We live in the details

It is 4:59 AM on January 8 and as the plane was landing on the runway, I was thinking that for the first time in ten years I'm celebrating my birthday at the time zone I was born in. It's a small detail, but it's an important one. My brother was at the airport to meet me. He looks good, older, more mature. We drove though Roxas Boulevard just as the city was waking up from its short slumber humming of crowing roosters, the tentative blows of jeepney horns and the slow roar of engines revving up for the day's journey through heavy traffic, skinny streets and dense pedestrian lanes. It is a schizophrenic mix that could make a good sample for a new Justin Timberlake album. The city is gray from the dawn and grime. Manila Bay looks quiet, tired, unmoved. Despite the early hour, already there are hundreds of people on the road---students are walking to school, peddlers are loading up their goods onto shaky rickshaws that they plow through town, bystanders are smoking away a lung and a half. Because of the early hour, we cruise past the city and drive through my town. We drive past the arch that welcomes me back and I am filled with nostalgia for a time when the basketball court was not yet flooded, the plaza expansive and filled with kids playing moro-moro, the river clean and thriving with fish, the fields ripe for harvest with rice and tomatoes and squash. Now I hardly recognize the way. I can't make out my usual signs home anymore, the scrolly gates of Dr. Eddie's house, the basketball court, Shelky's. It feels familiar but strange. The houses are rundown and exhausted from its fight with the river that continues to swallow the land to make a swamp of it. I tried to make out the faces of the people, to see if I knew them. I saw my elementary science teacher. She still wears her hair the same way, a short cut that is clipped by the ears. If I close my eyes, I could still see the pink church towering over my young self and my friends and I are barefoot playing Chinese Garter at the plaza. Why do we long for change and yet fear it? This town, just like me, has changed. In many ways this is not home anymore but I know this: I will forever trace the spirit of home from this place. (Always Mom, I promise.)

I met my friends in the city for dinner later that night. They arranged a surprise party for me. Wena is the one I see first at McDonalds at Rockwell. She is wearing jeans and a striped blue shirt. She is thin and compact, unchanged. At our moment of recognition, it is hard to believe its been close to a year since I had seen her last. It doesn't feel like a year, much like the year before when I saw her and we hadn't seen each other in seven. Pretty soon the gang arrives, and one after the other it is the same. Gabs still has the permanent smile and serious consitution, Jecee is beautiful and cool and collected, John is steadfast and calming, Clark is beaming from a new happy marriage, Eline is youthful and engaging. Years dissolve to nothing and we meet as if we had just seen a movie last week and we banter about our tendencies and usual foibles. Yet we are not completely unchanged by the years. There are new people in our lives. Confident Suki is Gab's better half and sweet Jen is Clarks and we feel a kinship to them as if we had known them all our lives. There are moments so sweet you can't believe you are part of them. This is one of them. I've had quite a few of them recently. I am grateful. I don't take it lightly. On nights when my prayer is unhurried and earnest, I sincerely say thanks for among these friends, the grimy, dense, gritty city becomes a verdant meadow and blue skies hover above, ready to entertain with images of an impromptu movie of sea turtles chasing pirate ships. Life is full of possibilities.

Birthdays invite a retrospection that could either make you see the glass half full or half empty, a view that offers such a limited view of our collective life ---"...our singularity, importance, complexity, love." I love the austerity and ambiguity of this moment, that it is both beautiful and sad at the same time. I am not afraid of this kind of sadness anymore. I am humbled by it. It reminds me of what is important like home and family and great friends and a memory of a life so good, it hurts, sometimes, to remember.