Alex Maskara
Thoughts, Stories, Imagination of Filipino American Alex Maskara
Welcome
~
I think I understand now why I had to go through what I went through. The thought came to me this morning while I was walking through the barrio, when the day had barely begun and the road still belonged mostly to early risers like me—the old men sweeping their yards, women already preparing breakfast, and the occasional tricycle sputtering past and disturbing the silence. Somewhere behind a concrete wall, a rooster announced himself with ridiculous confidence, and another answered from farther away. Dogs barked at nothing, or perhaps at me, although after seeing me pass several times these past few days, they seem to have decided that I belong here.
This is the same town I knew long ago, and yet it isn't. Houses have risen where there used to be open spaces. Concrete walls have replaced old fences. Stores occupy corners I remember differently. Motorcycles suddenly emerge from narrow streets that, in my memory, were hardly streets at all. Still, underneath everything new, there is something stubbornly familiar—the dampness of the morning air, the smell of breakfast drifting from somebody's kitchen, the sound of voices carrying easily from one house to another. I have been away too long. Or perhaps just long enough.
All the stress, distractions, and excitement of these past weeks temporarily pulled me away from myself. They did not destroy my old routines, but they certainly disrupted them. For a while, I stopped doing what I normally do. I became busy simply because there were so many things to be busy about. But not for long. One thought keeps returning to me: keep your feet planted on the solid and sacred ground of the Lord.
Maybe that is what this walk is about. Maybe that is what coming home is about.
There is a reason the Lord brought me back here. At first, I thought the explanation was obvious: loss, death, loneliness, and the sudden disappearance of the people who had made my American life feel secure. But perhaps those were only the events that pushed the door open. The deeper reason may have very little to do with tragedy. After all, what am I supposed to do here that I wasn't already doing in Florida? Meditate, exercise, read, write, talk about health and plants, garden, observe people, collect stories, conjure up stories when real life doesn't provide enough of them, take care of myself, and seek God in silence. The work remains the same. Only the ground beneath my feet has changed.
As I walked, I passed a small store and heard people talking inside. Someone recognized me, and there came the usual greeting and questions. Where have I been? Am I staying for good? How is America? I answered politely, exchanged a few words, smiled, and continued walking. During my first few days here, I loved these conversations. I had been gone for decades, after all. Everything fascinated me. The food fascinated me. The old people fascinated me. The changed streets fascinated me. I wanted to see places I hadn't seen forever. I wanted to taste this and buy that. I went on a small splurge—furniture, kitchenware, clothes for everyday use, shoes, and household things I didn't know I needed until I saw them.
It was fun for a while, until my body said otherwise. Fatigue arrived first, followed by poor sleep, allergies, sinus trouble, urticaria, and what felt like the beginning of a cold. My body, apparently, had not received the announcement that I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I laughed at that thought as I continued toward the market.
"Hold it."
That was what the Holy Spirit seemed to be telling me. Hold it. What are you doing? Stick to your guns.
I had allowed myself to become misdirected, perhaps by ordinary human excitement and curiosity, perhaps, as I understand it spiritually, by those forces that are always ready to pull us away from the path when we become distracted. But the Holy Spirit kept calling me back. I had known peace before. In Florida, despite everything, I had developed a routine. There was continuity to my days. I knew when to meditate, when to walk, when to work in the garden, when to read, and when to sit at the computer and write. I knew the stores. I knew the parks. I knew my house.
And Jim was there.
Even when we weren't talking, his presence mattered. He could be in another room while I was doing my own thing, and somehow that was enough. There was another human being in the house. If something went wrong, somebody was there. Then suddenly he wasn't. The crutch was snatched away, and although I had always considered myself independent, I suddenly became aware of the fragility underneath all that confidence.
I had spent years taking care of myself and, professionally, taking care of others. I knew how to manage a household. I knew how to solve problems. I knew how to live alone. Or so I thought. When Jim died, I suddenly became aware that there I was in Florida, in a house I had worked hard to maintain, surrounded by all the familiar structures of my American life, yet the ground beneath me no longer felt solid. Who would I call? Who would know if something happened? Who would even notice? My brother-in-law was there, yes, but that everyday sense of security was gone.
Perhaps that was when the road beneath my feet began turning toward this road—the very road I was walking this morning. Toward home. Toward the house my parents built. Toward the country where I was born. Toward these roosters that still refuse to stop crowing. I smiled when I thought about that.
