Today's Family Gathering

Today, I was forced to make an appearance at my cousin's 1st birthday party as a representative of my family since both my parents are working. Actually, I just learned that these people really aren't my cousins. They're related in some bizarre way, but not through blood but we call them our cousins anyway. The girl is actually a generation under me so they keep calling me her auntie... but it doesn't bother me. I'm guessing that when my mom and her sister first came to the States they didn't have many blood relatives of their own so they were sort of adopted by these relatives... or maybe they were really close in the Philippines. I don't know. But it's cool.

I haven't seen some of these cousins in probably a year or two thanks to my wonderful avoidance skills. It turns out that a lot of them have grown up. My tomboy cousin who used to carry around matches and playing cards now shows off her driver's permit and her cell phone. Almost everyone is married and has at least one baby.

I was pretty amazed at myself, at how much I didn't change all these years. I still feel like I'm twelve around these people.

"Where do you school now?" one of my cousin's ask me.

"University of blah blah blah," I say.

"... wow..." she stops and thinks for a moment. "I think you're the only one of us that made it into a university." It's not that great of an accomplishment... getting in... getting out with a degree and experience in your hand is what the problem is. But they weren't too amazed. I guess they're being smart and waiting for me to get the degree to start praising me. I don't blame them. Strange luck falls on the family and it's odd when they ask me how everything is, I can look around and genuinely mean it when I say "It's fine."

I also met my 'nephew', my first cousin's son. It was odd. Technically the boy is suppose to be 100% Filipino having both Filipino parents but there is something odd about the way he looks. He has very brown hair and colored eyes. I know his hair is brown. It's not the sunlight. It's really brown. And his eyes, I don't mean brown or black. I can't exactly pinpoint the color but it looks to be a very dark blue or green. Very odd for a full Filipino baby, but okay. I've come to three conclusions: that's not my cousin's baby, he was switched at the hospital, or his has some weird, Spanish recessives genes that are just coming out.

The baby's mother was a little exasperated with the baby. "Just wait until you get married and you have kids, you...." she trailed off, probably muttering some suppressed regret.

"Why? You don't like it?" I ask her, with a hint of suspicion as she is one of the caretakers of my 'nephew."

"...No, I do," she says quickly. "But it's just a lot of hard work. Just make sure your finished with school before you do anything." Even though that came straight from the horse's mouth I felt like saying "Well I could have told you that." But I didn't. I simply nodded, accepting the advice, the obvious advice, but I guess you can never hear something like that too much.

Treasure

My younger cousin asked me to take her to the local library today. When I say local, I mean local. It's basically just around the block from where we live, but I never pay too much attention to it. It's small building, a big room located in the run-down area of our neighborhood that houses a few thousand books - it's not a very big library. I spend a lot of time at libraries but I usually go to bigger libraries which are farther away. In fact, since my Filipino American literature mania started I've been scouring new libraries in search of more books. Sometimes, my search is futile in those libraries.

But I took her anyway. I may not like the library. But it's a library. I usually never pass up the chance to go to the library. No matter how small or run down it could be, I could always find something interesting. I let my cousin look for her books while I sat down at the electronic catalog browsing for Tagalog grammar books or Filipino children's books. Within a few seconds, I get bored of sitting at the computer so I just look around the small library when I see the word "FILIPINANIA" on top of a bookcase. Excitedly I dash toward it and find that two or three bookcases in that tiny library are dedicated to Tagalog dictionaries, children's folk tales, Rizal's work, Filipino music CDs, movies, and even the sickening romance novellas. Wow, I sure have been looking in the wrong place all this time. And this library was practically in my backyard. I was happy but I felt stupid too, for neglecting my own local library. This library must have had more Filipino/Tagalog books than all the libraries put together. And this is where the jackpot was. In my backyard. Whoo! All the books I've been searching for was right there.

After my excitement died down and my cousin begged me to take her home, i checked out my books with the librarian who happened to be Filipino. She reads aloud one of the titles in Tagalog. "Yeah, I'm trying to learn Tagalog," I say, before she starts speaking to me pure Tagalog. "Oh really? That's good." She flips through the Tagalog grammar book I picked out. "Good for you," she says. She said some other stuff but I can't remember.

Afterwards, we went home. My grandma was pretty proud of my eagerness to learn Tagalog. She wants me to learn, so she can just speak to me in Tagalog.

"It's you are learning, anak. Because my English is so broken," she says.

"No it's not." And it really isn't. She can speak perfect English, although she may be a bit slow at it, she speaks English perfectly.

