A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!

...how do I describe what I just went through? Two weeks of intense revelation. Two weeks of constant celebration. Two weeks of, after having shed off all the constant ruminations nagging me before, I face today with that sweet spontaneity of every moment.

Philippines to me will always be my home; this I have come to understand. I keep on telling my friends, jokingly, that it's so funny how whenever I come home to PI I endlessly enjoy living and all the time in between my visits (i.e. when I'm in the US), I just wait for when I'm alive again!!! Haha.

One of my dear uncles gave me the most striking lesson of my visit, if not of my whole life. We were sitting together, and he always with his smile kept on revealing to me how much he misses his son, my cousin, who like me has migrated across the seas. And yet he tells me it pains him to miss him so much, and more because his son, my cousin, would not want to hear any of his misery, understandably because his son, my cousin, suffers the same fate of being apart from loved ones, hence being alone. Yet he is not ashamed of his predicament, but rather in a very soft tone adding the wiseness of his age, tells me something like he knew I also needed to hear. He says, "Makakailiw ak ya maung! Pero antam, mas maung balet so makailiw, ta no andi la, mas mairap; Labay ton ibaga akalingwan ka la." (I miss him so much! But you know, it's better to miss, because it's harder if you no longer do; because that would mean you already have forgotten).

Fresh year. Fresh days. Fresh hope, finally. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!