My favorite part of my family’s eventful trip to the east coast two months ago was the 40-minute drive to Washington DC from Virginia.
It managed to top walking around DC and seeing all the monuments (which almost resulted in heat exhaustion), the visit to Hershey’s Chocolate World (which definitely increased my chances of developing diabetes), and stopping to take photos of every single historic sign and plot of land in Gettysburg (which lead to a lot of whining from little girls who have yet to develop a love for history).
My childhood friend, Samantha, and I were huddled in the back seat when she randomly asked her dad (my godfather, Tito Tootsie) how he and my dad became best friends. I’ve known the Guanco family all my life and yet it took Sam and me all this time to realize that we didn’t know exactly how our families became so close.
I expected Tito Tootsie to say something along the generic lines of, “We were in the same class and the rest was history…” That bit is actually true, but I didn’t think I would hear an entire, detailed account of his and Dad’s boyhood days in Bacolod. Their eyes lighted up as they animatedly told us stories of CB radios, going to school at La Salle, the burdens of being “high school chick magnets” (to which Sam promptly replied, “So you went from chick magnets to totally whipped husbands?”), and a highly-dramatized version of how Tito Tootsie proposed to Tita Lirybill over the phone just before she left for Dubai.
The story-telling begins.
Dad’s childhood friends are some of my favorite people. Four out of six of them are my godfathers and many of them have had the pleasure of seeing me grow from a chubby baby to an underdeveloped nineteen-year-old. It’s truly remarkable how they’ve managed to maintain such a strong bond after all these years and despite living separate lives in different states and countries.
Tito Tootsie and I had a discussion about how we haven’t formed a lot of friendships here in America that are as strong and deep as the ones we developed in Bacolod. I managed to stay in touch with just a handful of people from high school. Upon entering college, I honestly didn’t miss high school as much as I thought I would. People moved on to bigger and better things in different universities and different states, and high school began to seem like a small blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things. However, I can’t help but think that I wouldn’t feel the same way had I graduated in Bacolod, from St. Scholastica’s Academy as planned.
I’m not sure why this is so, but the friendships formed in Bacolod don’t seem to have expiration dates. I keep track of my old schoolmates through things like Facebook and am pleased to see that a lot of people who started out as good friends in grade school managed to stay close up to now, when they are close to graduating from college.
Jheyjette, Ysa, Ina, and I reunited with my beautiful godsisters, Sam and Trixie, this past summer.
Hearing Dad and Tito Tootsie reminisce in the car reminded me so much of my own group of friends in the Philippines. When I first moved to the States, I was scared of two things: getting out of my comfort zone and being separated from my friends.
Like my dad, I grew up with a pretty large barkada. My group of friends is made up of such diverse personalities, but we all just seem to click, for some reason. My parents practically adopted them. They were common fixtures at home and whenever they’d randomly show up at the compound, people would smile knowingly and say, “You know where her room is.” It was a friendship built on trust, fangirling, and verbal abuse… and having to give that up was difficult. I felt like I was throwing away years’ worth of memories, camaraderie, and inside jokes.
Thankfully, things didn’t fall through like I thought they would. During my first year in Dallas, I received several longhand letters from them, skyped as late as two in the morning (Philippine time), and got a much-appreciated visit (Alexi, I know we almost got kidnapped after we were locked out of that restaurant… But everything before that was great!)
I think the occasional homesickness Bacolodnons feel isn’t just a result from missing Bacolod, the place. We miss being surrounded by the people who made up our little city. They were what made Bacolod home. When we uprooted ourselves and moved (be it across the Pacific or merely an hour’s plane ride away, to Manila), we lost that sense of familiarity and were thrown in environments with people we couldn’t fully relate to.
I definitely consider myself blessed to have had opportunities to return to Bacolod. My friends and I are all in college and living our own lives too, but just like Dad’s group of friends, we talk and act like we were never separated whenever we reunite. Before I moved away, they gave me a scrapbook (that I’ve kept to this day) and I will never forget a quote written in one of its pages: “It’s always a hello never a goodbye when you’re friends with us.” I don’t think they’ll ever know how grateful I am for the effort they put into keeping in touch with me.
Taken years ago. One of my best friends, Kara, got all the girls to pose at Palmas.
My dad occasionally tears up whenever he sees this photo. Kara has grown so much as a photographer, but this will always be my favorite shot by her.
The drive to DC was honestly the best car ride ever. Sam and I laughed the entire time. As Dad and Tito Tootsie continued to share their stories with us, I had the pleasure of seeing genuine happiness and I knew that at that moment, in the car, immersed in a wave of nostalgia… They were home.
