Cold Water

I took a bath when I landed in the Philippines. But not filling-up-the-tub type of bath. That's a Western thing. Water's really expensive here (see the irony, we're living in islands, surrounded by water). And no such thing as showers. No, what you do is you fill up a pail with water, sometimes you pump it, if you're lucky, it comes from the faucet in your bathroom. Then, you use a tabo (a cultural icon, I swear. Rizal used it as a metaphor in his book, El Filibusterismo; and every Filipino around the world has it and it's simply this large plastic bowl with a long handle).

You scoop the water with the tabo and upend the tabo over your head. If you do it right, the water will stream down your body, so that you can rinse with one tabo of water (a handy skill of you've got only a gallon's worth of water for the day because sometimes the water stops running).

It's cold water on a humid, hot day. Imagine the shock of that water, but the deliciousness of it when it's 90 degrees out.

That's how my homecoming was, too.

It hadn't really sunk in. That I was going home. Not through the packing, the shopping, or the goodbyes. It was that water, baptizing me, that made me feel at home.

For 19 years, I lived in this place. Studied here and went to school. Had friends and went to places. Knew the ins and outs. Where the bookstore was, where the grocery was, where the special jeepney stops where. Then, when I landed, everything was so familiar---and not.

Ibang-iba na. Everything was so different. Places I thought I knew weren't there, anymore, and buildings that I'd never seen before sprouted up in what was vast spaces of grass. And it happened on a personal level, too. Seeing old friends and having an entirely new dynamic with them.

Cold water. In the face.