My most meaningful and amazing Christmas
Last year, my wife and I spent Christmas with my 87-year-old mother and my 89-year-old father in Fipe City, a small community south of Seattle, near the City of Federal Way, (where my youngest brother Jonathan is a member of the police force), State of Washington, USA. It was truly a very nice experience, bonding with my parents and my two brothers, Bernard and Jonathan with his wife Ghelley, and their two wonderful kids. I had a chance to have a long and heartwarming heart-to-heart talk with my Mama and Papa. I was able to ask many questions I always wanted to raise. And so, I cleared my mind of so many lingering questions. And I was deeply happy. But it was not my most memorable Christmas. For I missed my five children by then.
My most meaningful and really amazing Christmas was more than fifteen years ago when all my five children were travelling with me and my wife and we visited my parents who were then residing in Pearl City, Oahu, Hawaii, just adjacent to Honululu. I enjoyed that Christmas because my mother was still very healthy and she and my father could still walk along the beach of Waikiki, barefoot and oblivious to the troubles and problems of the world. Last Christmas, we discovered that Alzheimer's Disease has taken away much of my mother's memory. And my father seems sad and brooding staring at Mama, who has been his beloved wife for more than sixty-five years. My Papa has many faults but infidelity is never one of them. They have always been absolutely faithful to each other.
It was an amazing Christmas when all my five kids travelled with me to Hawaii. We spent quality time together touring Oahu and the big island, in all its majestic and pristine beauty, its beaches and volcanoes, its landscapes and seascapes, its twilights and dawns. I spent evenings with my father who was then working in the military camp commissary. We had coffee together when he told stories about his guerilla experiences as a young soldier, not even twenty but had to fight for our country. My mother, in her late sixties then, insisted to work in McDo Honululu as a cashier. (No, there is no discrimination in the US on the basis of age.) We had a swell time together malling, having picnic in the garden, and visiting friends and relatives.
Then we flew altogether to San Francisco, stayed in a Chinatown hotel, went sightseeing in the Golden Gate and toured Sausalito, that gem of a village off the bridge. Then, we took the boat to Alcatraz and from there went back to the mainland and drove all the way to a paradise called South Lake Tahoe, in the boundary of California and Nevada. My auntie and cousins work in the casinos and we went there bonding with friends and relatives. Then we visited Sacramento, Stockton and then again drove to Reno and, why not, Las Vegas. My kids enjoyed the company of their lolo and lola, aunties and uncles. We slept in many motels along the freeway and just enjoyed every moment of that Christmas season.
We spent Christmas in LA in the house of a favorite ''linudhan'' and close friend. Then they brought us to San Diego, and we crossed the border to Tijuana, Mexico. Between Christmas and New Year, we travelled as a caravan from San Diego all the way to Seattle, then crossed the border with Canada in Vancouver. We did relish the places, the foods, the parties, and the picnics. But, today, as I reflect on all those once-in-a-lifetime experience, I do realize that it is not really the destinations that matter but the journey itself, the bonding, the family. At the end of the day, stripped of all the non-essentials, what matters most in any Christmas is family. What really matters most is love.
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