write a post and respond to those who'd take the time to read it. But then the blog thing resurrected itself in me when one day, a church mate and friend, Salve Duplito (who also happens to be a multi-awarded business journalist), happily announced that her Inquirer online-powered blog was already up. That she was delighted is an understatement. In the following years, my well-traveled friends from UP (Dulcinea, Ivy Rose, Leilani, and Blanche) have settled in various parts of the world (Chi in Denmark, Beng in Australia. Lei was in NY for two years and in Thailand for another two, and Blanche is in HK until present). So they invited me to stay connected with them through Multiply and Facebook. They told me I could see more pictures of them through these sites. I stubbornly told them, "Just email it to my work address, I'll get it through my Blackberry." I never got to create a Multiply nor a Facebook account. This, amidst the fact that my Friendster account has been untouched since 2005. With my younger sister, Camilah, moving to the US after her marriage last year, I started to give Facebook and blogging a tiny bit of consideration. Recently, I watched the Nora Ephron movie on Julia Child and saw how blogging changed Child's life. I thought to myself, there's just a lot of online social forums these days that I want to check what's in it for the gazillion netizens out there. Before I could even find the answer for what's in a blog, Multiply, and Facebook, alas, there's Twitter.

So here I am, enjoying it so far, pretending (like Julia Child) that someone out there is in fact reading this. Wait, did I say I was enjoying it so far??? I guess there's lesson #1 for me-- blogging is something people actually enjoy doing--whether as the writer or the reader. Haha! It took all these years for me to figure that one out! Didn't my title say I was a late bloomer?

I chose to share my insights about traveling, and not just traveling, but traveling and not missing the point. You see, traveling is an expensive hobby. It requires time. It requires preparation. And preparation requires attention to details. So when you're out there traveling, you want to make the most out of it, sulit, in Filipino speak. Have you ever traveled to a new place but left it without experiencing anything new? That is missing the point. Have you ever traveled to the same place and yet experienced it rather differently the second time around? That is not missing the point. I hope through this blog, I will be able to share experiences that really make the travel worth all the time, money and preparation.

Finally I dedicate this blog to my dear eternal companion and best travel mate. He is, by the way, a far better writer than I am, although he does not hear of it. To you my sweets, more travels to the ends of the world. To the covered bridges of Madison County, or the dainty B&B of Wednesday Letters, to Paris, to Salzburg Austria, even to Florin of England. Here's to more travel, and life, and not missing the point.