SABBATICAL NOTES. 11 JAN 2014 N4

SABBATICAL NOTES. 11 JAN 2014 N4 

DROVE AROUND TOWN. Part of my duty as unpaid family driver with a boss like Christina Scofield of the Prison Break: Sige, sige, drive away, chauffeur!

A daughter, the first of the two who have learned to boss around their father, has convincingly learned to change her accent from British to Australian to Southern United States depending on where we would go, but always with the commanding voice, Drive, drive, driver.

Today, it is to the Festival Market to get those sliced fish for the fish sinigang with the miso, and with all the leafy things to spice up the taste of fried fish, and then drowned in Ilokano soured soup courtesy of those Magic Mixes stashed in our luggage from the Philippines but wrapped daintily with our dark, dark, dark clothing.

It is raining cats and dogs, and I see this as a good omen of the things to come, of places to go where the feet would lead me, of places unknown and unheard of, of places where the sun also rises and sets at the appointed time.

I will go to these places even if these were at the end of the world for as long as the rains, profuse and cleansing, fall there.

So: last Saturday, I went to the TJ Maxx by Kapolei and there grabbed one of the best of the automatic umbrellas that was not made in China.

Or at least, that was what that hanging thing--that tag thing--was saying.

I tried it, the parasol, and it opens up to a rainy world.

And I think of the four Valencias of my wandering, exilic, diasporic life: Valencia, Spain; Valencia, California; Valencia, Bohol; and Valencia, Bukidnon.

I will go again to these places, places of rain and sun and sunrise and sunset and thunder and lightning.

I am coming, Prof Amelia Bojo!

WPH, HI/11 Jan 2014