The Lord worked things out, although not instantly and certainly not without confusion. I still had the house in Florida to sell. I had belongings to dispose of, arrangements to make, finances to untangle, and then there was the problem created by my tenant, another complication arriving exactly when I did not need one. But one by one, things began moving. The rental came in. The State Farm refund arrived. Then came the email from the mortgage company regarding the payout. Closing is getting closer. So far, so good.
Why am I worrying?
That question followed me as I walked. Why am I borrowing trouble from tomorrow when today's road is right here beneath my feet?
I reached the market and bought what I needed. Nothing dramatic, just food for the day and perhaps another household item I suddenly remembered I didn't have. A garbage can. A dustpan. Something for the kitchen. These necessities reveal themselves gradually. You don't realize you need something until you reach for it and discover it isn't there. That, too, is part of settling down.
I have also discovered that many of the things I need can be ordered online. Plants, household supplies, even products for my allergies that don't require a prescription. Packages arrive, boxes are opened, and another small piece of my new life takes its place inside the old house. And then there are the plants, of course. They are beginning to arrive too, and that excites me in a different way because gardening is not a distraction. Gardening belongs to the life I already know.
I imagine the spaces around this house becoming greener. I think about the garden I left in Florida and how much time I spent alone among the plants, touching soil, trimming leaves, observing what survived and what didn't. I can do that here, perhaps even more than I did there.
On the way home, I passed people again—familiar faces, vaguely familiar faces, and faces belonging to people I probably knew forty or fifty years ago but can no longer place. Everyone looks strangely familiar here. That is one of the oddest things about returning to the Philippines after living so long in America. In the United States, I became accustomed to variety—faces from everywhere, accents from everywhere, different colors, heights, shapes, styles, and temperaments. Beauty and ugliness mixed together in endless combinations. I miss that variety. I also miss the cleanliness and order of certain places, the carefully designed parks, and those wide spaces where I could walk for miles without needing to speak to anyone.
Here, everyone somehow looks like somebody I might be related to. Perhaps that is why the novelty wears off quickly. I enjoy talking to people I knew before. I enjoy hearing what happened to them, who married whom, who left, who returned, who died, and who built the new house on the corner. But after a while, small talk exhausts me. I begin looking for an exit. "Well, nice seeing you. Take care. See you around." Then I walk away, relieved to be alone again.
I am beginning to realize that there is nothing wrong with that. I don't have to perform for the barrio. That may be one of the most important lessons of coming home. Nobody is watching me as closely as I imagine, and even if they are, why should it matter? I do not need to become "the returning American." I don't need to be the cool guy from the States. I don't need to impress anybody with where I've been, what I've done, what I own, what I know, or how long I lived abroad. I don't need to become popular, admired, respected, or even particularly interesting. None of those things mattered much to me in America, so why should they matter here?
My life has already become quieter than that.
As I turned onto the road leading back toward the house, the morning had become brighter. More motorcycles passed. A tricycle rattled by. Somebody was sweeping leaves into a pile. Cooking smells drifted into the street. A radio played somewhere behind an open window. The barrio had awakened, and strangely, as everything around me became noisier, I felt quieter inside.
This is what I need: return to the program. Meditate. Read. Write. Exercise. Attend to the plants. Maintain the house. Eat properly. Watch my sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Rest. Avoid unnecessary stress. And perhaps most important, stop trying to please everyone I encounter.
There is tremendous freedom in anonymity, silence, and not needing to explain myself. I can walk to the market in the morning, buy what I need, return home, close the door, and enter the room that changes according to the hour. Sometimes it is a bedroom. Sometimes it is a reading room. Sometimes it becomes my office. Sometimes it is simply a place of prayer. And there I write.
Writing is the constant. It fixes my life in space and time. Without it, days can dissolve into one another. Experiences become impressions, impressions become fragments, and eventually fragments disappear. But when I write them down, I can examine them. I can separate what matters from what is useless, what is nourishing from what is wasteful, and what belongs to my path from what merely distracts me.
Perhaps that is why I was brought back here—not to begin another life exactly, but to continue the one I had already begun. Florida taught me solitude. It taught me routines. It taught me how to create a private world of books, exercise, gardening, meditation, and writing. America gave me decades of work and experience, but retirement seems to be asking something different of me now: be still enough to understand what all those years were for.
