So we had a couple (three, actually) of aunts who came over Friday morning and stayed over for the night.  It was a very special occasion; my mother even used one of her sick leaves at work to entertain her cousins and her sister. 

Ever since we moved to Laguna in 2002 we were sort of uprooted from all our family.  It was a big blow to my mother, who lived the whole of her life here in Bagbaguin, surrounded by her aunts, sisters and uncles.  Unfortunately moving to Laguna was a necessary evil because even though it is technically farther from Makati, the place where both my parents work, the travel time is ultimately shorter.  The traffic in the South Luzon Expressway is infinitely lighter than all the routes my parents can take to Makati from Bagbaguin, so much so that their travel time is practically cut in half. 

In Bagbaguin everyday is basically the same but somehow it’s still all very different from each other.  In here you basically see and speak to the same people everyday but somehow something new always happens.  People in Bagbaguin are like hobbits; they like long, languorous chats that stretch up to dinnertime.  Everybody walks everywhere so everybody ends up talking to everybody on the way. 

Gossiping is a prime past time in this place and everybody seems to be in everybody else’s business.  Everybody has a comment or an opinion on everyone else’s matters, but no one really minds because they know that they’re guilty of the same thing as well.  And our house in Bagbaguin actually has the perfect position for gossiping; it’s right smack in the middle of everything—the bakery, the wet market, the pharmacy, everything.

Every time my father visits this place he doesn’t even have to step outside our gates to get updated on the latest news; he just stands there leaning on the gate and the passerby’s’ gives him the gist of it all.  My father, just like me, happens to love taking naps but each time he’s here he doesn’t get the waves of sleepiness he gets everywhere else. 

And neither do I.  I love this place and even though our house is very dirty and very uncared for (I’ll save those rants for another day), the people more than make up for the dirtiness.

I’m actually ashamed that I once saw the act of visiting here a chore.  The whole of my college life I might’ve only gone to Bagbaguin about ten times in four years.  It was that bad.  And I’m sorry for it now because I’ve missed a lot; my cousins have grown up and shared bonds with each other that I can only hope to penetrate through and my aunts and uncles who know my brother so well don’t even recognize what I look like.

It’s a sad thing, but I’m making amends.  I have to.  This is the year that I will get re-acquainted with them once more, no matter what.