"Oh, but I don't feel free, you know, speaking in this language. It's too hard. I want to speak to you in Tagalog, it's easier. It should be you who should understand me and not me to understand you, now. Like this one," she points at my cousin who is half-listening, half-daydreaming, "your auntie says it's my fault for not teaching her Ilocano or Tagalog. But to talk to her in English, is a short-cut. If I tell her something in Ilocano, she will just say 'What? Huh?' and it will take so long. That's why I just talk to them in English. But your mom, she encourages me to speak to you in Ilocano because she says you can understand a lot."

I don't know how true that is. I probably don't understand as much as people think I can. It's just a technique that we (me and my cousins use) to comprehend whatever is going on - body language, context and the English words that they sometimes drop into their conversation.

But I want to be able to understand my grandmother. She has a lot to say but maybe she just can't say it.

8/9/2002 12:00:40 AM

Oops (again)

I think Xab's more than a little annoyed with me. I think he may actually be angry at me. I think it has more to do than what happened today. We went to the beach. To make a long story short, we couldn't find Xab for two hours.

I feel really selfish. I think he's annoyed that I'm being so lethargic. He's probably so fed up that I don't do what he wants. He deals with the pressures of dealing with my family, goes out of his way to do things for me (even when sometimes, I tell him not to) while I go out of my to avoid his family. He understands a little bit. He admits he has a scary family but maybe he thinks that I should toughen up and deal with them no matter how scary his family is. It's not that I can't. My excuse would be that my mom doesn't want me to be seen as some whore that's always going to his house. Even though it's a reasonable excuse (on my mom's part). Maybe I should try harder. But I don't want to deal with the consequences. I need to try harder. 'Forever love' doesn't stand on its own.

FC's Visit

FC (or Favorite Cousin) was in my part of town today so she invited me to go watch a movie with her. The whole thing was like a battle plan. She's trying to avoid my mom because it's really starting to show that she's pregnant. I was talking to her on the phone.

"I can go in your house, your mom will see... and then she'll tell my mom. You know they all have big mouths," she says.

"Is it really that obvious?" I ask.

"Yes!" She stammers. In the background, I hear her husband telling to just say that's she's hiding a basketball under her shirt. Jeez, was it that obvious?

"I have a sweater," she says.

"Then wear it."

"But you know how your mom is. "Ayy! Why are you wearing a sweater? It's so hot! I feel hot just looking at you and your sweater!" she imitates my mom perfectly.

"So? Just do it. She says that all the time. I'll wear my sweater too, then she'll yell at the both of us."

So when she arrived, I came out and greeted her and to see how obvious her pregnancy was. Yep, pretty obvious. She slips into her sweater and we walk inside. My mom waiting in the living room and I grab the newspaper and sit next to FC holding the newspaper in front of us so that her belly would be concealed while we read movie times. My mom didn't seem to notice so we just ended up dropping the whole facade. It's pretty weird how no one notices. I guess it's pretty obvious to me since I know she's pregnant. It's usually not the first thing that comes to mind if you see FC with a large belly. The first thing you would probably think is that she is hiding a basketball under her shirt. You wouldn't really think that she's pregnant. That's just too odd.

Testing

Last night as I was typing my previous entry I was talking on the phone with Xab. When we talk on the phone, sometimes we don't say anything. It's enough to just hear the other person breathing, or typing away or even snoring sometimes. That's what we were doing last night but when we did talk he asks me:

"If I were to move to Alaska, would you follow me?"

"What? Why would you want to go to Alaska?"

"I'm just wondering. Answer the question."

"I don't know. Probably not. I have school in California."

"You could go to school in Alaska."

I was getting annoyed. I felt like he was testing me, but I didn't say anything about it at first.

"Ok," he continues, "what if I were to move near your school? What would you do?"

"Are you testing me?" I finally ask, unable to mask the annoyance and anger in my voice.

"No, I'm just wondering."

"You're testing me! Don't test me." I said and repeated a dozen times while he was trying to explain that he was only curious. Curious. Curious about my limits. That's what it felt like. I don't know exactly what was going through his mind. He was probably thinking about running away or something, or he was really stressed about what happened with my mom.

I felt offended. Does he not think I love him? How much do I love him? I wish I could say I would go to the ends of the earth with him any day, but in reality, that just isn't true. I have my dysfunctional family to balance out, the pride and honor I think I could bring them as a daughter. If it were really drastic, I'd go anywhere with him. I really would. But right now, sticking it out, being strong, being resilient and patient... I think that is what has to be done. By the both of us. Our family situations aren't exactly heavenly but we just have live through it, maybe make it better. I can't run away just because of this. Even if I love him so much. This isn't fairytale land.

