Just Passing By

April showers bring May flowers. When I was a little kid, I thought this was a line in a poem and struck me as funny. You see, back home in the Philippines, we hardly get any rain in April. Summertime comes in March and extends all the way to June. And April was usually scorching hot. This is my third year in the US and now I see that April showers bring May flowers indeed paint a pretty good  sketch of what it’s like during these times of the year.

It’s May and the flowers have bloomed but a storm brought rains down here in the desert valley. Due to our location, we don’t get a lot of rain and so when I woke up this morning and saw the ground drenched from the overnight showers, I felt as happy as a little kid who sees snow outside her window. Rain to me is comforting. It brings back fond memories of childhood like those times my brothers and sisters would play out in the rain or make paper boats and race them on the flowing water along the sidewalk gutters. Or when we were forced to stay inside the house and Mama would cook champorado in the afternoon for our merienda so we can stay warm. She would often have the radio tuned in to the MellowTouch station where they play love songs from the 50s to the 70s. Or when as a teenager, I would just stay in my bedroom I share with my two sisters and I would just write long letters to my childhood boyfriend as I listened to the rain drops pelting on the roof and windows. I especially like the smell of rain in the afternoon, when the water cools the hot soil. Mama always said the smell can make for an upset tummy but I didn’t mind. It was an odd smell but I loved it.

Aside from not getting enough rain here, I can’t hear the cool soothing rain sound anymore. With the houses insulated and the windows double paned to protect from the miserably cold winters, they’re effectively sound proof. And so during rainy days like this, I try to spend some time out to enjoy this little luxury of smelling the rain and doing a little raindance.

Over the weekend, I had two separate but very interesting and hilariously funny conversations with two of my aunts who also live here in the US, one in California and one in Chicago. Both are getting ready to go on a vacation to the Philippines in a couple of weeks and were struggling to fit all the pasalubong they’ve accumulated over the last year or so in anticipation of this homecoming. It’s my grandma’s 80th birthday and all her children will be at her bash.

For my non-Filipino readers, let me digress a little by giving a short cultural lesson here. A pasalubong is a token or gift one brings to family and relations after a short trip or an extended absence abroad. For it to be more meaningful, the gift has to reflect its place of origin.

So going back to my two aunts’ dilemma, they got pasalubong-shopping-happy and bought more than they can bring home. They have the usual candies and chocolates, logo-tees (preferably with the name brand emblazoned on the front), canned goods and the ever-so-popular Victoria Secret body wash and lotions. One of them even had to send one box ahead thru a door-to-door service just to make sure she doesn’t exceed her baggage allowance at the airline. With all the stuff they’re bringing and after making a checklist, they still worry they missed a gift for someone.

I’m scheduled to fly home too in exactly three months. As early as January, I’ve already started my pasalubong shopping. In the Mayrina language, pasalubong is “pata,” a sort of childish-twist to the word. I need to makes sure that each member of the family gets a pata - but not just any pata. My bros and sisses can be more cruel than Simon Cowell so I need to be very discriminating. The challenge makes the shopping more fun. I remember when Mama came home after her first trip to the US, we had so much fun opening the balikbayan box. It didn’t matter that each item had a label for who it was for. My sister, Dang, just threw herself over the box and tried to claim everything for herself. My other sister, Tuchie, and I were helpless against her as we played tug-o-war with a white shirt that we didn’t even particularly like. We were fighting for it just for fighting’s sake - it was hilarious. We just dropped on the floor giggling. Later, when we all calmed down, we traded our stuff with one another. You’d think Mama would know exactly what everybody wants, but she didn’t. After the trade, we did end up getting what we want. And did I mention we were all grown-ups when this happened?

So now there’s one less person to fight over the box - me. But it would still be fun watching everyone if they liked their pata, or not.