Walking on Water: Home for the Weekend

With papa and his vision.

No wonder he's still the one man I measure everyone else against.

This weekend, I opted to be negligent for a good while and spend some days in Digos, Davao del Sur. Since weekends are the only days when I can catch up on backlog paperwork and other office responsibilities, it took a great deal of convincing on the part of my dear father (and a promise of an airfare refund) that made me decide to visit home.

(Uh-oh, I think there's a bit of an oxymoron here. How can one be a visitor to one's own home?)

"Home" has become a relative word now. Perhaps I'm one of those people who no longer know what that means. I've spent the past 15 years living in dorms and I relish this freedom. Home has been PSHS-MC, UP College of Medicine, CWL Dorm, Cuevas Apartment, Paz Street in Paco, Apartment in Nakpil Street, Residents' Callroom and now, Medicine Chairman's Office.

Different degrees of solitude. Weekend at the local beach (Aplaya, Digos, Davao del Sur. Oct 2008)

It's been 6 months since I last went home. With my recent jam packed schedule, getting to spend 3 days there is already a treat. There's always something soothing about the Southern sunshine even if it's several degrees warmer down there. Even the dry and dusty Digos breeze seems more refreshing. After spending a few days at home, I come back to Manila invariably recharged, with a stronger resolve to someday return and finally allow my roots to sink in.

This little boy might as well be me...

There is an area outside our house that I particularly love. It's that junction where the concrete ledge of our little terrace meets our front wall just adjacent our front door. I fondly call that Jean's Corner - where I have always enjoyed basking in the afternoon sun, waiting for dusk while lazily strumming my green guitar, or simply watching the dust settle . Even during mid-afternoons, that spot remains cool, being shaded by the tall talisay trees Papa planted soon after we moved to that place. Sometimes I just watch birds tend their nests on the nearby kawayan bush, listening to the rustling of the leaves of the mango, balite and talisay trees around me. Sometimes I just sit there, legs curled, my back on the wall, hunting fleas off one of our dogs until daylight makes way for the pale light of the moon. Other times I just while away time, doing nothing, thinking of everything unimportant.

I spent some time in that nook last weekend.

The shade from the talisay tree was gone. The late afternoon sun was no longer soothing, the rays that seep through the trees were just too bright I had to close my eyes for a while. I tried to listen to the rustling of the leaves but I can't hear them anymore. There was something unsettling about that corner. A certain loneliness, and with it, a sense of being out of place, a music that haunts me that I know isn't mine.

I couldn't stay in that place long. Somehow, it's not my corner anymore.