Year of the Philippines

I'm going to keep this short, but it probably won't be because it's me trying to keep it short. (See?)

I'm still in slight disbelief that in seven days, I am finally returning to my birth country, the first time I get to since leaving it twenty years ago. Two decades ago. That's how long it's taken me to make this trip happen, and it's not by intent or for a lack of trying to do it sooner, but somehow my circumstances in the last twenty years just never found me making this trip happen.

But I am now.

To this day, remains the only stamp in either of my passports.

At the realization earlier this year that 2015 marks two full decades since I left, I just cannot keep this trip waiting for me to make it happen, even if I am probably at my least able to make this trip happen now. I have children now - a toddler and an infant - that I'll be leaving with my wife to take care of for the ten days I'm gone. No, they're not coming with me, not for this trip. Even the concept of that is unheard of for any married, family man. But this is how I need to do this trip. By myself, and in just ten days.

Typically when Filipinos return to the Philippines after being abroad for a number of years, it's for the balikbayan experience, complete with balikbayan boxes filled with gifts for family and friends still remaining in the Philippines.

But not my trip. Not this trip of mine.

This lone and short trip of mine is strictly for the purposes of finally returning home for so long, and to simply walk that very long lane inhabited by my memory.

Memories of my childhood in Philippines remain with me, and I have been waiting for this chance to reconcile it with the reality of the country now, twenty years later. Everyone who has gone back and forth to the Philippines - be it friends or family - in the last twenty years always tell me how much everything has changed. Each time they do, I'm left wanting to see just how myself. Even worse, I get mad at myself listening to friends' trip to my home country, when they weren't even born there. So why haven't I returned to my native land? There are reasons, but no excuse really.

That is all about to change now though, finally. Now I get to go, and my excitement is dwarfed only by my relief that now, I finally get to.

Putting my US Passport to use before it expires next year.

This has been a long time coming, and it's now coming.