how do you leave your mother?
ikoku nikki/diary of a strange land, tomoko yamashita
or better yet, how do you leave your motherland?
this morning, i received an sms from my bank saying they weren’t going to approve my application for the waiver of my annual fee. this annoyed me. the fee was worth P4,500—that’s two games. maybe three or five books, depending on the price. a shit ton of coffee. one and a half month’s worth of my dog’s food.
a conversation about this whole affair with my dad (we came to the conclusion that i should just cancel my card and live on the supplementary card my mom had given me) boiled down into a conversation on a job (i have been looking for a new one), which boiled down into a conversation on leaving the country.
“you should leave. don’t grow old here. don’t retire here.” he’d said, facing his work laptop and reading an email. just another thursday.
but how do you leave your motherland?
my whole life is here. my family, my friends, my dog, even the strays we feed outside. they’re all here. if i leave, how do i leave without my heart? how do i pack 25 years of my life into a few suitcases and leave?
i browsed postgraduate offerings in a university in australia.
gabby recently came back and raved about the wide open spaces; the parks, the birds, the encouragement of going-out on weekends. i thought it would be nice to go.
i asked my dad if it would be fine if my postgraduate degree was different from my undergraduate. maybe it was time to pursue my real love: arts and humanities. he said it would be fine, he’d ask me for what purpose the degree would be, but he wouldn’t invalidate my desire to pursue it.
i wondered if i should take an mba instead. the same pattern from 2018. play it safe; you can always write and read and explore the arts in your own time.
but why, i ask myself, would i leave my motherland just to play it safe? if safety was all i wanted, i could stay here. take up an mba in the university i ended up not going to. stay home. safe.
my relationship with the philippines is as complicated as my relationship with my mom (though she will tell you it isn’t and maybe it really isn’t and i’m just being dramatic).
the philippines is a nation that is so hard to love. it’s frustrating and, sometimes, thankless. you fight for what’s right and do what’s right, but greed overrides all. a georeserve has to fight for its own existence in the face of development. people are displaced for another subdivision—for a new high rise that, really, only the wealthy can afford nowadays.
i’ve seen articles about the surplus of property. too many rooms built and not enough occupants. but still, we develop, right? we build and we build and we build. real estate is an asset; it’s money in the long run.
the senatorial elections are coming up. the first 10 favoured candidates are people who have no business being in politics. but vote for them anyways, because they’re popular tv personalities. vote them over the candidates who have the credentials; the drive—the good of our land in mind.
despite this, i ask you: how do you leave your motherland?
how do you pack your life, all 25 years of it, into a suitcase and leave without looking back?
my aunt had done that. 30 plus years of her life into a suitcase and onto a plane to america. a visit once a year. new roots sprawled in a land that’s not really her own. she's spent more time in america now than she’s ever spent in the philippines.
how do you bear to only see your parents once a year? to not be by your mother’s side at the time of her death? to watch your country from the screen of a tv instead of everything unfolding in real time?
my friend aria and i met up for dinner a few weeks ago. she’s in singapore pursuing her masters. when i joked that my mom was probably still gossiping with her sister, she said “it must be like they’re those teen sisters again. i’ve only gone half a year without my brother and i missed him so much. i wonder what it’s like to live so far away from family.”
the philippines, the pearl of the orient; the land worth fighting and dying for.
how do you leave, even with the wind at your back propelling you forward? how do you leave knowing that it’ll be only you; that in a foreign land, you will have to carefully create a life without the foundations that built you up and made you who you are?
even if the land is dying and the water is scarce, how can you leave for better pastures when you’ll be departing alone?
i recently read a novel called yñiga. i will not explain much, but i will share this excerpt that still lingers in my mind:
She knew then: whatever she’d do—leisurely dip pandesal in her morning coffee, retrieve laundry from the clothesline, pass someone’s fare in the jeep—a part of her would always be running to the hospital.
Forever making a run for it.
Her reluctant handiwork. Preordained, impossible to escape.
sometimes, i wonder what it’s like to learn your mother has died when you are thousands of miles away; oceans and countries apart. what it’s like to sit in quarantine, an agonising 14 full days, knowing that your mother is in a freezer, waiting for you to be released so the viewing can begin. i wonder what it’s like to hear your youngest sister say your mother doesn’t visit you in your dreams because “you didn’t come home,” despite a global pandemic; to tell said sister that you called and you sent money; you did what you could in the face of uncertainty—to defend yourself against your supposed lack of filial piety.
my aunt in america was my grandmother’s favourite.
how does a favourite child leave the nest?
all my life i had been coddled by my family. i’ve been ferried to and from the hospital at odd hours by my parents who would, in three or five hours, get into a car and drive to work if i was discharged; have had them stay home when my fevers ran high and nobody else could care for me. my dad comes home from work to eat lunch with me, even if i’m 25. in the mornings, in between sleep and wakefulness, i hear them shuffle in and out of my room to kiss me goodbye.
how can i leave this comfort?
my dad mentioned something during this morning’s conversation. they had thought about migrating. they were looking at australia and canada when i was younger, but my dad was young and arrogant; they’ll read up on it more another day. another day came, but he’d reconnected with his mother. a root planted firmly in the ground.
“there was that burden. if i leave, my relationship with my mom—your relationship with your a-ma will fall apart again.”
but he said he was frustrated. he should’ve done more. we should have gotten out when we had the chance.
how do you leave your mother?
my dad wasn’t always a mama’s boy. there was a long stretch where all i knew was my mom’s mom. grandma. then, on a random sunday morning in 2013, he said “we’re going to see my mom.” an aunt of his had told him he should visit his mom again.
we arrived unannounced. it was touch and go, with a younger brother who was mad at him and a younger sister who seemed 50/50 with our arrival. i remember having pandesal and butter and his mom—my a-ma asked me how i was.
my chinese name, 金金, is pronounced as kim kim in fukien. the same character in my name is nestled in the second character of my a-ma’s 秀錦. her dad, my taikong, named me. my a-ma’s nickname was kim-ah.
i don’t know if i want to leave. sometimes i do, but i’m afraid. all my life i have known the comfort of my home; the warmth of my family. if i get lonely and sick in a country far away from my pearl of the orient, what then? there is no parent to pester, no best friend to text “do u want to hang out?”.
in a land far away from my own, i will be a vagrant. motherless and motherlandless; a lone sailor in seas not their own and aboard a boat made of memories and homesickness.
how do i leave motherland; how do i leave mother? both of these questions weigh in my hands as i gaze over the horizon of my life, its distance and depth as uncertain as everything else in this world.
ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚
a song as always.
if this seems incoherent, i apologize. i wrote this in between so many things; in between me brewing coffee and fixing my dog's food. in between me fixing up lunch and starting my new book. you get the gist.
i just felt like i had to get it all out of my system and so i wrote without really thinking twice about it. and here i offer it to you, barely edited, barely given a once over. i hope you enjoyed reading, hahaha!
i should probably stop apologizing for always posting things unedited and raw. most of the time, i'm just writing this to scream into a void. if you're reading, thank you for taking the time.
see you all next time ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧!