The Homecoming

After almost nine months of work in the vast oceans of Europe, as a seafarer , my older brother had his vacation late this year. He did several attempts to book his trip to Cebu as a jump off point to our home place Lazi, finally he got one just in time right after the New Year. He will be moving with his family to our hometown for good. They stayed in Cavite for quite some time. But lately, they decided to stay to our place.

This would be the first time that I'll see his wife, my niece and nephews in flesh. I only see them in pictures when my brother brought some, whenever he would visit our town. My Tito and Aunt in Manila said that the siblings resemble my father's profile, who had Turkish features. I wondered how these genes got into our bloodline. For one , our family have no foreign descent nor our ancestors had. But we are almost always mistaken to have one. I remembered one time while I was in Baguio for a seminar, one of our speakers, curiously threw a question on me. This concerns my features, whom he sees has Turkish and Arab attributes. This predicament was reiterated in a staff meeting together with the heads from the Central Office. "Do I look like one?" I'm not a descendant of Bin Laden. I quipped silently.

My brother's family arrived in Cebu late in the afternoon. Questions left hanging over my head slowly found it's answers. Raven, the oldest child had mixed genes of our parents. May-may, the middle child and the only girl, is the feminine replica of our father, and Ronin the youngest had also gained a lot from our lineage. Although, the kids can't understand the Cebuano dialect, and are still hesitant to approach me and our youngest brother, they have so much in store for the family.

They spent two days in the city, and paid a visit to our mother who stayed in my aunt's house for a week, for rest and vacation. She'd be back again for her check-up in a week's time. I'm sure they had many unguarded moments to capture , just the way when he met our father early during the day.

The next day, they journeyed to the province. Lots of surprises await them as they start building their family in a new found place like no other. A place that we call home.