Nevergirl’s

The hub keeps bugging me to blog in detail about our weekend away - and I will. But please, not until I’ve fully slept the exhaustion off! Understand, this is the first time I left the house for more than 5 hours since giving birth last September 26. Rejoining the rest of the world takes some getting used to.

Our foray to Dumaguete was fun but it was also easily the worst trip I’ve ever taken. Everything that could possibly go wrong did. First, our luggage fell off the bus (more on this on another post) and we almost reached Dumaguete utterly clueless that the sole maleta we carried was lying on a lonely road somewhere between Cebu City and Sibulan. When we did get our luggage back, it was so badly mangled we had to shop for another one that very day. Then, the moment we checked into our hotel, we got told by locals that everything was within walking distance so we walked - and I promptly ended up with an asthma attack.

On the second day, we went to this pricey resort in Dauin. It was called El Dorado. The resort was pretty but the rooms were ugly. The staff were horrid and we were the only guests there who did not have an old, wrinkled male Caucasian to cling to. I had the hub cancel our stay and ask for our money back. We didn’t get it - at least, not fully, because the hub was brutally honest and told them we loathed our room and the service. It was only after the hub fought with the receptionist that we realized we were stuck in the middle of nowhere - literally - with no ride out. My cousin, Jamie, had to make several frantic calls before she lucked in on a former suitor who not only fetched us but took us on a mini-tour of other resorts. We opted to stay at the South Sea Resort Hotel. The place is a gem and there, finally, the hub and I got the rest and moments alone he claims he badly needs. But before that, we met up with two blogger friends, Lurchie and Dan.

So now, until I’m over this vacation-induced fatigue, I’m going to leave you only with some of our weekender photos and this little post. We were supposed to be home Sunday but the huuuuge waves made the return impossible. Needless to say, the delay threw a big wrench into my schedule.

Oh, and dear Vet, if there’s one thing this trip validated, it’s that I’ll never be good at ‘roughing it’. But I promise I’m entertaining company. Ask Wett.

I’m not going away. I am going somewhere. I have places to see, verses to learn, stories to write, odd corners to turn, moments to capture, heavens to peer at, ghosts to drag, and nostalgia to challenge the stars with. I want to find places that will break my heart and hold moments that force me to stop and remember. I want discovery and metaphors, scars and cycles, moonlight and galaxies, tombstones and ripples, and the birthing of stars.

I’m not going away. I am going somewhere. I don’t have a map or a saltwater sketch of all these places I am going to but I don’t need one. My feet know the way to the sea.

Hello whirlwind love, won’t you sit down, have a cup with me? I know the roads are unfamiliar and sometimes the streets change names but how was the trip, anyway? Did you get a map? Did you get lost? Did you learn an odd verse or two while you swam with purple dolphins? Did you stop to take photos, and will you show them to me - tonight, perhaps, over margaritas and music? I’m glad you found me. I’ve been waiting for you, you see. I’ve always known you’ll come and whisk me off someplace where I could wander for days without ever reaching the end of the universe.

Happy 27th, dearest.

It’s all Mark Twain’s fault, it really is. All the husband did was ask what I wanted for Christmas. Feeling flippant, I said, “To wander without a compass” and then quoted Mark Twain: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

He loved the idea - and that was how the Mark Twain project was born. Every other weekend, we will travel to an island we have never been to. We will start this 15th with Dumaguete, and then maybe Siargao or Bacolod later on, and perhaps an undiscovered island after? I can’t wait. For the first time in almost five years, I will finally have the time to wander. ‘course, we won’t be taking the kids along. Alex will only spend three-quarters of the time talking and Charlie will sleep through it all. Besides, we plan to make the most out of every trip by doing some of the things on our ‘Do Before You Die’ list. So yeah, it will be just the hub and me and the huge sky above. Fun!

We played with marbles and rubber bands and snacked on mansanitas we picked ourselves. We made up words and fought over who invented which word first. We ate bread, Japanese corn, Bazooka, and mud pies but we never got fat and the mud didn’t turn us into swamp creatures at all. We had no toys and personal computers but we had bikes and skipping ropes. We skipped all the way to our friends’ houses and practiced riding our bikes handless. We never wore helmets and sometimes fell onto ditches. We got bruised; we broke bones; we punched each other black and blue but we always made peace afterwards.

Today, all we do is tease each other mercilessly. We pick on the brother’s girlfriend of the moment and make fun of Allaine’s hair. We give each other ridiculous nicknames (bingka, bayot, super love) and discuss the miracle of toilet paper. We ask Jonah if she still has elf’s ears. We give each other bangs - and if the haircut don’t turn out as we’d hoped it would, we shrugged it off. Hair grows; siblings don’t - not from follicles, anyway. Years from today, we will grow grey hairs. We will acquire charm along with eczema. We will lose our looks, eyesight, agility, and libidos. But as long as we have each other, who cares about bedpans and dentures? A part of us will always remain the children we were back in ‘93.