Home sweet home

I was looking at my daughter, and I was thinking of what kind of home I’m providing my daughter with. We have this traditional view that a home is a place with love with comfort and with future. How many people are homeless then?

There’s nothing more wonderful than growing up in loving family. I know because I grew up in one. It is not a perfect home, say, not even an ideal one but a typical Filipino one. Typical because the father is the head while the mother is the neck of the family. I say the mother is the neck of the family because mothers not only run the family they are also the visionaries in the family, they save, they wake their children up in the morning to go to school, they prepare the dinner; mothers hold the head (father) that turns the body (family) and that’s what Filipino mothers really are--control. I didn’t mean that negatively.

I experience lots of joy during my childhood days. I was my father’s boy (YES, HE'S DEAD!) . My father was a heavy equipment operator and his work allowed him to go to beautiful places. He works for the government paving roads for the national public works department and it brought him to mountains, forest, rivers and brooks, and fields. He always brought me along, sometimes my big brother too, but it was always me. I remember how he dammed a small brook with his loader so that the camineros could catch mudfish and catfish. Who can forget that scene? If only I can paint that scene is the first thing that I would portray. The monster loader damming up a river, while the camineros shouting and laughing while catching the slippery fishes, me standing by the steering wheel, my father’s hand on the controls and on my head, my father laughing, me laughing, all laughter. We had broiled mudfish and catfish with tomatoes with dirty hands with cusses with nature for lunch. Unforgettable.

I remember eating dinner with my siblings and laughing. I remember my mother pinning a handkerchief on my shirt so that it will not get lost. I remember my ditche telling me fairy tales while washing the dishes while watching our neighbor swimming in the flood. I remember my ate selling gulaman. I remember my kuya crying because my younger sister scissored his project, a Voltes V artwork. I remember Dadai eating halo-halo at ka Juling. I remember Beng crying and my father dancing her to sleep. I remember Dong pulling white hairs off my father’s head. I remember ate Myra, Jocelyn, Kuya Boy, Tito Buboy, etc. I remember home.

For me home is not a place. Although I consider our old house my home, so many things have changed that I feel like a stranger. For me a home is not a place with love, comfort, and future although I experienced that kind of home; that kind of home does not last, I mean, people leave.

For me a home is a place in time where I can always come back to visit.
This may sound strange, but I think my brother in Thailand, my sisters in Pangasinan and my sisters in Baguio know what I’m talking about.

So I was thinking, what kind of home am I providing for my daughter.

Education is always there and academic honors don’t mean that much to me, material things can be bought, money, toys, stuffs and things…future, who can buy the future?

So what kind of home?

I hope I’m building a home made up of beautiful memories that my daughter can come home to no matter where and what road she takes in life, no matter where she goes. And I mean, no matter where she goes, a place in her heart that will and always exist in her, a place in her heart that will pull him back if she ever comes to the brink, a place in her heart that can save her if it ever comes to worst -- like what happened to me, my home saved me and is still saving me.

I hope I’m building for her a home—a strong and a beautiful home like the one my father built.