Passport Photo
Taken for my passport when I was eight, I would use it two years later to visit the Philippines, in 1981, after my maternal grandfather suffered a heart attack. When I was two years old my grandfather came to live with us in Honolulu for a few months after my grandmother died but returned to Manila shortly after. He was homesick and grieving. In the short time we lived together we formed a bond, spending some mornings at the beach or park. I still remember the park where he took me aside to tell me he was leaving. In many ways Hawaii resembled the Philippines. Surely he could have found contentment in the similarities. Then again, at his age I am certain that he was used to the way of life back home. I often wonder how it would have been had he stayed. I’ve never had grandparents around growing up and have often wished I could have experienced that. He wrote often and I always looked forward to mom reading his letters aloud. From a letter he wrote after we visited him in 1981: From the day you left, the Philippine skies in Greater Manila and all the countrysides spread a dark gloom and bitterly wept like all the women folk who saw you off at the airport. Continuously it has been raining dogs and cats without let up. All school and government offices were forced to close up, almost all streets in Manila are under water. Some reported to be as high as six to nine feet. In the newspapers the arial view of Central Luzon only showed rooftops of houses as the death toll continues to rise. When he died in 1982, a year after his heart attack, only mom returned for his funeral. In 2007, I visited the Philippines for the first time since I was ten, on a pilgrimage to the cemetery in Manila where he and Lola are buried. Sadly, neither of my parents has any desire to return to the Philippines. The more I keep recounting my recent travel trying to convince them to visit (downplaying the three typhoons and earthquake during my visit in November of 2007), the more I want to return to the country that is beginning to feel more familiar than foreign.
