It's Beguinning to and Back again

New Year's Eve 2006. Waiting at the Philippine Airline's Gate at LAX for our evening flight. It's already been a trial checking in all our fifty pound balikbayan boxes full of coffee, spam and kitchen knives from the 99 cent store and then getting my dad to waddle to the waiting area for an airport wheelchair to get him to the gate. I'm trying to mellow out, I call friends on the phone to wish them a happy new year and let them know I'll be out of the country indefinitely. My father strikes up a conversation with a filipino couple who, like my father, were brought in on wheelchairs by the airport staff, the husband is wearing a rather ratty knitted cap and looks like he's been sick and has been forced into early retirement, his wife on the other hand looks to be in good health, she's probably in her mid to late 60s but she could pass for someone in her late 40s (that radiant Moreno skin--no bain de soleil for this san tropez tan, bitches). So my father and the couple bond over their decrepitude-ness. Naturally they move on to the topic of their children. My sons, my father claims, refuse to send me money. The woman looks over at me, not quite a reprimand, her face doesn't change from the same put-upon, long-suffering look that she came in with, a favorite mask for many a filipino mother. I try to explain to her that me and my brother can't send money fast enough to cover my dad's spending. that's nothing, she says, you know what our son did? My son and his wife connived to steal our house. they convinced us to put the house in my son's name and then you know what he did, he evicted us, his own parents. talagang salvaje. So now we've had enough and we're going back to the Philippines.

In the Philippines old people are worshipped like saints, honor them well and your crops will not be ruined, your children will make lots of money, all your endeavours will reach a bounteous fruition.