Imagination

MANILA, Philippines — I have two new voters at home! There was much excitement when we realized that it was going to be their first time to cast votes, crucial votes, in a crucial year of our history.

They were committed to registering to vote. All this would go down during the height of the pandemic but they would not be deterred. Through all the pasikot sikot this country lets you go through to accomplish things in life, they plodded on, bearing masks and alcohol and individual pens each. They were not going to be defeated by bureaucracy.

The children always ask loads of questions. “When did I register to vote?” I say I cannot remember but only know I’ve never not voted. “What were campaigns like before?” “Oh, bloody. We had a tito who was running for governor and got shot! And it took forever to proclaim a winner! And because it took forever, so much cheating could happen. Did you hear about the 30 women and five men who walked out of the counting during that one election?” “Whose election was that, Mom?” “Ferdinand Marcos,” I say. But those brave citizens wouldn’t let him and didn’t let him.

And then there are questions I cannot answer, the most innocent ones, while in the car, and they are watching their country. “Why do so many names of people running have the same last names, Mom?” “I learned in class that political dynasties are illegal, Mom. Wasn’t that person convicted of (fill in the crime)? Didn’t he used to be in prison?” “Did the candidates study governance? Why are they running? How much does it take to win a campaign fairly, Mom? What’s a ‘solid North,’ Mom? Why are religious leaders endorsing candidates, Mom?” Indeed, what country is this mother leaving to her children?

It is a truth I didn’t know when I became a mother: that you raised political children, too, whether you knew it or not. You pass on your ideas of country and governance and what you expect and imagine for your land when you raise them. (Those who are corrupt must keep this in mind with their own children.) We owe it to them to make them politically aware, so that they take part actively in the civic and social life of the country and that they understand and practice that making a better country is in the hands of every citizen. We need to teach accountability and compassion for others. It isn’t just a Spider-Man line, you know. It’s true: With great power comes great responsibility.

Once I told them I seriously thought of moving somewhere else, anywhere else, in my 30s. It was the best time, I thought. They were small enough to be portable and big enough to take care of themselves. Other lands seemed more promising and, at the very least, less stressful. I thought of free education, a working health system, streets one could walk on, less need for a car, or to accommodate an extra hour or two when trying to get to anywhere, government officials who didn’t test your strength or intelligence. Oh, the freedom, the possibility, the safety, the opportunity!

“Well, why didn’t you, Mom? Wouldn’t it have been better for us?”

I think of the sunlit days of my youth, traveling to the province under covers when early morning hours still meant you needed a kumot. What joy it was, arriving at the foot of an ocean and sighing with such sweetness. Everywhere, here, the sea is just a blink away. I think of green mangoes and fried rice and fried fish and the simple joy of roasted eggplant, or steamed okra, doused in bagoong and calamansi. I think of the market place and all that teeming produce and the suki who always slips in an extra kilo of mangoes, or finger chilies, or whatever is in season. I know all about her children and she knows mine. We are a lovely people.

But I also think of the fear we have for the police. Or I think of the long lines to get anything done officially, and how roads are always under construction with the picture of the public official we must thank. (Heavens! It’s called doing your job!) I think of how transportation makes all of us depleted and defeated and the lines for the way home crush our hearts and spirits. All that waste, all that lost to corruption, terrible governance, false promises, and officials who have forgotten about the common good.

It’s a hard question to answer, why I don’t leave, without sounding privileged or romantic and, as I promised, I’m trying to find the words to describe what it is that stays my hand from the final cut of just leaving my country.

The truth is, I know that you cannot have one side of the country without the other. You cannot decide to love — country, person, yourself, anything, really — without knowing you have to love all the different parts of it. You cannot just leave when it is hard. Like any commitment worth making, one is always aware that one says yes to the whole kit and caboodle. You say yes to bagoong but you also say yes to bureaucracy.

And I guess I am committed to my fellow Filipinos — those I wait in line with, and those who suffer with me the weight of corruption. Once the car I was driving was hit by a 10-wheeler, and I knew the impact of the difference between us drivers, sitting there in the police department. How grossly unfair that I lost a door but that my taking him to the police meant he was losing a day’s work, and the goods he carried and the people waiting for the goods were suffering, too. I cannot abandon nation — that strange, big word — without it meaning I abandon my neighbors in this beautiful land. He and I sat together in that police office, shrugged shoulders, accepting our fate. I bought us snacks and we ate together wordlessly. Who knows what words were in our hearts?

What words are in our hearts as we approach another election? We spend so much time name-calling each other, sure that all the other sides that are not like ours are the ones who are wrong and lost. There are so many words out there in the fake news created by those in power themselves, and how evil is that? How can we imagine a great and true truth if we willingly participate in falsehood and lies? If you are in power and reading this, let me ask you why you openly lie to people who travel beside you in the same geography of life and death?

Let us quiet ourselves, allow ourselves the space to ask: What do I want for my country? What kind of leader do I want? Not just for me, but especially for those who have less, and deserve more? We must realize that although our vote is singular, the impact of it is always shared. And think of all of those who cannot vote because they have no IDs, are homeless and belong to no address, no land. Or those who cannot fill up a form or go to a registration site, or cannot read or write or have been deactivated by some technical reason. Who will speak for them and their needs?

Every election is a chance to course correct, decide what will no longer work and what we will no longer allow, and what can no longer be. For a while, I felt hopeless, but my children voting has given me new energy. I have made so many mistakes, have been complicit in some way in this course we are on. But the children who have inherited all these have this power now in their hands. And that gives me a bright, new, shining hope.