Mag-anka Jeffrey Dalere Tangonan, my kadkadua:
Agmurmurayka! Breathe the air of your ancestors.
Now you see, now you see: You are not an accident of life. Your mother meant it all, this fact of your birthing, its substance and what it means to her and to you. The facts are wrought in stone, those hardy excess of the mountains and hills that depress into the lukong of your birthday, until that lukong—indeed, the Ilocos—reach out to the vast sea in the west: born July3, 1985, in the days of disquiet of your birthland, some few months before the people rise up in revolution against the dictator with only their rage to callthe shots so he, the dictator, would remember, that he had not the right tostay a second longer in power. So you were a prelude to the newfound birth of people's courage, mind you. You never knew—but now you do.
Like everyone else in your barrio, you were born away from the loneliness of hospitals or clinics. You were with your people, in the very heart of it all: in the warm and smoky kitchen built by your grandfather whohad come to Hawaii to seek his fortune over here, maybe misfortune, but fortunenonetheless.
I could imagine the welcome, my dear kadkadua: our twin cries breaking the silence in that hour of our birth, pacifying the anxiety, and giving calm and balm to the mother of our child's dreams, in the Philippines and in Hawaii, much later on. Our whole neighborhood could havecome to give witness to this birthing, the midwife with her crude but certainways, and the relatives' prayers that went with their frenzied ways of attending to the needs of both mother and midwife—and then us.
Someone could have gathered the leaves: the marunggay tocoax our mother's breast so she would have more of those colostrum, the first of the first milk we would need.
Someone could have put out the basi, the arak, the tobacco,the gaiety could have begun right there and then despite our young father'sabsence.
You see: he had to go away to fight a war he did notunderstand. Perhaps he did not like to wage a war with others, but Ilocos being Ilocos, with each parched earth and broken promises, he did not have to justify his leaving, for leaving he had tofight a war for a dictator who bluffed his way into greatness as empty as the fields lying fallow when the first rains of May fail us.
So we were born without him, coming into this world in war and in chaos, and in the din of what was left of the Philippines in those times with rallies and demonstrations that marked each day that we had to fight it out, with mother finally deciding to let go of the homeland and join her family over here so we can have a chance, one fat chance to be something better, to eke it out somewhere else in the hope that in eking out some life would come to us at last.
And so we left, you remember that. We left the barrio of our birth to get into another barrio—the same poverty we were escaping from—in thebig city, where soldiers like our father were doomed to be poor, were the poor were doomed to be poorer.
In the big city, we waited for the coming of our younger sister, Des, she who had come with smiles on her face, sunny smiles, bright smiles, her charm those of the days that gave out some hope for a land so rendered hopeless.
With us, you my kadkadua, Des, and I, we waited for our parents to come home, our mother from a faraway land she had gone to, and our father from the many wars he had to fight in Mindanao.
Some days, our mother would come, but not long—and Des would not know her, remember? Perhaps I was more understanding, more tolerant of absences? Perhaps I was getting used to it, this life with our neighbors shared day in day out, a life of absence, a life of constant looking for something better, something more redeeming beyond the small piece of meat we would share with equally poor children?
Kadkadua: You realize at a very early age that in the geography of pain and separation your neighbors were closer to you than your family in Hawaii—both in reach and intimacy. And your birthland is the same thing, despite its wretchedness: it is where you wanted to stay longer—and linger on. You remember the ceremonies of arriving and departing from this birthland, the ceremonies in the language you knew: Ilokano. Some night an adult with you tagging along would take the bus, and in the morning sunlight, there you were in Bacarra, in those flat lands of rice and garlic that in the east would reach up to the mountains and in the west would bow to the power of the waters of the sea.
This land of the Ilokos you returned to many times, as if in a ritual. And when it was time for you to leave, you just called out to your name: Umaykan, umaykan, di ka agbatbati! (Come, come, you are not to be left behind!) Of course, you were calling out to yourself.
I was calling out to you, my kadkadua.
The sounds of your first language, you are sure, are the powerful winds of the Ilokos mountains, the clatter of the water buffalo's steps as it pulls the sled that carries the bolo knives and shovels that allow the earth to breath, and the flow of the water of life to the thirsty rice fields of the Ilokos. Do not allow this language to be dead in you, kadkadua. It will be a struggle, yes, but it will be your connection to the gods and goddesses you will search for. There is no shortcut to the redeeming ways of the gods and the goddesses, you see.
Kadkadua: Ilokano word for placenta, twin, companion, to journey with, spirit, soul.
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