Tacloban on my mind

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

My taxi driver was making small talk as we crawled through unexpected midnight traffic in Singapore. We were discussing Christmas and how it is a big thing in the Philippines. I said, it’s similar to the Chinese New Year- we have parties all week-long. And like China, all domestic migrants in big cities make that trek back to the provinces/hometowns to celebrate Christmas. “What about you,” he asked, “where are you going to spend Christmas?”

All my life I spent Christmas in Tacloban. My mother’s siblings and their families would spend Christmas eve at home. Even when we were in college in Manila or Cebu, or when we were already working outside of Tacloban, it was a crime if we did not come home for the holidays. But there was one time in 2008 when we said that we’d try spending it in the big city, where Christmas lights and decorations were grander and fireworks bigger. It was fun but it was not home. After that, we said, never again. We still prefer the lights display of DPWH than Ayala Triangle or that Christmas tree in Balyuan than the Christmas tree in Cubao.
Home has always been and will always be Tacloban. I have been based in Manila for the last 20 years and been a transient in many cities for half of that. Friends would say: “the hotel room is your home, the airplane is your home, your home is where your head rests at night, you live out of a suitcase.” But I know where home really is. In fact, I am very particular with the words I use when I refer to my frequent travels between Manila and Tacloban- I say, “mabalik” ako ha manila (I am going back to Manila) and “mauli” ako ha Tacloban ( I am going home to Tacloban) and I never use these words interchangeably (I remember that it was another Waray friend, Bubbles, who made that distinction). I still dream in Waray, think in Waray. I tell all my friends that Tacloban is the center of the Philippines.

But my home will never be the same again. The first time I said that was in 2004 when we brought my brother’s body from Manila to Tacloban for the wake and funeral. It was also close to Christmas, that trip. I had been able to keep it together because I told myself at that time, my own grief can wait, I need to take care of my parents first. But when I saw Tacloban from the plane’s window, I started to cry. Because I knew then that coming home would never be the same again- there would always be this permanence of absence to deal with, my family will be completely changed and I, I myself, will not be the same again. A line of a poem goes: “For all the history of grief/An empty doorway and a maple leaf.” To our family, grief is an empty seat at the dinner table for a son and a brother who is never coming home for Christmas.

And that exact same feeling of profound loss came over me when I looked at Tacloban from the plane window when I came home on week 2. It has been a habit of mine to trace the way to our house from up above when there is a break in the clouds and the plane starts to descend,. I would zero in on a marker (the Astrodome) and then trace the roads home, looking for more markers along the way. I would look out for RTR hospital, then the V&G church, then I’d guess which among the similar-looking bungalows closer to the mountain side is our house. The plane would then make a u-turn in Tanauan, right where my friend lives (by Sol Oil in Brgy. San Roque). My marker is the wooden pier. And then I would start looking for certain landmarks again- the Palo Cathedral, that house on Maharlika Highway with that big ugly eagle or rooster or whatever. I would look out for the beach-goers in McArthur Beach, Baluarte and Sandy Beach Resorts (I remember how, as kids or even when we were older, we would vigorously wave at planes overhead). Soon after that would be the airport. (Once, my brother brought my sister and me to the edge of the runway so we could see the planes up close as they landed).

Now, my usual markers were gone. My friend’s house in Tanauan was crushed by the big oil tank of Sol Oil. Astrodome was still there but the surrounding areas were unrecognizable. The “ Shed”, where we went for sabaw after pa-morningan inuman in Magsaysay Blvd, was washed out. There was a boat in the middle of Magsaysay corner Real Street. And there were no roofs for me to be able to tell my house from the others. When the plane was almost on the ground, I looked to my left and I could almost see all the way through to Real Street, on the other side of the airport; hardly any houses were left standing to block the view.

