Getting Away

I just had to get away. 

My family had just moved from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Gig Harbor, Washington.  I had just spent the summer going through all our belongings, sorting, packing, taking care of the children who had school out, bringing them to every summer class Icould put my hands on, and endlessly cleaning our house to prepare it for the realtor who had just called and was going to come in the next hour with a very interested “this is it” potential buyer.

Keeping a house, with three small children in it, spotless for every showing (for each one of the 36 “this is it” potential buyers) for three months was just plain torture. I had to summon everything I learned about speed and multi-tasking from the Iron Chef, about staging and sweet-smelling candles from HGTV, and about herding children in an instant and shoving them into the car hastily but lovingly from…heck, I don’t know.  Where do you learn that?  What channel?  All my wisdom is now borrowed from television.  If I didn’t see it on TV, I don’t know it.

Arriving in Washington in August was a relief…for a brief while.  After making a head count at the airport, finally taking a deep breath, and thanking our lucky stars that we sold our old house and now lived in a shiny new house, the moving truck arrived and dumped all our old stuff on our feet. So that’s where I was.  That was when Bey emailed.  Box #112.  I just had to get away.

When Bey sent an email with the title “Last Call: US Reunion”, I was unpacking my 112^th box of household items that I just couldn’t take it anymore.  If I had to unpack one more U-Haul box to unearth things that I should’ve thrown out ten years ago, but I couldn’t throw out now because we hadjust coughed up a truckload of money to ship it 2,000 miles to our new home…if I had to unpack one more box that could be opened in three seconds with three deft strokes with the letter opener, but needed three hours to find new crevices in the house to stuff its contents into…if I had to unpack one more of those boxes, I was afraid that I was just going to do a Hulk—swell with pent-up rage, explode out of my clothes, and throw the remaining 36 boxes out the window.  Not good.

So I urgently emailed her back, “Yes, Bey.  I’ll be there.  Bibili na ako ng ticket ngayon din.”  I just had to get away.

But my escape could not be total.  I had to bring my youngest one, David, who is 19 months old and still breastfeeding.  He is physically attached to me, like an arm or leg. For better or for worse, I cannot go anywhere without him.  That’s okay, I would bring him…How in the world would my breastless husband put him to bed at night?   It would be too much to ask for.  He doesn’t have to pay airfare anyway.     

So I bought my plane ticket.  We were just going to be gone overnight.  It wasn’t a long and lazy vacation, but it was still going to be a big escape. For a single plane ticket, I was going to get away from the boxes, and I was going to get away to a distant time and place.  Back to UPIS, back to 1988.  Time travel for $183, round-trip.  It’s really quite a deal.    

1988 was such a long time ago.  From where I stand now, everything looks amazing, hilarious, and memorable, made rosy by the passage of time and death of brain cells.  Isn’t that the fun of storytelling at reunions though:  many things happened that you don’t remember, but you also remember many things that didn’t happen? 

But to me, it was valuable to go back.

1988 was not only 20 years ago, but it was also 20 pounds ago for the ladies (okay, okay…for me, it was forty pounds ago) and 20 thousand hair follicles ago for the guys. It was 20 wrinkles ago, 20 laugh lines ago, 20 stretch marks ago.  But most importantly, it was 20 notches of innocence ago.  It is you and me today, minus 20 harsh realities we have learned the hard way in our wanderings of the past 20 years.  

It was a time when we did not think twice about wolfing down three Texas burgers for lunch and washing them down with a large jug of rootbeer complete with floating honeybees.   It was a time when the highest high would be learning that your crush has vandalized his love for you all over the bathroom wall, and the lowest low would be realizing at 5 pm that your skirt’s fly has been openall day (and our skirts zipped at the back, remember!).   It was a time when no sorrow could be so terrible that it could not be made better by a good dose of fishballs followed by a nice long walk around the Sunken Garden with a goodfriend (or better, your crush).   It was a time when a simple love letter could keep you afloat for weeks and an afternoon date at Sweet Haven could keep you dazed for months.

When we arrived at Bey and Peloy’s home, I suddenly realized my isolation for so many years. After graduating in 1988, I went to college at the UP Manila campus and was there for the next seven years. In 1995, I came to the United States.   All these wonderful friends—Bey, Peloy, Eleanor, Francis,Gladys, Vince, Allan, Priscilla, Hiyas, Jhoanna, Cedric, Tracy, Malyn—I have not seen most of them since 1988. But to be with them that Saturday afternoon and evening, I remembered how young, restless, and promising life was back in 1988.   What was going to become us?  What great things would we achieve?  And look at us now—I looked around the room, here are the loud answers to those questions. 

