i’ve been here in the united states for twenty-four years. when i left home—the home of my early childhood, of days playing with my cousins next door and being scolded by my aunts and chased constantly by mosquitos, my roots so deep it stretched from batangas on one side to mindanao on the other, and i only knew of one place where they converged, where the core of my identity as a human being began to form—i was only nine years old. i didn’t really understand what was going on at the time, when after so many years absent, my father finally came home to take us to the united states: land of opportunity, of better education, of a better life. i didn’t really understand all of that, but i was excited to go somewhere i’d never been.
when we left home, it was only a year after benigno “ninoy” aquino, jr. was assassinated at an airport in 1983. i remember seeing news reels on the color television at my cousins’ house and the silence of the room each and every time the newscasts replayed the video of the man coming home after exile and walking across the tarmac and suddenly, inexplicably, falling face down. i didn’t understand it then, only that this man was someone really famous and that he was all over the television, and that he was shot, and died.
when we left home, it was in an atmosphere of upheaval. there seemed to be stories of riots and tear gas nearly every day, ever since that man died on the television, and there were, everywhere, signs and ribbons and small flags of sunshine yellow—the color of the sun on our pilipino flag—here and there, and people flashing “L” with their thumbs and forefingers, the “L” for laban: fight. i didn’t understand that it signaled the catalyst for a change that was to come many, many months later (some say too long a time), a change that would catapult a precariously unified nation into further chaos, overthrow a long-entrenched leadership (some say dictatorship), and sink a country so strongly divided, separate, and disparate into political and social confusion.
i didn’t understand it then that what i was leaving behind was a home on the verge of turmoil and change.
and still, history has yet to say if that catalyst—and what followed and what still follows after—will do for my homeland harm or good.
i hope that the sacrifice of a life can justify the future shape of a nation of people, if only to salute his memory, and enfold into its daily rounds a small piece of what he wanted his people to accomplish as individuals, and together, as a true country.
many thanks to filipino librarian for his post on the i am ninoy campaign. this entry was originally published, in slightly different form, at rustedscissors on november 25, 2008.