I had been to ground zero before this. I came by bus that my friends and I chartered to get our families out on week 1. I came when everything was still chaotic; when one still had to be escorted by a military truck to get into the city safely; when bodies were still on the side of the road; when there was hardly any food or water getting to the people. I had already seen San Jose or what was left of it, and truckloads of bodies in body bags and in my mind, one of them could be people on my list that friends, who could not come home immediately, asked me to find. But I did not cry then. I had so much to do and so little time and I could not allow myself to break down. It was too overwhelming that there was no room for tears, no room for my own melodrama.

But this second trip home on week 2 was different. Maybe because I knew my family was finally safe that I finally let my guard down and saw, again, like it was the first time, the city that I love. And I finally allowed myself to cry.
Yes, it was the same feeling I had in 2004, that feeling that nothing is going to be the same again. But it was magnified many times over now because it was not just me-- it’s the feeling shared by my family, my friends, my friend’s family and friends. A whole city was grieving.

I think the sea always figures in most activities of Taclobanons: we do our early or late afternoon jog along Magsaysay Blvd, all the way up to Leyte Park, while enjoying the view of the bay; we’d spend late afternoons just hanging out in Bal-yuan. At night, we’d park our cars along the stretch of Magsaysay and have a beer or two (or more) and bbq from the stalls in Balyuan for pulutan. But how can we again spend full-moon nights along Magsaysay without remembering that at one point during this ordeal Bal-yuan was littered with hundreds of body bags? We would have breakfast or lunch at Yolanda’s (yes, there was a carenderia by the sea named Yolanda, very popular because they served the freshest catch of that morning) and then coffee at Café Lucia, pizza at Canto Fresco or buko juice at Manlurip while enjoying the cool sea breeze. We would take drives along the coast and end up in Brgy. Bislig Tolosa for a masag breakfast. On Sundays or holidays, families would go to the beach resorts for a picnic; picnic lunch is lechon, tuba, gaway, tinuon na saging. Personally, I prefer early morning dips on weekdays, when hardly anyone is on the beach. Sometimes, I’d go straight to the beach straight from the airport, coming from an early morning flight. Now, would we still look at the same sea without remembering how it once claimed so many lives? Would there ever come a time when we won’t tremble in fear at the sound of the rain or gust of the December wind? Didits said it best, “imagine, a whole generation of children would be afraid of the rain, would be afraid of the sea.”

And that is sad because what made this city beautiful is that bay that wraps around the city. And now, every single time we marvel at its beauty, it would always be bittersweet.

It took me a while to respond to the question of the taxi driver. I could have told him all these but maybe it would be a little bit too much for a late night ride. So I said, not this year, but oh, how I’d miss spending the holidays in Tacloban.

Christmas in Tacloban pre-Yolanda is a frenzy- everyone who is studying or working elsewhere is home, home from Manila, from Cebu, from abroad. And every day there’s a party- mini-reunions with friends from grade school, high school, college and then the never-ending family gatherings all throughout the season. But how do we do that post-yolanda knowing there will always be one or two, or even more, or entire families, who will be missing from these reunions? I imagine how our laughter would always be punctuated by silences- silences to remember those who are no longer there and how our stories will now be interspersed with accounts of the struggles to survive, or stories on the agony of waiting to hear from family during those days when Tacloban was shut off from the world, or stories of how they lost everything- homes, businesses and of the challenges of getting back on our feet from zero.

If I could have it my way, I’d be in Tacloban right now for Christmas, for my birthday, for the New Year, post-Yolanda conditions and all. My father is 79 years old, with a pacemaker and an anxiety disorder and his doctors said it would be better for him to be in a place where he would have access to a steady supply of medicines and hospitals with the equipment to be able to handle his kind of medical condition. So for the second time in my life, I spent Christmas away from home. And for the first time in my small unit in Quezon City, I hang a parol, borrowed a Belen, bought a very small Christmas tree, and my sister decorated my place so it would at least feel like Christmas at home. It’s not the same but we are all together and for now, I think that’s enough. Home for now, is where my family is.