So I walk. Every other morning, if my body permits, I walk these barrio streets. I watch them awaken. I listen to the dogs, roosters, motorcycles, radios, and conversations spilling out of houses. I pass old homes and new ones, people I remember and people who seem to remember me better than I remember them. With every walk, the place becomes a little less strange. The house becomes more mine. The silence becomes familiar. My old routines return.
At five in the morning, I meditate again. I read again. I write again. I tend to the plants. My allergies still bother me now and then, and there are still problems waiting to be resolved. The Florida house has not completely disappeared from my responsibilities, and there will undoubtedly be other complications. Life does not suddenly become perfect simply because one crosses an ocean. But the anxiety is beginning to dissipate because I am beginning to understand that I don't have to solve my entire future today.
I only have to follow what has been apportioned to me: one morning, one walk, one meal, one plant, one book, one page, one prayer at a time.
When I reached the gate of my parents' house this morning, I stopped for a moment before going inside. For decades, I thought of this place as the home I had left behind. Now it is simply home again. Perhaps the Lord did not bring me back here to make me more involved with the world but to give me enough distance from it—to remove some of the burdens that had accumulated around my life: the mortgage, utilities, insurance, taxes, maintenance, and the constant calculations required to keep a house running while growing older alone. Those things consumed more of me than I realized.
Now the assignment seems simpler. Take care of what has been given to me. Take care of my body. Take care of this house. Take care of the plants. Read the books. Write the stories. Record the meditations. Walk while I still can. Observe. Listen. Pray. And stop worrying so much about who might be watching.
I opened the gate. Behind me, the barrio continued with its morning—roosters, dogs, voices, engines, brooms scratching against concrete, pots clattering in kitchens. Ordinary sounds from an ordinary town I once left behind in search of another life. I have returned after all these years, older and carrying an entire American lifetime inside me.
But perhaps I did not return here to recover the boy who once left this barrio.
I returned as the man all those years created.
And now, on this old ground, I can continue the work. Stick to your guns, I reminded myself as I walked inside. Keep your feet planted.
The ground beneath them is sacred enough.
2026-09-15 22:23:36
blog
I am now beginning to do the things I used to do before, which is one of the reasons I chose to come back and stay in my old hometown. I wanted a place where I could easily recreate the routine I had established in my home in the United States, only this time surrounded by family and familiar surroundings. What a relief it is to be back in my birthplace, living once again in my parents’ home. It is safe and quiet, and it provides pretty much everything I need. Most importantly, I know I am more than welcome here. I like to think that my parents built this house partly as a gift to me, and that my brother watched over it all these years until the day I finally returned and decided to stay.
The house I left behind in Lake Worth, Florida, already seems strangely remote in my mind. For a long time, it appeared to be the perfect place for me to retire comfortably in the United States. I had everything I needed there, and I had built a life around it. But the two people I expected to remain close to me—the people I believed I could rely on for companionship and a sense of security—both died. My other friends lived in cities far from me, and I increasingly found myself surrounded by neighbors with whom communication was difficult because many spoke little English and my Spanish was limited at best. I had hoped to build the next stage of my retirement around the one person I still had nearby, Jim, but he said goodbye far too early and far too unexpectedly. After that, going home began to make more and more sense.
And now I am here.
Yesterday, I started finding my way around the same old barrio again. In the mornings, I can walk to the market just a few steps from the house and see what is available. I discovered varieties of seafood I rarely bought in the United States. They were available there, of course, but usually frozen and often expensive. Here I saw squid and several kinds of fish besides the familiar bangus and tilapia. Before long, I might travel to nearby Guagua and explore the markets there, where I may find even more varieties of fresh fish, perhaps practically straight from the catch, along with all the vegetables I could possibly want. I really don't need rice with every meal. Today, however, I remembered that I still had an extra piece of bangus sitting in the air fryer from yesterday, so there was no reason to buy anything new. Besides, my sister-in-law cooks for me and makes sure I have food whether I ask for it or not. Fortunately, she is a very good cook.
I am also beginning to run into my old childhood playmates around town. We are all in our 60s now, perhaps a little less certain of our footing than we once were. We still try to joke with one another the way we used to, but our humor is now tempered by the seriousness that comes with age. I suppose that is simply how life goes. We are the same people, yet obviously we are not.
