Let me tell you something about my side of town

Let me tell you something about my side of town.

To get here, you’ll have to drive a little farther than where you’re used to. Down the highway, into the expressway, past the rows of factories that line the road. To your right is the airport’s tarmac, to your left, the bluish waters of the bay. There are no buildings more than five floors high, no glittering skyscrapers save for a few that are separated by fields of green, all in a place right on the border between farmland and the last stretch of the Metropolis.

I live in the largest suburban area in Southeast Asia, a vast expanse of low horizons and the quiet buzz of lazy Saturday afternoons. On weekdays, I stay in the city, amidst the loud horns of trucks and shouts from the streets 12 floors below my window. I’ve learned to get used to the hustle and bustle, to the quick pace one must keep to survive in an unfamiliar place. But I can’t say that I’ve learned to love it, because I don’t. I am not a city girl, and I never will be.

To me, there is nothing so appealing as a slow-paced world where you feel that you have all of time in your hands. In the village where my old school is (less than half an hour away, depending on schoolday traffic, from where my house is), rows of large houses are covered by the boughs of tall acacia trees, protecting afternoon joggers from the sun. Everything is quiet and even the air is different, almost like you’re not in the same country anymore.

People go around my neighborhood in their house clothes, unafraid to step into cafes and malls wearing the same thing they wore to bed the night before. There is something so Californian about the sunlight and the red tiled roofs and the date palm trees in the middle of the avenues. The rich live only a few minutes away from the middle class, and sometimes they live in the same place. We speak with a characteristic lazy drawl and a twang after every letter “o”. English comes naturally, and it takes a while for many (but not all) to adapt to Filipino. When we talk to each other, it’s always in English, with a “Dude!” when we’re getting pissed.

It’s like Wisteria Lane. It’s like a lot of things, but at the same time, it can be terribly, terribly exclusivist. The cities outside can change a perspective or two, but can we help it that all our lives we’ve been separated from the rest of the world? That we grew up with each other, will grow old with each other, and will probably all be buried in Manila Memorial someday?

We’re a strange bunch, my kind and I. I can’t speak for every single one of us, but generally, we share common traits. We’d rather stay in and drink at people’s houses than party at clubs all the time. We’re exposed to village gossip from an early age, from the scandalized murmurs in mothers’ gatherings every weekend afternoon at the largest house’s porch, served iced tea and pasta and some freshly baked whatever that Tita just brought out from the oven. I make beso your mom, you make beso mine. I know you because you’re the son of Tita or Tito’s brother or sister or distant cousin, twice removed, the prom date of a girl a couple of batches higher, who was the kabarkada of a co-varsity of my best friend. Everyone knows everyone.

Also, it hardly ever rains. Or floods. Or anything, really. When it does, it’s over when it’s over.

I wonder if I’ll be stuck in this place where time almost stops. Will I settle down here, drive home from work in the city every night, spend Saturday lunches with the girls like sina Tita do, do the groceries with my kid in the shopping cart seat, wearing velour sweatpants or breezy white dresses and slippers? Will I bring my kids to football or basketball or piano practice when I’m not at work, support my friends who open stalls during the holiday bazaars?

It takes a while to outgrow everything and to actually want something beyond one’s comfort zone. But this will always be the heart of suburbia, with its small neighborhood stores and the familiar faces everywhere. This is the world weaved together by Tirona and Concha Cruz and Zapote and Acacia and Madrigal, the place I call home.