8/5/2002 12:06:02 AM

Oops

'Oops' and 'dammit' are the two words that I kept repeating over and over in my mind today. Ever since about 8:50 in the morning. Xab and I were sitting on the couch reading the Sunday newspaper. We smile occasionally at each other, teasing each other sweetly but quickly change our auras to a friendly indifference each other when my mom would walk into the room while she was getting ready for work.

He gives me a quick peck on the cheek. I smiled, turn my head. Aw, shit. My mom is standing there. When the hell did she get there? She has this surprised look. Maybe surprised that she saw him kiss me on the cheek or surprised that she saw her in the room. Either way, she responds with the reproachful "Oooh!" Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. You know, I tell myself, it's 8:50 in the morning. It's way too early for me to be awake. I am probably back in my bed, snoozing away and it's really not Sunday. It's Friday. Yes. That makes perfect sense, because this certainly doesn't.

My mom gives me a few orders of the day and then leaves.

"Um... that was weird," I say to Xab, testing the waters of my reality.

"Yeah, that was." He says. Crap. Crap. Crap. So that did just happen. It's almost hard to explain why this is a big deal. A quick kiss on the cheek, so what? Almost everything has fallen because of the one clumsy, quick, split-second kiss. Xab and I set up this well-designed, yet simple facade. Although we're 'going out' as 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' and my parents 'accept' that, it's an unspoken rule to keep my dignity. And I don't mean just my virginity. That's a no brainer. My parents don't even have to tell me that one. I know I don't want or need that yet. I'm supposed to not ever kiss him, hug him or even hold his hand. My mom freaked when she saw us holding hands, even though he really was just trying to use a tweezer to get a splinter out of my palm.

It was an easy dilemma to solve. I love Xab. I love being with him. I kiss him. I hold his hand. I love hugging him. I just love being next to him. We don't need to do anything more. I just need to be near him. It's enough for me. It's so stupid. Just one little mistake. When my parents are around, we don't act like boyfriend and girlfriend. We act simply as friends, or even best friends. We banter, we tease. It's a front we play in front of my parents and almost everyone else on this planet. It's not a false facade, it's just another side. And it was best that way. I don't need to prove to the world that I love Xab. Just as long as he knows is what matters.

It was better that my parents didn't see that. I thought for a while it would be kind of odd if my parents never saw our affectionate side but if they did, they would just start to worry. They'd constantly lecture me. I know better. I already know better. I know too many people's stories to screw up. But after a while, I just thought it would be better for them to not think of the two of us in the matter at all. They should just think of us as kids, as children. Not that ingenious, purposeful wall has crumbled. It hid a lot of things. Our fights. Our tears. Our more affectionate hugs and kisses. But it's gone now just because of one quick, simple, practically childish kiss.

Oh well. It'll pass. We went to Comic Con International today. It was pretty amusing when I wasn't remembering what happened this morning. When I did, I just wanted to gouge my eyes out. I was sure that would make me feel better. But I just had reassure myself (along with Xab's help) that everything would eventually cool over. I'm sure it will. It was just the aftershock I was afraid of. On a side note, Comic Con was amusing. It was fun getting loads and loads of free stuff, watching many fanatics and wonder the use of it all. I admit though, that there was someone there I wanted to see. I didn't know he would be there but I saw some freaky, familiar artwork. Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Invader Zim was there. I'm not particularly obsessed with him. Like almost everything else, I am amused. But I had to get his autograph. I don't know why. I had to go through some trouble for his autograph though. We stood in this motionless line for about 45 minutes. The man that was policing the line gives us an index card as a ticket to come back at a later time to meet Jhonen so we head to the parking lot to drop off the loads of stuff we got into the car. We were starting to walk back to convention center when I realized that my damn pass wasn't on my shirt anymore. We wandered around downtown in search of it but I decided just to ask them for another pass. They were going to close in 2 hours and I had my receipt as proof that I bought one. Eventually, I got a new pass for free, too. Stood in line, said "Can you sign this?" to Jhonen and left. Very anticlimactic. But it was cool.

Anyway, I've been avoiding my mom. I think we stayed the whole day at Comic Con just to avoid my mom. But she didn't say anything. There is some weirdness between the three of us. Like she just walked in on me naked. Even then, I think I would rather have her walk in on me naked. She's seen me naked before. I don't think there would be as much shock value if she did that instead. haha. It will cool over I hope. Eventually.