Little by little, I am also learning how to function here again. There is at least one bank near the marketplace with an ATM, and I needed to replenish my supply of pesos. The transaction went smoothly. Back at the house, I started setting up my mini PC and asked my nephew to buy a few inexpensive accessories for me. The refrigerator I ordered also arrived, and I asked my brother to take care of it because afternoons have become my sleeping time while I recover from jet lag. I slept well that afternoon and woke up around six in the evening. I made myself some coffee, ate dinner, and did a little cleaning afterward.
I have also been trying to organize my belongings. Right now, medicines, cameras, coffee, creams, and all sorts of little things have taken over my dining table. It isn't exactly pleasant to look at. I ordered shirts, shorts, and a multi-tiered rolling cart to organize everything. I swept the floor, picked up my garbage, and made a mental note that I needed proper trash bags. These are small, ordinary tasks, but perhaps that is exactly what settling into a new life—or an old life made new again—is about.
I started using Lazada yesterday to order some of the things I needed. Today, I thought about ordering dental floss and trash bags until I noticed that one item cost around 20 pesos while the shipping charge was 58 pesos. I know we are talking about Philippine pesos and very little money in U.S. dollars, but the principle still bothers me. It seems ridiculous to pay almost three times the price of an item just to have it shipped. So today may be a good time to explore the stores around the barrio and find out what I can buy locally instead of automatically ordering everything online. Part of returning home is learning again where things are and how people here go about their everyday lives.
I also have to pay closer attention to what I eat. I have already become a little careless with breakfast, particularly with all the bread around here, much of which seems sweeter than what I am used to. I am more disciplined with lunch and dinner and continue taking my medications as prescribed. Still, I need to be mindful of my diet and not assume that medication can compensate for careless eating. I hope my blood sugar remains under control when I eventually have my next blood work done.
My sleep remains inconsistent, although, to be fair, it was inconsistent even before this trip. Jet lag has simply added another layer to it. For now, I am allowing my body to adjust instead of fighting it too much. Eventually, I expect my days and nights to settle into a more normal rhythm.
Perhaps one of the best things about this homecoming is that I am beginning to feel more focused on storytelling again. I don't think I want to spend too much time making reels about my new surroundings. Plenty of people already vlog about life in this town. My own cousin posts videos about the place several times a day, and I have no desire to join that crowd. I would rather continue focusing on the things that have always interested me: gardening, growing plants, reading, writing, and telling stories.
Gardening, unfortunately, will have to wait. The weather has been terrible, with constant rain and some flooding. I don't even want to visit the small lot that has been set aside for me and that I eventually hope to turn into my garden. I caught a quick glimpse of it when I passed the gate a couple of days ago, and it certainly wasn't inviting. Parts of it were flooded, and people had dumped junk there. Once the Florida property is finally closed and everything is financially settled, one of my first projects will be to clean that lot thoroughly and bring in fill, sand, and good soil where needed. That probably won't happen until October. By then, I hope the weather will be more cooperative and I can finally begin transforming that neglected piece of land into something beautiful.
Another priority is maintaining my English, both through writing and reading. English isn't widely spoken in the barrio, and after spending most of my adult life using it every day, I don't want to lose my fluency simply through lack of use. Writing regularly in English will help. Reading English books will help. Speaking it whenever I have the opportunity will help as well. I can even use ChatGPT's voice feature to have English conversations during my free time. In a strange way, technology can help me maintain a part of the American life I brought home with me.
So this is it. I am finally back where everything started.
There is something almost circular about it. I left this place many years ago and built an entirely different life thousands of miles away. I worked, traveled, made friends, bought homes, built routines, and imagined growing old there. Now I have returned to the same barrio, the same family home, and some of the same streets I walked as a child. Yet I am returning as a completely different person, carrying decades of experiences that the young man who left here could never have imagined.
Sadly, the circumstances that brought me home were shaped by tragedy and loss. I don't necessarily believe that the deaths of my sister and Jim were God's way of sending me a message. Sometimes terrible things simply happen. The people closest to me were not healthy enough to remain here as long as I had hoped, and painful as that reality is, I have to accept the loss of them. Their deaths changed the direction of my life, but that doesn't mean they happened in order to change it.
I miss them, and I probably always will. But I am still here, and life continues to ask something of me.
Perhaps my task now is simply to live this remaining chapter well—to settle into this old house, rediscover the barrio, build my garden, take care of myself, read, write, tell my stories, and appreciate the family that surrounds me. And somewhere in my faith remains the hope that I will see the people I lost again someday. If that day comes, I will have quite a story to tell them about everything that happened after we parted ways.
