migration pattern

I imagined coming home would be like visiting an old grave: the absence of life--my life--would have left a gap that I could never fill again. I thought coming home would be like digging up that grave, resting in it, and quietly waiting for all the dead memories to come crawling out of the sodden earth.

It wasn't.

Life in Manila, though wet, was mostly unchanged. Sure, new groceries popped-up, people lined-up at the MRT(who would've thought?), and there were new responses at mass. But the way I interacted with society, all the modes and mediums that allow me to eat great food, go see a movie, and find my friends and family, were still very much present.

The strangers that do me this service everyday since I was born were still just as helpful. The infrastructure that brought me from one place to another was there (even if it was sometimes in waist-deep floodwater). But most especially, loved-ones were not only accessible, they were welcoming.

Friends hugged me as if I've never left. My tita gave me a hearty kiss on the cheek, a little more moist than I remembered. My mom taught me how to cook, and it was warm, full, and good. All of them found time to spend with me, and I feel like the life I left behind was never gone, only misplaced.

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in," Robert Frost once said. Then Manila is still my home, and the diaspora continues.