This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on October 25, 2005.
When I see old childhood friends in the morning market or at the mall while I’m having my afternoon coffee, I am often greeted with confused and shocked looks—the kind you would expect to see on someone who has witnessed an apparition. It doesn’t matter who it is—my mom’s best friends, a second cousin, or perhaps, a neighbor from our old subdivision—their question is always the same: “Why did you come back to the Philippines after living in the United States?”
It’s not an easy question to answer. My return home was not something my family and I could have foreseen when I left for college in New York City. I was 18 years old then and bouncing-off-my-seat excited to leave Manila in order to live out my own American Dream in the Big Apple, where I became co-captain of my university dance team, performed at the world-famous Joyce Theater in front of dance icon Merce Cunningham, and learned from the now late-Beat poet and my professor, Kenneth Koch. Armed with my Ivy-League diploma and the brazen self-confidence of youth, I easily navigated through urban life in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. But despite all these, I longed for home even if I was unsure whether the Manila of my memories was still intact.
True to our nation’s ever-tumultuous socio-political identity, my return home was greeted by the Arroyo-Garci phone-tapping scandal and the nervous uncertainty on people’s faces as they confusedly gathered on Ayala Avenue, outraged by our head of state’s pseudo-apology, but exhausted from the thought of living yet another People Power, our democratic ammunition that seems to lose meaning with each use. Yes, I was definitely home, for only in Manila do you take into consideration the possibility of a revolution breaking out in the streets when making plans to meet with friends. But there was something life-affirming in watching it all unfold, not only on television but on the streets, making its way into dinner-time conversations with family. Because I was home, I didn’t have to go online to read about it in the local news wires and I could partake in the dialogue because I was here to see it happen.
For the first time in years, I celebrated my dad’s birthday with him, my mom and 30 of our dearest relatives in Baguio. It felt incredible not to live out that PLDT television commercial where the stateside daughter makes that tear-jerking, long-distance call to dad (something my two older brothers had to do from the West Coast), but instead to greet him in person with an embrace and a kiss.
When we bless the food before each evening meal, I thank God not only for the sustenance we receive, but also for the company around me. Gone are the days of having microwaved lasagna—or microwaved anything, for that matter—alone in my studio apartment, or amid other Manila exiles who, like me, dreamt of their mom’s kare-kare, with the sauce made from freshly ground peanuts and other secret homemade additions, unlike the powdered supermarket variety we resorted to using in the US that often disappointed.
It may be surprising to know that more exiles are returning home. Many of my peers are coming back to set up their own restaurants, to become fashion stylists or graphic designers for local publications, to seek their master’s or juris doctorate at the Asian Institute of Management or the Ateneo Law School, respectively, or (in classic Pinoy fashion) to take a stab at that singing career in show biz. When I see these talented men and women out at night in Greenbelt, at St. James Parish in Alabang, or (yes, this really happens) at my favorite squid-ball stand in Parañaque, we often give each other a knowing look or a smile, not having to say a word about our return because of an unspoken understanding that can only be comprehended after you’ve had a slice of the American Dream, only to realize that there’s nothing quite like the Humble Pie from home.
One of my dearest friends is preparing to leave for the US next year, to begin her residency as a doctor in Illinois. I want to beg her to stay, to serve the people of our country who are in dire need of her expertise, instead of the ones she will likely treat in an affluent Midwest suburb, who will go home in their SUVs with their health insurance cards neatly tucked in their wallets. But I know that to ask her to stay would be selfish. I know why she wants to leave, and perhaps I would, too, if I only earned an eye-opening average of $700 to $1,000 a month as a self-employed physician—wages an American high-school graduate can get working at a neighborhood GAP store.
But if I know her at all, she, like me, will long for Manila’s chaos, one that can easily transform into a cognizable order. She will see, with the perfect vision that only hindsight can offer, that all the opportunities in the West sometimes isn’t enough to keep you from returning home.
My doctor-friend also has one weakness that she surely can’t live without and that she absolutely must have after every meal: the Philippine mango, so explosively sweet and inimitable. And in Chicago, they don’t grow them like we do.