2026-09-10 02:10:35
blog
On Sacred Ground
I think I understand now why I had to go through what I went through. The thought came to me this morning while I was walking through the barrio, when the day had barely begun and the road still belonged mostly to early risers like me—the old men sweeping their yards, women already preparing breakfast, and the occasional tricycle sputtering past and disturbing the silence. Somewhere behind a concrete wall, a rooster announced himself with ridiculous confidence, and another answered from farther away. Dogs barked at nothing, or perhaps at me, although after seeing me pass several times these past few days, they seem to have decided that I belong here.
This is the same town I knew long ago, and yet it isn't. Houses have risen where there used to be open spaces. Concrete walls have replaced old fences. Stores occupy corners I remember differently. Motorcycles suddenly emerge from narrow streets that, in my memory, were hardly streets at all. Still, underneath everything new, there is something stubbornly familiar—the dampness of the morning air, the smell of breakfast drifting from somebody's kitchen, the sound of voices carrying easily from one house to another. I have been away too long. Or perhaps just long enough.
All the stress, distractions, and excitement of these past weeks temporarily pulled me away from myself. They did not destroy my old routines, but they certainly disrupted them. For a while, I stopped doing what I normally do. I became busy simply because there were so many things to be busy about. But not for long. One thought keeps returning to me: keep your feet planted on the solid and sacred ground of the Lord.
Maybe that is what this walk is about. Maybe that is what coming home is about.
There is a reason the Lord brought me back here. At first, I thought the explanation was obvious: loss, death, loneliness, and the sudden disappearance of the people who had made my American life feel secure. But perhaps those were only the events that pushed the door open. The deeper reason may have very little to do with tragedy. After all, what am I supposed to do here that I wasn't already doing in Florida? Meditate, exercise, read, write, talk about health and plants, garden, observe people, collect stories, conjure up stories when real life doesn't provide enough of them, take care of myself, and seek God in silence. The work remains the same. Only the ground beneath my feet has changed.
As I walked, I passed a small store and heard people talking inside. Someone recognized me, and there came the usual greeting and questions. Where have I been? Am I staying for good? How is America? I answered politely, exchanged a few words, smiled, and continued walking. During my first few days here, I loved these conversations. I had been gone for decades, after all. Everything fascinated me. The food fascinated me. The old people fascinated me. The changed streets fascinated me. I wanted to see places I hadn't seen forever. I wanted to taste this and buy that. I went on a small splurge—furniture, kitchenware, clothes for everyday use, shoes, and household things I didn't know I needed until I saw them.
It was fun for a while, until my body said otherwise. Fatigue arrived first, followed by poor sleep, allergies, sinus trouble, urticaria, and what felt like the beginning of a cold. My body, apparently, had not received the announcement that I was supposed to be having the time of my life. I laughed at that thought as I continued toward the market.
"Hold it."
That was what the Holy Spirit seemed to be telling me. Hold it. What are you doing? Stick to your guns.
I had allowed myself to become misdirected, perhaps by ordinary human excitement and curiosity, perhaps, as I understand it spiritually, by those forces that are always ready to pull us away from the path when we become distracted. But the Holy Spirit kept calling me back. I had known peace before. In Florida, despite everything, I had developed a routine. There was continuity to my days. I knew when to meditate, when to walk, when to work in the garden, when to read, and when to sit at the computer and write. I knew the stores. I knew the parks. I knew my house.
And Jim was there.
Even when we weren't talking, his presence mattered. He could be in another room while I was doing my own thing, and somehow that was enough. There was another human being in the house. If something went wrong, somebody was there. Then suddenly he wasn't. The crutch was snatched away, and although I had always considered myself independent, I suddenly became aware of the fragility underneath all that confidence.
I had spent years taking care of myself and, professionally, taking care of others. I knew how to manage a household. I knew how to solve problems. I knew how to live alone. Or so I thought. When Jim died, I suddenly became aware that there I was in Florida, in a house I had worked hard to maintain, surrounded by all the familiar structures of my American life, yet the ground beneath me no longer felt solid. Who would I call? Who would know if something happened? Who would even notice? My brother-in-law was there, yes, but that everyday sense of security was gone.
Perhaps that was when the road beneath my feet began turning toward this road—the very road I was walking this morning. Toward home. Toward the house my parents built. Toward the country where I was born. Toward these roosters that still refuse to stop crowing. I smiled when I thought about that.
