I am back. And I am home.
After over 24 hours spent in a three different airports across two continents, buttocks planted on the snug economy seat, struggling to catch some semblance of sleep to curb the jetlag recovery in between bingeing free episodes of the epic love story between thousand year old goblin Kim Shin and his fated bride, Ji Eun Tak (Thank you, Korean Air!), US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer let me through.
“Where’d you come from?”
“Korea.” A technicality I leveraged on, daring not disclose my flight origin, skirting the possibility to be subject to further scrutiny and interrogation.
“Do you have any food with you?”
“Like in my backpack right now?”
“No, just overall. Including your luggage.”
“Instant noodles and canned goods.” I quipped in feigned confidence, despite the activated immigrant fear of rejection.
“Welcome home.” The CBP returned my passport and resident card, motioned his hand for me to walk through.
I unpacked all the dirty laundry of t-shirts, shorts and skirts that braved the days and nights in sticky tropical humidity and heat, the packet of Lucky Me Instant Pancit Canton, the cans of Purefoods corned beef, the paper wrapped glass bottles of oil doused cured galunggong, gallon zipper bags bursting with Goldilocks polvoron, a set of Manille calamansi and dalandan liqueur, a stack of photographs from a happy childhood, Christmas gifts to handover from friends to family living in the same Dallas suburb. All remnants of home that was now in the home that now is.
What and where is home even for someone like me?
This made me think of the Two of Wands that was serendipitously my card pull for the day I left Manila for Dallas. A man looking out onto the horizon and the globe in his hand from the comfort of the terrace of his palace. While in the other hand rests a wand and another wand leans on the concrete barrier that separates him from the great expanse of what’s out there.
When one pulls the Two of Wands, one is presented with the comforts of what one’s achieved - a castle worthy of royalty - as well as the possibilities of what else is out there. The man’s face is not looking to what’s here in the now, not fully present to the trappings that surround him. Is bored? Is he not satisfied? Perhaps. In contentment, one’s eyes do not wander outward, towards the world in his hand and the open space.
My head spins from the days spent with my people whom I have not seen face to face, held in my arms’ embrace for at least a decade. My heart bleeds for the comfort of their accessible presence and overwhelming love. And yet, my patience worse for wear from absurd time wasters - senseless bureaucracy and pencil pushing, bumper to bumper traffic crawl and loop the loop mental gymnastics from dead end unthinking and small mindedness. My stomach churned uncomfortably at the acrid taste of the clearly stratified cake of society. My moral fibers stretched seeing and partaking in the urban opulence, side by side with the glaring, skin crawling poverty.
The very place that ignited a fire that was once lost in me also dampened that light. I wanted to remain there, in my place of my birth, my home, and yet my gut screamed that I couldn’t be there anymore. Dubai and Murrica chewed me up and spit me out into someone else. I was that same person, but not exactly that person who left the Philippines a decade ago.
My gut still stirred as I stood in line to wait for my turn through CBP, anxious of the questions, of the head-to-toe, cover-to-cover judgment of my being. I wondered whether there’d come a time when this feeling would go away. That I’d finally feel truly welcomed, accepted in my now home in Texas.
Is there a place where collide in a perfect amalgamation of that home and this one - where one can feel truly loved, welcomed and embraced and yet still enjoy the benefits of order and ease? Or will it only ever exist in the fog of my imagination or in another Universe?