By: Paulo
The other evening I woke up to sounds that should be familiar to me by now.
I live alongside one of the busier intersections in my area. Across the way is a supermarket, two Starbucks, a gas station and various shops and restaurants that I rarely remember exist. Sometimes in the morning I look out at the cars stopped behind traffic lights that never seem to change. Most people just sit and wait, while others fix their ties and dial numbers on their telephones. Occasionally, a man holds frustrated arms in the air and shakes his fists at an indifferent circle of neon red. I just watch them all in the comfort of my home, and every time the light goes green they all drive further away from their own.
At night some things change, and some things don’t. The stoplight is still everyone’s enemy, but the long stretch of straightaway road grows more vacant as the hours pass.
The other evening I woke up to sounds I should be familiar with now – cars racing home at a hundred miles per hour.
In the darkness, I got out of bed, did not bother to put my glasses on, walked slowly to where I knew the door stood and reached out my hand to immediately greet the knob. I walked three or four steps forward and to the right and unhesitatingly zoomed down fourteen steps to the kitchen. At first I thought it something special – to be so comfortable in my surroundings and to know what was and wasn’t there without having to see anything at all, until I realized that that’s what it’s supposed to feel like to be at “home.”
It’s difficult to think that, as I was growing up, “home” was an unfamiliar term. I can still look back and see my mother’s exhausted expression after a week of just trying to get by. She’d sigh, stare blankly ahead and mutter words about wishing she were at “home.”
And the two of us, sitting at our very own kitchen table, would just stay quiet. She – distant in some fonder memory, and I – excluded from her visions of home and very, very confused. If “home” wasn’t where I had been for the entirety of my life, then where could it be?
As the years went by it became painfully clear that “home” was almost 7000 miles away. “Home” was in the Philippines, where my mother and father were born and raised. “Home” was in the Philippines, where all my relatives were.
“Home” was in the Philippines, where I had never been.
Even so, I began to feel a certain attachment to this home I’d never seen. I’d emulate my mother’s passionate monologues about the glories of home - speaking longingly about the weather, the food, and the culture of the Philippines to my friends.
Of all the phrases I stole from her monologues, there was one that stuck:
“I can’t wait to go back home.”
As impossible as it is to miss a place one has never been, I could always say those words with complete sincerity. I could truly say that I could not wait to go to the Philippines, even if it really was for the first time.
It was in the summer of 2001 that I first visited the Philippines. I was fourteen back then. I can remember the plane touching down on the ground and the walk towards the terminal. I can remember looking outside and seeing rain, and I can remember being thoroughly exhausted from the whole day of travel it took to bring me “home.” I can remember falling asleep as soon as we loaded our luggage into the car and waking up with more than ten of my relatives there to tell me how tall I’d grown – even if they’d never seen me before. I remember almost feeling like I understood what my mom meant by “home” when I fell asleep again and woke up to home-cooked Filipino breakfast and my grandmother insisting that I eat more.
It was a wonderful feeling – just to be there surrounded by family. It felt almost as if my cousins had been my best friends since the day I was born. They shared the same interests and had the same sense of humor. It was as though we had grown up together in the same house – in the same home. However, I guess the novelty of that feeling had to wear off sometime because it simply wasn’t true.
It probably was the time my cousins and my uncle took me to play basketball that I first realized this. It was almost near sundown as they hastily made their way through narrow passages – taking unexpected turns. In the dying light it was hard to keep up. On unfamiliar ground it was hard to keep up. Maybe it was my having to call out “slow down” that made me feel like a foreigner. They could have made their way to the court knowing what was and wasn’t there without having to see anything at all – while I could not have even found it in broad daylight. It made me feel vulnerable – scared that I could get lost in a place I called “home.”
The second realization was more abrupt. It came the morning after we played basketball when I woke up to more than just the sweet smell of my grandmother’s cooking. I woke up to the horrible feeling that I needed to scratch off the entirety of my skin. Mosquito bites. Everywhere.
My mother said it was probably from playing so late at night without any repellent, but that only made me feel worse when I glanced over to my cousins and uncle who were completely unscathed.
As our stay in the Philippines continued I started to feel a certain sickness. Perhaps I can partially blame the pesky mosquitoes for injecting me so many times, but it wasn’t entirely their fault. I began to miss the Colorado air. I missed my guitar. I missed my bed, but I dared not say that I missed home – because if “home” wasn’t in the Philippines then where could it be?
I suppose going to the Philippines is what it took for me to realize that my home was not in the Philippines – at least not completely. Home for me has become a term that defines a collection of fonder memories and places of comfort – some of which are in the Philippines - most of which are in Colorado. No, home, for me, is not where the heart is. My home cannot be confined in the cavities of my chest.
In two months I will be moving away to college. When I look back on the short eighteen years of my life, I can’t help but think that the things I will miss the most, are those I can touch, feel, hear, and see right now – on my bed … in my room … in my home. 
Paulo is a Halfway Contributor