The Lord worked things out, although not instantly and certainly not without confusion. I still had the house in Florida to sell. I had belongings to dispose of, arrangements to make, finances to untangle, and then there was the problem created by my tenant, another complication arriving exactly when I did not need one. But one by one, things began moving. The rental came in. The State Farm refund arrived. Then came the email from the mortgage company regarding the payout. Closing is getting closer. So far, so good.
Why am I worrying?
That question followed me as I walked. Why am I borrowing trouble from tomorrow when today's road is right here beneath my feet?
I reached the market and bought what I needed. Nothing dramatic, just food for the day and perhaps another household item I suddenly remembered I didn't have. A garbage can. A dustpan. Something for the kitchen. These necessities reveal themselves gradually. You don't realize you need something until you reach for it and discover it isn't there. That, too, is part of settling down.
I have also discovered that many of the things I need can be ordered online. Plants, household supplies, even products for my allergies that don't require a prescription. Packages arrive, boxes are opened, and another small piece of my new life takes its place inside the old house. And then there are the plants, of course. They are beginning to arrive too, and that excites me in a different way because gardening is not a distraction. Gardening belongs to the life I already know.
I imagine the spaces around this house becoming greener. I think about the garden I left in Florida and how much time I spent alone among the plants, touching soil, trimming leaves, observing what survived and what didn't. I can do that here, perhaps even more than I did there.
On the way home, I passed people again—familiar faces, vaguely familiar faces, and faces belonging to people I probably knew forty or fifty years ago but can no longer place. Everyone looks strangely familiar here. That is one of the oddest things about returning to the Philippines after living so long in America. In the United States, I became accustomed to variety—faces from everywhere, accents from everywhere, different colors, heights, shapes, styles, and temperaments. Beauty and ugliness mixed together in endless combinations. I miss that variety. I also miss the cleanliness and order of certain places, the carefully designed parks, and those wide spaces where I could walk for miles without needing to speak to anyone.
Here, everyone somehow looks like somebody I might be related to. Perhaps that is why the novelty wears off quickly. I enjoy talking to people I knew before. I enjoy hearing what happened to them, who married whom, who left, who returned, who died, and who built the new house on the corner. But after a while, small talk exhausts me. I begin looking for an exit. "Well, nice seeing you. Take care. See you around." Then I walk away, relieved to be alone again.
I am beginning to realize that there is nothing wrong with that. I don't have to perform for the barrio. That may be one of the most important lessons of coming home. Nobody is watching me as closely as I imagine, and even if they are, why should it matter? I do not need to become "the returning American." I don't need to be the cool guy from the States. I don't need to impress anybody with where I've been, what I've done, what I own, what I know, or how long I lived abroad. I don't need to become popular, admired, respected, or even particularly interesting. None of those things mattered much to me in America, so why should they matter here?
My life has already become quieter than that.
As I turned onto the road leading back toward the house, the morning had become brighter. More motorcycles passed. A tricycle rattled by. Somebody was sweeping leaves into a pile. Cooking smells drifted into the street. A radio played somewhere behind an open window. The barrio had awakened, and strangely, as everything around me became noisier, I felt quieter inside.
This is what I need: return to the program. Meditate. Read. Write. Exercise. Attend to the plants. Maintain the house. Eat properly. Watch my sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Rest. Avoid unnecessary stress. And perhaps most important, stop trying to please everyone I encounter.
There is tremendous freedom in anonymity, silence, and not needing to explain myself. I can walk to the market in the morning, buy what I need, return home, close the door, and enter the room that changes according to the hour. Sometimes it is a bedroom. Sometimes it is a reading room. Sometimes it becomes my office. Sometimes it is simply a place of prayer. And there I write.
Writing is the constant. It fixes my life in space and time. Without it, days can dissolve into one another. Experiences become impressions, impressions become fragments, and eventually fragments disappear. But when I write them down, I can examine them. I can separate what matters from what is useless, what is nourishing from what is wasteful, and what belongs to my path from what merely distracts me.
Perhaps that is why I was brought back here—not to begin another life exactly, but to continue the one I had already begun. Florida taught me solitude. It taught me routines. It taught me how to create a private world of books, exercise, gardening, meditation, and writing. America gave me decades of work and experience, but retirement seems to be asking something different of me now: be still enough to understand what all those years were for.
