I’m standing outside,
The walls shake,
Above, the birds flee the telephone poles,
And the ground trembles,
Everything happened suddenly,
I didn’t know if it was magic,
Or just… MAGIC MIC,
I quickly open the door,
And my senses are slapped by the music,
Like taking your first step off the plane into the heat cloud of Manila,
It hits you, everywhere. As if Manila need not your boarding pass, but your sweat as a measure of how willing you are to venture further.
I enter the room, my mother standing loud and proud with a half-circle of kapamilya behind her, yelling till they too had fainted lungs.
My eardrums drum out the familiar tune: “UNBREAK MY HEART,” as she swings her wine bottle, “SAY YOU LOVE ME AGAIN,”
At the time, I disliked every word of it.
Disliked the sensation of being around people who sang as the only means to happiness. Pick up a book, I would say. Or, do something besides singing your “favorite” song.
I thought this, until I found myself in the same situation years later.
Mom and I lived alone, but not lonely for mom was like my mirror: I saw her thoughts within me everywhere I went.
Every afternoon, I walked home from school, approached the door to reveal my latest progress report,
At the table, always a note, “Anak, here is money for tomorrow. Cook something, you need to eat.” Faint traces of red lipstick imprinted the napkin as if it were part of a company trademark.
And I, with my finger signed my mother’s name onto my hand so as not to ever lose it again.
And through it all,
Mom kept singing.
Everyday.
She bursted with the magic mic,
And sang along the key of beauty,
As if every note materialized into a key for heaven’s gates,
She sang, everytime, next to God,
Because her song, she knew, was the key to her heart,
With every song, she tightroped the rhythm,
Patient and balancing her body,
So as not to fall,
She saw the greater goal in sight; HER manifest destiny.
She sings to string a rope across the Pacific,
Hoping each verse sparked strength to pull Isabella, her province, closer to her backyard,
As if every crescendo in a BeeGees song made carabaos stomp to the rhythm,
She hears the Philippines crying,
Like a lullaby,
She sings to cure the struggles,
She cuddles barrios with a smile more radiant than 8 rays,
With a passionate squeeze to make any calamansi juice jealous,
She holds the Philippines close to her heart,
Because with every song,
She offers fruits more succulent than the homeland’s own rich soil,
Her voice is what drives jeepneys,
Because behind every passenger,
Is a mother, or an idea of a mother, who, miles away nags at their child,
To pick themselves back up,
Never back down,
And if anyone touches your dreams,
You send them to the cemetery,
I know this, because you have struggled.
As a teenage overseas Filipino worker,
You fled the Philippines,
A refugee of failed economic planning,
You left the entire family,
With eyes like telescopes:
Foreseeing the future with
Every minute detail,
In your LEFT HAND, the paintbrush of Luna,
In your RIGHT HAND, the notebooks of Bulosan,
And, more than America,
You settled in Carson to birth your baby boy
To remind him that Philippines, though distant,
Will always be in the heart.
You clutched your mic like a hammer to smash the world,
Holding that mic tight like holding a calling card,
You sang louder,
Till the idle buzz diminished,
and your heart beat the same rhythm as Manila streets,
She need no mic stand because her mic stands solid
With fingers choking it of life,
But breathing life into the mic,
As if for the first time her tongue lashed the same Ilocano battle cries
As Gabriela; A modern-day urban guerilla with a vision to bleed for her family.
You told me stories, Momma,
Of late-night performances at the bars in Saudi Arabia,
How the crowd swooned over your solo acts,
You plucked your guitar to entertain,
But most of all, to earn a better wage,
Because being a nurse, simply wasn’t enough,
Now, you sing,
Because after graveyard shifts and 60 hours of work a week for thirty years,
Your thumb has grown into the groove of your pen after writing medical charts like novels; it has grown too crooked and too painful to straighten out to grasp the fretboard,
Your fingers too weary even to give your own son a hug,
Your hands wear the same glove as the same immigrants who built this country,
And like an architect,
Though those fingers are tired, they are not retired from their task at hand,
Because with those fingers, you built monuments in the heart of every person you have met,
And like the most sacred of shrines, we are reminded of your divinity,
I mean it when I say it:
Please momma, don’t let ANYONE turn down your song.
Sing with a desire to conquer your greatest obsessions,
And sing with no regard to put your guard up,
Because with your voice,
I echo the same love your life is built on.
So, Unbreak my heart, say that you love me again,
I love you, mom.
I’ll keep echoing those words on the mic,
I love you mom,
I love you.
And I’ll say it louder,
So that, maybe, the Philippines can hear me crying too