For me, it has become a humbling reflection.  What has become of me?  What great things have I accomplished with my UP education?  Look at me now, with many years of serious schooling behind me, folding laundry and doing dishes in suburban Washington.  The irony is ruthless and overwhelming.

On a lighter note, it is funny for me to look back because it was a time when a few people thought I had “beauty and brains”…which is such a distant thought that it is so comical. I can’t even sit here and type about it without quietly laughing.  Even my own children, my most blind and loyal followers, would think it is ridiculous. 

Case in point: when I was pregnant with child #3 and waddling around in my 8^th month of pregnancy-induced refrigeratoresque proportions (the double-door kind), my four-year old, out of nowhere, just blurted out, “Mommy, you’re sexy.” 

I was taken aback. I have not been remotely accused of sexiness for many, many years.  And to be called sexy now?   That shot me straight up to heaven where angels sing glorious alleluias all day.  “Wow, thank you Sara! That is so sweet!”  I grinned triumphantly.  The glow of pregnancy must be a real thing then. It was always a mythical concept to me because I was constantly extremely exhausted when I was pregnant. How could I possibly have a beautiful glow if I feel like I’ve been hit by a bullet train?   Wow, I truly felt like I won the lottery.

Then I quickly realized that she’s four and what in the world was she doing using words like “sexy”?!   So I asked with a nervous smile, “What does sexy mean,Sara?”  She just looked at me straight in the eyes and said as matter-of-factly as could be, “Fat.  Sexy means fat.”  Ouch.  Back to earth for me in a thud.  The alleluias stopped mid-song.  Boy, I told myself, I have to teach these children tolie.  Or maybe I have to teach myself to stop asking questions.

Another case in point: we went home in December 2007.  My Grandma, who at 86, has earned every right to say what she wants and make no apologies or explanations, proudly puther arm around me and announced to a group of long-lost relatives, “Look at Donna.  She has prioritized academic excellence over looking beautiful.”   Ouch.  I think she meant it as a compliment, but to my ears, she might as well have said, “She may be as ugly as a mutt in the gutter, but at least she’s not stupid.”  So now you see how far I have come….truly a world away from being “beauty and brains” and all that crazy nonsense. 

After the party at Bey and Peloy’s house, Eleanor, Baby David and I checked in at a local hotel. Eleanor was one of my very best friends in high school, but despite email and phones, we have not been very good at keeping in touch.  Our never-ending attempts at educating ourselves (I thought I was forever in school, but she is still in school! now for a PhD in psychology) have left us in touch only periodically, but meaningfully nonetheless.

Having a chance to talk with Eleanor that night was the culmination of my time-traveling experience that weekend.  Trading tales, sharing love stories, and unloading heartaches with her early into the morning, I felt like I was sitting with her on one of those concrete benches under that big tree outside the Multi again, watching the traffic on Katipunan while the sun was beautifully setting in the distance. 

Hearing her and listening to her sound advice (she is a psychologist, after all), I felt like I was the captain of my ship again.  That life is black and white and I had control over my destiny.  Call it the clarity of youth (or maybe the ignorance of inexperience)—whatever it was, it came upon me that night.  I was16 years old again, certain of my abilities (academic excellence and probably even looking beautiful), full of potential, with my whole life before me.

So what started as an attempt to escape the responsibility of unpacking became an opportunity to step into a time warp and remember who I am and who I could still be.  So after a hearty breakfast at Jollibee, this time everyone was clear-eyed and sober (no more slurred speech or purple teeth), we were all off to the airport, back to our lives, back to our families, back twenty years into the future.   This time, with a little more than what we came with.      

Donna Apolinario Anel graduated as the class valedictorianin 1988.  She then joined the INTARMED program and received her MD in 1995.  She then went to the US for specialty training in Internal Medicine and sub-specialized in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.  She stopped working in 2007 when the third child was born.  She categorically denies that she has prioritized academic excellence over looking beautiful.  Instead, she has prioritized her family to the exclusion of everything else, including academic excellence and looking beautiful—whatever those are.   That’s her story and she’s sticking to it.  Her professional career is now on hold while she specializes in IT services (Ilaw ng Tahanan, that is),sub-specializing in homework, breastfeeding, and laundry.