So I walk. Every other morning, if my body permits, I walk these barrio streets. I watch them awaken. I listen to the dogs, roosters, motorcycles, radios, and conversations spilling out of houses. I pass old homes and new ones, people I remember and people who seem to remember me better than I remember them. With every walk, the place becomes a little less strange. The house becomes more mine. The silence becomes familiar. My old routines return.
At five in the morning, I meditate again. I read again. I write again. I tend to the plants. My allergies still bother me now and then, and there are still problems waiting to be resolved. The Florida house has not completely disappeared from my responsibilities, and there will undoubtedly be other complications. Life does not suddenly become perfect simply because one crosses an ocean. But the anxiety is beginning to dissipate because I am beginning to understand that I don't have to solve my entire future today.
I only have to follow what has been apportioned to me: one morning, one walk, one meal, one plant, one book, one page, one prayer at a time.
When I reached the gate of my parents' house this morning, I stopped for a moment before going inside. For decades, I thought of this place as the home I had left behind. Now it is simply home again. Perhaps the Lord did not bring me back here to make me more involved with the world but to give me enough distance from it—to remove some of the burdens that had accumulated around my life: the mortgage, utilities, insurance, taxes, maintenance, and the constant calculations required to keep a house running while growing older alone. Those things consumed more of me than I realized.
Now the assignment seems simpler. Take care of what has been given to me. Take care of my body. Take care of this house. Take care of the plants. Read the books. Write the stories. Record the meditations. Walk while I still can. Observe. Listen. Pray. And stop worrying so much about who might be watching.
I opened the gate. Behind me, the barrio continued with its morning—roosters, dogs, voices, engines, brooms scratching against concrete, pots clattering in kitchens. Ordinary sounds from an ordinary town I once left behind in search of another life. I have returned after all these years, older and carrying an entire American lifetime inside me.
But perhaps I did not return here to recover the boy who once left this barrio.
I returned as the man all those years created.
And now, on this old ground, I can continue the work. Stick to your guns, I reminded myself as I walked inside. Keep your feet planted.
The ground beneath them is sacred enough.
2026-09-15 22:23:36
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The Return to the old Barrio
I am now beginning to do the things I used to do before, which is one of the reasons I chose to come back and stay in my old hometown. I wanted a place where I could easily recreate the routine I had established in my home in the United States, only this time surrounded by family and familiar surroundings. What a relief it is to be back in my birthplace, living once again in my parents’ home. It is safe and quiet, and it provides pretty much everything I need. Most importantly, I know I am more than welcome here. I like to think that my parents built this house partly as a gift to me, and that my brother watched over it all these years until the day I finally returned and decided to stay.
The house I left behind in Lake Worth, Florida, already seems strangely remote in my mind. For a long time, it appeared to be the perfect place for me to retire comfortably in the United States. I had everything I needed there, and I had built a life around it. But the two people I expected to remain close to me—the people I believed I could rely on for companionship and a sense of security—both died. My other friends lived in cities far from me, and I increasingly found myself surrounded by neighbors with whom communication was difficult because many spoke little English and my Spanish was limited at best. I had hoped to build the next stage of my retirement around the one person I still had nearby, Jim, but he said goodbye far too early and far too unexpectedly. After that, going home began to make more and more sense.
And now I am here.
Yesterday, I started finding my way around the same old barrio again. In the mornings, I can walk to the market just a few steps from the house and see what is available. I discovered varieties of seafood I rarely bought in the United States. They were available there, of course, but usually frozen and often expensive. Here I saw squid and several kinds of fish besides the familiar bangus and tilapia. Before long, I might travel to nearby Guagua and explore the markets there, where I may find even more varieties of fresh fish, perhaps practically straight from the catch, along with all the vegetables I could possibly want. I really don't need rice with every meal. Today, however, I remembered that I still had an extra piece of bangus sitting in the air fryer from yesterday, so there was no reason to buy anything new. Besides, my sister-in-law cooks for me and makes sure I have food whether I ask for it or not. Fortunately, she is a very good cook.
I am also beginning to run into my old childhood playmates around town. We are all in our 60s now, perhaps a little less certain of our footing than we once were. We still try to joke with one another the way we used to, but our humor is now tempered by the seriousness that comes with age. I suppose that is simply how life goes. We are the same people, yet obviously we are not.
