Leaving Home

first published as lost and found column#17 on April 9, 2005

 

The last day home after a vacation is always the most hopeless day of the year for me. Nine years living away from home, and I’m an expert in transience. Still my heart isn’t used to it.

 

The day before my departure, my heartbeat races twice as fast, I snap at everyone in the house, and I am lost, wandering inside my head like a wild tiger in a cage far away from the jungle. I lock myself in my room, or go out in the garden, so no one can find me. Already my mind is moving away, bracing itself for detachment in the next 24 hours.

 

In a fit of panic after Christmas, I told my father flatly: “I need to go shopping.” We drove out of the house in silence. But as the mall came into view, I decided I wanted to eat instead, on a restaurant on top of a hill. “Ok” was all he said. Then a few minutes later, “Do you mind if we stop by the cemetery first?”

 

I shook my head. I didn’t actually care where we went; a heavy feeling wrapping itself around me had made me incapable of making any rational decisions. I just wanted to go somewhere. Anywhere away from the heaviness.

 

It was a weekday, so the grounds weren’t busy. Flowers lovingly laid by relatives at the headstones the weekend before made bright splashes of yellows, oranges, and reds on the green bed of grass. Being under so much sky felt exhilarating. Already my mind was getting clearer.

 

This was what an ordinary afternoon must feel like at home, each day reassuringly stretching on into another one just like it. No need for arrivals or departures. My father and I didn’t talk. Not about my vacation, certainly not about leaving. It seemed he wanted only the comforting silence, too.

 

On our way up to the restaurant, I changed my mind again. “Can we stop by the shrine first?” I asked. The shrine was a private park built in honor of the Sto. Niño. It overlooked the city and was a popular place for prayer and picnics. I hadn’t been there since I was ten, and something in me was suddenly drawn to it now.

 

Most of all, I wanted to see the playground. It had a globe-shaped jungle gym curiously placed at the top of a steep slope, and though I had always been fascinated by it, I had never climbed too high for fear of rolling down the slope. I wanted to climb it now and see if it was still as scary.

 

Perhaps I should have expected it, but everything looked smaller. Even the steps going up and down the hilly terrain were less tiring .The playground was now a zoo, the jungle gym turned into a monkey cage. Much smaller than the one in my memory and not scary at all. I wouldn’t be able to climb it anymore.

 

Instead, my father led me up a ledge. This, too, was at the top of a slope, but it overlooked houses and forest and the wide sea. The mountain cast a shadow over the gulf as the sun set behind it. In all my years of living at home, I had never seen anything so serene. Or perhaps I had never really needed to see this until now.

 

We stood there until dusk, keeping our balance in the wind, me memorizing the scene in my mind, my father’s arm around my shoulders. We never got to the restaurant. I was dizzy with hunger as we drove down to the city, still silent. But somehow food or words weren’t that important anymore. I had come home at last, and because of that, I was ready to leave.

 

The next day, before I even hugged my father at the airport parking lot, my mind was already on its way to Cebu. No space for emotional goodbyes. I boarded the plane, immediately turning on my laptop like the other travelers preoccupied with their calendars and to-do lists for the next destination.

 

On the way to my boarding house, I got a text from my father: “Your time here is never enough. Wish we talked more. We weren’t able to visit that new place I told you about.”

 

He always says that afterward. “Thanks for everything, Pa,” I replied simply, the words starting to come back.