MikeLigalig.com

By Aurelio A. Pena
Philippine News Agency, Davao City

DAVAO CITY, Philippines: It's not common for anyone to get an invitation from a sister in America to come and live in that so-called “land of milk and honey”.

Making it even more tempting is their plan to buy a big two-story beach-side house in Charleston, North Carolina, a five-hour drive from their home in Springfield, Virginia, suggesting that if ever I make it there, sis Mina and brod-in-law Erwin want me to stay in one of the four rooms and “fix up the place for us so we can all be together when we retire”.

A picture of the big house was attached to their email to me a few months back before I renewed my passport, just in case. I don’t know why they’ve started thinking of “retirement” and buying a second house, so I figured they must be in their late fifties, nearing sixty and dreaming of the days when they would do nothing else but go fishing in one of those beautiful lakes around Virginia.

“It’s an old house,” she said in her email. “Pero kung nandito ka na, ayusin mo na lang at eventually pag nag retire na kami ni Erwin, five years from now, makakasama ka na namin doon permanently. Hopefully pati na si Nena (my other sister)”.

Of course, for someone who’s homeless as I am, this invitation is like God’s manna dropping from Heaven, if only it’s not something that ends up in Davao as “estoryaheeee!” because frankly, I still cannot believe this unless Mina and Erwin send me a one-way plane ticket from Manila to Los Angeles-Washington and personally meet me at the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington, just to make sure I accept their once-in-a-lifetime offer.

What makes it seem so real is the fact that Mina is a bonafide US citizen, has four cars, a big six-room house in Springfield and works in America’s biggest jewelry company in Virginia the last 16 years. Mina is my younger sister while Nena, who’s now in California, comes after me in our family of four, all orphans after our parents died of old age, one after the other.

One nice thing about Mama’s long dream of coming to America to join my sisters in her earlier years, it was eventually fulfilled after she died even if the US Embassy denied her a visa because she was too old to travel. Well, years later, Mama finally didn’t need a passport or US visa entering America, because she was packed inside a nice-looking jar (urn) and hand-carried by Mina who always loved Mama since the day she was born.

Today, that jar is the centerpiece of her living room decoration, perched above their fireplace in Virginia. Mina’s dream of this one final family reunion in our old age at that beach house in Charleston, North Carolina, is also one dream I had but dismissed outright considering I don’t have any chance of immigrating to America at this age, even if they go through that “petition process” which can take as long as 25 years before the US Embassy will even consider giving you a US Immigrant Visa.

Mina stressed this fact to me, feeling her own frustrations at the US government for making it so difficult for foreigners to immigrate there. That’s why those who plan to live and work in America, are looking for easy ways -- doing it illegally by getting a Visitor’s Visa, or a Tourist Visa, then getting odd jobs to survive and doing a TNT -- or “tago ng tago”. Or if you’re in Mexico, just crossing the border illegally, making sure you’re not chased and arrested by US Marshalls.

At this point, deep inside me, I see no point in pursuing this dream of Mina for reuniting our family in the US, unless she makes it easy for us to go there. But in her latest emails to me, she also wants me to “struggle and fight my way to the land of milk and honey” like what she did many years ago after her first family broke up, joining me and Nena in a string of broken families and broken dreams.

But Mina has been luckier than the rest of us after she met someone, a Filipino in Virginia, who committed his whole life to her “till death do us part” and working at stable, well-paying jobs in the US, a country that had been so good to them all these years.

With my roots so deep in the ground here in Davao, I still can’t stand the thought of fighting my way there, even if the thought of fishing in a beautiful Virginia lake is so goddamn tempting.

America, to me, isn’t worth dying for…!

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America may be good to most of us who's making a life here but nothing compares to our childhood hometown. For me, its Tagbilaran. For my Papa, its Tangub City. We will all crave for the close knit community that we had that can never be replaced. Specially here.

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