New Year 2008

As with all my Christmas and New year vacations, I spent my holidays with my family back home in Ormoc City. Ormoc used to be a small city, small enough for people to know almost everyone they see in the streets. Now, I could barely recognize anyone. The streets seem to have shrunk and the tricycles multiplied by the hundreds and buzzing like flies. Judging by the presence of a Jollibee branch, a dunkin donuts outlet and a high end coffee bar where the cost of a cup of coffee is much more than an average farmer could afford, the city has changed a lot.

It's not just the city. My family used to live in a big clan house together with all the other five main families on my father's side. (I say "main" because there are secondary families from the second generation that got added, which makes it more than five.) We use to share the living room, kitchen and dining rooms everyday. Mealtimes were always as noisy and as loud as the marketplace.
Christmas and New years were spent with all families - from the first to the third generation, huddled in the living room where baskets and baskets of gifts were showered over the lucky third generation kids. Each child recieves at least five gifts from the five different main families.
And there are at least twenty third generation kids to track. It takes more than an hour to distribute all the gifts to each kid, with chaos mounting as the mounds of crumpled giftwrappers grow and threaten to bury the smaller kids alive.
New Years were spent with everyone gathered outside the lawn and the men lighting up the fire crackers as the clock strikes midnight and we all each hug all our cousins, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, in laws, maids, dogs etc. It takes less than an hour to hug everyone, that is if we were lucky enough to find them amidst the melee or sober enough not to end up double hugging everyone as we often forget who we've already hugged earlier.
But this year was different. Our clan house is no longer ours. All the families except one are already living in different houses. We barely see each other.
Christmas was strained with most of the first generation "elders" not joining and we celebrated New Year just within my own family (with my mom, sister, brother and our kids). KC, my niece, commented, "This is the most boring new year ever." I couldn't blame her. It was a peaceful and intimate New Year for me but for a child like KC, it was a big change from the chaos she was used to.

This Christmas holiday was also the grand twentieth year reunion of my highschool batchmates from year 1987. I wasn't able to attend as it was scheduled much earlier than my arrival date but I could view the pictures and read about what transpired from our batch webpages. On the outside, it was your usual fun and great-to-see-you-again-after-all-these-years reunion stuff. But what surprised me were the stories I heard that occurred behind the scenes...the ones you wouldn't see in the photos, wouldn't find in the emails or wouldn't notice on the faces of people you talk to. Along with all the stories of success, achievements, and funny moments, there were also stories of elicit affairs, fighting, sex and scandals. Most of the time, I would find myself gasping,"Did he really do that??!" .."Did she really say that?".."She what??!" .."You what???!!" My neck hurt from all the head shaking from disbelief. I couldn't believe that the pictures I had in my mind of my batchmates, were no longer true....and I wonder how much of me has changed.

Sometimes I find myself resisting change. I love change but there are moments like now where for a second, I wish things wouldn't change. That everything would be always like they were..like furnitures, like rocks, like diamonds.
But then again, they would have to stay motionless to stay the same.
I don't think I'd like to live life like a stone.
Life is like water, change is its waves.
As the new year comes and a new life awaits, I take to my feet and ride the waves.

Image by my friend Doug Petit. I miss you my friend.