“Funny that I no longer question why certain residents behave the way they do. Most of those I dislike have either died or gone away elsewhere themselves.

There was a time in Leyte where I was born when I couldn’t wait to get on a boat and take the overnight trip to neighboring Cebu and escape the ordinariness of my hometown. The place had lost its charm. I was in my teen years and Cebu was a good 12 hours away by a wooden boat with outriggers, powered by twin diesel marine engines that deliver enough power to haul passengers, copra and abaca through 46-odd nautical miles over placid Visayan Sea waters. Cebu’s movie houses were first class, of course, and this was at the time when one could enjoy Clint Eastwood shooting the bad guys all afternoon and take the boat again that same night and go home for the princely sum of P50. For another P20, one could have his hunger sated by ngo hiong, really just lumpia to the rest of us, and this uniquely Visayan fare known as puso, pronounced with stress on the second syllable.

I was done with Leyte’s black sand beaches no matter that then, unlike at present when the waters sting and turn murky when disturbed, one could swim all day knowing that the waters were clean and that one could simply cast a line and haul in a fish and do a sinugba in a matter of minutes. I was done flying kites, too, as the lure of the nightlife in the city was so much more enjoyable, what with all the made-up girls in tight-fitting clothes selling their company for the contents of your wallet. Besides, I was sore at a few residents whose callous attitude and the imperious way with which they treated their neighbors had reached fever pitch.

It did not help that the Sta. Margarita mountains, home to golden brown dahili rice which are some of the most nutritious anywhere in the country, had been frequented by those who have taken up arms against the government and had been declared, unofficially of course, off limits to civilian lowlanders as a consequence. This meant you go there at the risk of losing your standing as a good member of the community and get on the nerves of the military that has established a camp in one of the strategic promontories. Some of the more unfortunate locals, suspected of aiding the rebels, had been brought to the camp and interrogated. Some of those unfortunates, so the story goes, not only lost their liberty but also their lives. I personally knew one who took the cudgels of those who suffered from the excesses of government, of those whose human rights had been so callously disregarded, and who himself was made to dance on bare feet to the rapid staccato of bullets exiting from an M16 rifle.

There were many other small aggravations piling on top of others that added up to one giant grudge against a place that had seemingly lost its anchor more than it had lost its charm. Gone was the restful peace one found at the elementary school grounds when everyone, teachers and pupils alike, had gone home and one was with just a handful of others enjoying the green mounds of cut grass that would be burned only tomorrow to drive away the mosquito that bred at a nearby stagnant canal. Gone, too, were the yellow breasted orioles with yellow and black flumes that used to sing each morning at the back of the grandstand when one came to school early to avoid chores at home. Also gone was the sound of the low-flying DC-3 that circled the town promptly at 7 a.m. on Monday morning as it began to land at the local airport and debarked a load of passengers fewer than 20. These were the guys who could afford a ticket costing, I was told, P45 or P50 a pop, way too much for locals who preferred the slow boat to Cebu for less than half the price, the smell of copra thrown in.

I must have left my birthplace quite a number of times over the years and at one time thought I was leaving it for good. But I keep coming back, unable to separate myself completely. Funny that I no longer question why certain residents behave the way they do. Most of those I dislike have either died or gone away elsewhere themselves. As for those events that used to agitate my unaccepting mind, these have either been abandoned or relegated to the dustbin of past excesses. I don’t exactly remember how it happened but I actually look forward to going home again. The puto at sikwate that I enjoyed as a boy of 9 early in the morning after Mass tastes exactly the same, but the nourishment it gives is more psychic now than gustatory. It is as if my favorite food merchant, Manang Memen, had concocted a more potent sikwate than the cacao beans were capable of producing because clearly, she had not.

And this was why I recently booked myself a flight and enjoyed the place of my birth like I never enjoyed it before, its people and its sins, warts and all. I enjoyed the place so much I was exhausted on the way back to Manila where at the airport I met a fellow traveler, a priest, who complained of a full bladder. It was raining and quite dark at 5 in the morning when the flight back to Manila was still two hours away. No one was looking, so he zipped open his fly and let go. And oh, I did, too.