Little by little, I am also learning how to function here again. There is at least one bank near the marketplace with an ATM, and I needed to replenish my supply of pesos. The transaction went smoothly. Back at the house, I started setting up my mini PC and asked my nephew to buy a few inexpensive accessories for me. The refrigerator I ordered also arrived, and I asked my brother to take care of it because afternoons have become my sleeping time while I recover from jet lag. I slept well that afternoon and woke up around six in the evening. I made myself some coffee, ate dinner, and did a little cleaning afterward.
I have also been trying to organize my belongings. Right now, medicines, cameras, coffee, creams, and all sorts of little things have taken over my dining table. It isn't exactly pleasant to look at. I ordered shirts, shorts, and a multi-tiered rolling cart to organize everything. I swept the floor, picked up my garbage, and made a mental note that I needed proper trash bags. These are small, ordinary tasks, but perhaps that is exactly what settling into a new life—or an old life made new again—is about.
I started using Lazada yesterday to order some of the things I needed. Today, I thought about ordering dental floss and trash bags until I noticed that one item cost around 20 pesos while the shipping charge was 58 pesos. I know we are talking about Philippine pesos and very little money in U.S. dollars, but the principle still bothers me. It seems ridiculous to pay almost three times the price of an item just to have it shipped. So today may be a good time to explore the stores around the barrio and find out what I can buy locally instead of automatically ordering everything online. Part of returning home is learning again where things are and how people here go about their everyday lives.
I also have to pay closer attention to what I eat. I have already become a little careless with breakfast, particularly with all the bread around here, much of which seems sweeter than what I am used to. I am more disciplined with lunch and dinner and continue taking my medications as prescribed. Still, I need to be mindful of my diet and not assume that medication can compensate for careless eating. I hope my blood sugar remains under control when I eventually have my next blood work done.
My sleep remains inconsistent, although, to be fair, it was inconsistent even before this trip. Jet lag has simply added another layer to it. For now, I am allowing my body to adjust instead of fighting it too much. Eventually, I expect my days and nights to settle into a more normal rhythm.
Perhaps one of the best things about this homecoming is that I am beginning to feel more focused on storytelling again. I don't think I want to spend too much time making reels about my new surroundings. Plenty of people already vlog about life in this town. My own cousin posts videos about the place several times a day, and I have no desire to join that crowd. I would rather continue focusing on the things that have always interested me: gardening, growing plants, reading, writing, and telling stories.
Gardening, unfortunately, will have to wait. The weather has been terrible, with constant rain and some flooding. I don't even want to visit the small lot that has been set aside for me and that I eventually hope to turn into my garden. I caught a quick glimpse of it when I passed the gate a couple of days ago, and it certainly wasn't inviting. Parts of it were flooded, and people had dumped junk there. Once the Florida property is finally closed and everything is financially settled, one of my first projects will be to clean that lot thoroughly and bring in fill, sand, and good soil where needed. That probably won't happen until October. By then, I hope the weather will be more cooperative and I can finally begin transforming that neglected piece of land into something beautiful.
Another priority is maintaining my English, both through writing and reading. English isn't widely spoken in the barrio, and after spending most of my adult life using it every day, I don't want to lose my fluency simply through lack of use. Writing regularly in English will help. Reading English books will help. Speaking it whenever I have the opportunity will help as well. I can even use ChatGPT's voice feature to have English conversations during my free time. In a strange way, technology can help me maintain a part of the American life I brought home with me.
So this is it. I am finally back where everything started.
There is something almost circular about it. I left this place many years ago and built an entirely different life thousands of miles away. I worked, traveled, made friends, bought homes, built routines, and imagined growing old there. Now I have returned to the same barrio, the same family home, and some of the same streets I walked as a child. Yet I am returning as a completely different person, carrying decades of experiences that the young man who left here could never have imagined.
Sadly, the circumstances that brought me home were shaped by tragedy and loss. I don't necessarily believe that the deaths of my sister and Jim were God's way of sending me a message. Sometimes terrible things simply happen. The people closest to me were not healthy enough to remain here as long as I had hoped, and painful as that reality is, I have to accept the loss of them. Their deaths changed the direction of my life, but that doesn't mean they happened in order to change it.
I miss them, and I probably always will. But I am still here, and life continues to ask something of me.
Perhaps my task now is simply to live this remaining chapter well—to settle into this old house, rediscover the barrio, build my garden, take care of myself, read, write, tell my stories, and appreciate the family that surrounds me. And somewhere in my faith remains the hope that I will see the people I lost again someday. If that day comes, I will have quite a story to tell them about everything that happened after we parted ways.
2026-09-10 02:10:35
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