Here

hey! :)

merry christmas! here i am at home, spending it alone :) but the thing is, that's so strictly not true at all.

i don't feel alone. i feel loved, and blessed, and tearfully grateful for many many many things. i am weepy at the thought that there are so many people in the world that i can text, right after i thought for a few harrowing minutes that i was gonna be a goner.

i told bobby today that i already said i love you, mentally to everyone i love. he said, baka sa akin mangyari yan kaya ngayon pa lang sinasabi ko na, viola, i love you. hehe.

this morning, at breakfast, buddha and i listed all the life-threatening situations we've been through. the only criteria is that you thought during or after that you could have been a goner. i thought of three times. first was when chung and i almost shot off the santolan flyover due to a driver's wandering eye (i always feel a little bit queasy going over that same patch of road each time), then when dd and i experienced a minor earth tremor inside the moviehouse at the mall and it took forever to get out.

The last time was yesterday when our plane was hovering over cdo, waiting for a break in the clouds, and it tried to land, twice. the second time, going down, we really felt the moment when the pilot decided/ realized we weren't going to land, and the engines revved again and the plane's nose went up, and up we went. but with all that fog and clouds, you couldn't be sure where up was, a mountain or what (the uncontrollable need for control, to see). it didn't help of course that being a slightly phobic flyer, i know all about air crashes. (i also learned much later from co-passengers that when we went thru the clouds, we were too near the houses, and that's when the plane went up again). i concentrated on praying long and hard, and forever. thought of asking the silent man beside me if i could hold on to his shoulder but he seemed scared too and i didn't think it would be fair to ask him to carry some of my anxiety. in the end it helped that the woman one row behind across the aisle, said aloud, ay salamat when the pilot announced we were going to land in cebu instead. we smiled at each other. yes, let's not try anymore. let's land in cebu. trying again would suck.

so i am happy to be back on the ground, in a much quieter and much colder qc. after the weeks of shopping, and the week of merry-making, and yesterday's trauma, i am grateful to be resting in my own house (had a massage :))), and own bed, crossing paths again and sharing a japanese dinner (food fest!) with volunteer house-sitter buddha. i am pleased to add a new concept of Christmas Eve to my cognitive storehouse: this is only my fourth or fifth (basta less than ten) time to be away from the family reunion in Mindanao in my 33 years of life, would you believe? i am deeply touched that maya said to just come over if i get lonely, and she'd drive me home when i wanted to. oh thanks hb :), i love you. thanks for taking me to dinner last night after i got home from flying all the way from luzon thru the visayas to mindanao, back to the visayas and back to luzon all in six hours. with less than two hours sleep and hardly any food.

fortunately for me, while i was assessing my life in the air, i thought that i really had no loose ends because everyone i love knows that :). and the last person i talked to was dd who rode to the airport with me, thereby upholding perhaps the one personal Christmas tradition I/ we have. We always -- in the last three years, anyway-- go home together.(other Christmas traditions i adhere to existed before i did). in fact, some moments up there, i had to give up worrying because worrying is actually not a choice. i mean it does you no good. i just thought am starting some things that could be good. and i'd really hate for my parents to be sad.

in cebu, i asked people to pray for good weather and safe flight to anywhere, and when my pastor-to-be uncle who had driven all the way to the airport to pick me up, said, "done", that's when i really wanted to start bawling from the shock.

so yes i am spending christmas alone, and happily. today and tonight, i really need the space and the time and the quiet, to be. to be grateful. to celebrate truly. there has probably never even been a christmas before this when i truly felt that where i am is where i should be/ want to be, and where i am is really where i am. i am here.

and it's Christmas.

:)

and tomorrow i fly again :)

and the strange thing is, a few weeks ago, this is exactly how I thought I should/ want to be spending Christmas. Here and in Iloilo till a part of the 26th. God-willing that is, my lola is sure to say. though i tried otherwise.

Happy birthday, big J, and love to the angels who fly with me.