Three More Days

(A J195 - Travel Journ - Article)

I did say I took this class because I needed to travel more. I love it when I travel – the feeling of moving from one place to another, buttocks hurting from the amount of time sitting on a bus, knowing there’s some beautiful (or not, but nevertheless, a) place waiting for me at the end of the journey.

I love new cultures, and I love eating food I haven’t tasted before. I love the difference of the smell of the air in the city and the province, the sun on my neck and the wind in my face, the rain penetrating the ground and releasing petrichor and visible stars and –

I did say I love to travel. But I didn’t say why.

You could say I was a well-travelled child. My mother took me to Legaspi every month when she would get her dental supplies and the dentures her patients ordered. She would buy me Funny Komiks and a tube of Smarties and we would go to McDonald’s and she would buy me a 6pc pack of Chicken McNuggets (I was a fat kid) – all these without fail. Every month. Until I turned four.

She had to leave, she said. It was only for three days, she said. I’d be back soon, she said.

Only the first one was true.

It’s not so dramatic, you see. She had to work abroad – for reasons a child couldn’t understand, the adults thought, and so nobody told me anything. And so I didn’t cry when she left – because she said she’d be back in three days’ time. I waited, and I waited, and I remember waiting. I don’t remember when I stopped, though.

And so the next time my mother came home, I was too old for Funny Komiks. Smarties had phased out. And I had grown sick of McNuggets.

Don’t get me wrong, I love her, I can say that so many times and you may not believe me but I don’t care because I do love her and there’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think I ever stopped waiting. For the Funny Komiks. For the Smarties. For the McNuggets. Every month. “Maybe after three more days” is what I still keep telling myself.

I love to travel – and I admit it’s probably because I’m looking for that feeling the monthly Legaspi trips gave me, something that I will never feel again.

So you see, it wasn’t even my going away that made me a changed person.