Home for Christmas

"Make sure you're home before dinnertime."
I have lost count of the number of summer mornings when my mom would give me that same reminder over and over and over again as I would leave the house after breakfast to go on my imaginary Don Quixote adventures outdoors with my older cousins. I really did not quite understand that as a child but now, when I am living more than a quarter of my life (or more if I die before I'm a hundred), it now seems reminiscent to a shepherd counting the sheep in his fold by dusk. After all, everything has to come full circle at the end of every day, whether the means be figurative or, in this case, quite literal.
On Wednesday, December 17 at 3 a.m., my sister shook me awake. My head was spinning as I had been asleep for less than two hours. As I splash water into my face, I blamed my late night date with Em and Banana in Glorietta which saw me home by half an hour past midnight. With school taking up most of my time, I was glad to get Tuesday night off to at least meet with them for a couple of hours in Makati. A little while later, as I drove my sister to the airport for her 5:30 a.m. flight, the car literally flew over a road hump which I swear I didn't see. That got my sister seriously contemplating about getting a taxi somewhere. When we finally reached the airport, she pulled out her luggage from the backseat and told me, "See you later at home." Now that was surreal.
I crawled back to my bed by 4 a.m. and woke up with a start at 8 a.m., realizing that I had loads of other things to do before my own flight home later in the afternoon, including packing my luggage! I had to meet Kuya Jojo in church to hand over some music sheets for safe-keeping and to pick up my peanut butter bottles. On the way, I got stuck in traffic and ended up being 20 minutes late, much to my embarrassment. It was 11 a.m. and I had errands to run, a car that badly needed cleaning and a stomach that was growling its way into an ulcer.
Thanks to traffic, I got back home at a quarter past 12 just in time to pick up the ringing phone and talk to my mother who asked me three different variants of "Where were you?" I immediately told her I had to go when I espied my half-empty luggage at the foot of my bed with its lid hanging open like a kid having his mouth examined. Yikes! I spent the next hour or so running around with books, papers, clothes and Christmas gifts, trying to stuff them into my bag.
As I lived quite near the airport, I got to the terminal a good 90 minutes before my flight. The airport was teeming with people even if PAL had the terminal all to itself unlike last year. Of course there was pushing and jostling but, hey! It's Christmas so that I chose to ignore all that in the name of the jolliest time of the year.
The flight was smooth and I slept all the way, although I did wake up once in a while because the toddler seated behind me kept on kicking my chair. The plane landed according to schedule and as I was seated in the plane's rear portion, I had to wait for my turn to get out of my chair. So I busied myself with texting my mother and my aunt, telling them that I had arrived safely and in one-piece. Finally when it was my turn to leave the plane, I pulled out my backpack and laptop and reached for a paperbag in the stowage bin holding about 12 paperback novels. As I was pulling the paperbag out of the bin, this taller and bigger guy was making his way against the tide of people leaving the plane. Apparently, he had left something and I thought he was going to wait just until I was able to retrieve my things. However he forced himself between the what tiny space was left between me the aisle seats and in the process, he hit my arm and made me lose my balance. My paperbag flew out of my hands and rippped apart, spilling my books on the aisle and the seats. So I held up traffic inside the plane as I picked up my books on the floor and cradled them in my arms as the paperbag had gone from being bag to being just paper in a matter of seconds...all while waiting for an apology which never came.
I was still muttering when I got to the luggage carousel until I met my younger cousin. I did not know how he managed to get himself into an area restricted to passengers only but I was only too thankful when he reached out to carry my books for me and later pulled my heavy bag from the carousel. As we drove home, I looked at my watch and realized it was past 5 in the afternoon. We passed by bayi-bayi stands, Biscocho House's newest shop, Julie's house, Christ the King cemetery and later SM all under a sunset I had missed seeing in this part of the country.
I asked to be dropped off at the hospital because my grandfather was sick yet again. My mom later brought me home and called me to dinner just after I had washed up. It was still all a little surreal for me as I started the day all alone in a dining table miles away from home and now, I was seated in my usual position in the dining table with my family with our two dogs yapping at each other in the background. No matter what my seven-year old self would say, it was actually good to be home by dinner time.