Year 2004-2005

Far Away Christmas



Tired and bored, he lays down on his bed. It's been a hectic day. He picks up the remotes for DVD and TV and plays a movie entitled 'Far From Heaven'. Booooooooooring. He loses interest in the middle of the movie and turns his eyes instead to the laptop sitting on the bedside table. He surfs the intenet. He reads a couple of bookmarked URLs, checks his own blog. He castigates himself for wasting time on useless blogging and pointless DVD movies. He could have turned this DVD off the first time Julia Moore appears in a 1950's outfit. He wonders how the world appeared in 1950's. People in 50's wore nice, color-matching clothes with skirts that flew like hurricanes, and smiles as automatic as rifles - ratatatatatat - made of plastic - like garbage containers.

He hates his bifocals. He keeps raising his head up and down, screen to keyboard, committing typographical errors - he really needs to learn typing.

He lifts his legs from the bed and checks them out - His thighs need more bulk, he thinks. His mind wanders around his running training, maybe he should use his thighs more when running.

He turns on the bed to relieve the pressure of having the laptop over his chest as he types. He needs to wake early am tomorrow so he can work-out in the gym. He'd go through the same old routine tomorrow, see the same gym rats, all building up muscles each time, while he, while his bulk remains the same. He lifts the same 100 pounds for years now. He's not intending to bulk up because he's a unner, not a bodybuilder. He is one of the oldies in the gym - most of the gym rats are young enough to be his children. But he thrives in the gym, at least it gives him a routine.

He stares at the TV screen - Where the hoot is he now in the movie he's watching? He ignores the TV screen. He opens a book - What was the last page he read in Anita Shreve's The Pilot's Wife? The character's pilot-husband just had a plane crash. Nice book really, nice story. Why the hell he watches this stupid DVD instead of reading the book?

He stares around his quiet room and sees the black entertainment system he'd had for years. The oldest item in the system is the alarm clock which was the first item he bought as soon as he arrived in the US in 1990. It is cream colored, still working, showing the same old bright red digital numbers. It sits all by itself besides the DVD player and stereo system and CD player and books and electric fan (which he sometimes needs to turn on despite the air-conditioning).

Through the years items in his room have changed. For example, he used to type on an electric typewriter, nowadays, he keyboards a computer. From playing stereo cassettes, he switched to CD player. From Video Player to DVD player. From CD players to Ipod, from tower computer to laptop, from….ah, everything ain't that constant.

He lingers quietly on his bed, reading words on 'The Pilot's Wife' book but NOT reading at all. He is thinking about the conversation he had with his lady boss over the phone an hour ago.

"Can you work this Chistmas Ramon?" she asked.

"I don't care."

She said, "You're sure? I know how important Christmas is to you Filipinos. I'm Jewish."

"I can work this Christmas Anne, despite me being Catholic and Filipino."

She said, "I see, but you sound different from the other Filipinos here. Christmas is big for them."

"I know but I have no family except my sister and her husband and the rest are all back home."

She said, "Ok."

That's the end of the conversation. There is no reason to rub-in the sadness of being a Filipino OFW working and living alone. There are other things more important than Christmases in the life of a Filipino OFW.

He stares lengthily at the alarm clock he bought sixteen years ago. It's amazing how durable it turned out to be. Durability is an apt word to describe a Pinoy earning a living outside his county. He turns his head to the screen and he's now really pissed off with the movie he's watching. He does not know what the movie is all about and does not care to know. He turns off the TV.

Now what?

He absorbs the look of his room. He smells the pillows and blankets. He smells his shirt. It smells like his father's shirt when his father was his age. It's a very curious thing to start smelling like your father when he was your age.

He closes his eyes to think about the time when Christmas was very close to him. He recalls the smell of bibingka, how it is cooked by Apung Gari with coconut husks burning on top and below it. Like hell. He smells the burnt banana leaves while Apung Gari's hands grates the coconuts and wraps the bibingka orders without losing the cigarette hanging from her lips.

It's been twenty years since he saw his last Christmas with his family, the last All Saints Day too.

But he never gets homesick. He braves it all out - how in the hell would he eat and earn a living if he did not leave? How - oh, the drama of his life...it never goes away, this drama, this drama heard all the way from Hongkong to Bahrain. Lonely Christmases celebrated in Far Away lands.

He reads Anita Shreve's novel. He reads meaningless words with images floatng in his brain:

Wake up kids, hs brain says, put on the new clothes. Eat breakfast before you get out of the door. Later you can knock door to door in the neighborhood - start with the rich neighbors -they usually give the bigger amount of money gift. Go on knocking until your legs get tired. When tired, sit down and count the money you got as gifts. Later, join your parents as you travel to your roots, to your grandparents who never miss the best Christmas food prepared just for the whole clan. Enjoy it all - stars of Christmas which you prepared out of bamboo sticks and tied with rubber bands and covered with colored Japanese paper. Keep dreaming about misa de aguinaldo, noche buena, Christmas Songs. Until the excitement fades when Christmas morning moves to lunch and cool afternoon. Then to dry, sad, lonely evening.

He turns off the light to keep dreaming about the Christmas of his native land that is so far away now.

His phone rings. He picks it up.

"Merry Christmas Uncle Ramon!" He hears the voice of home. He asks if the gifts he sent were received.

He hears lots of laughter. "Yes we did. Salamat po!"

He is now happy to sleep. He takes a last look at the alarm clock he bought the first time he landed in this foreigh land. Afte 16 years it's still working. It is durable. Always loyal to its function.