Four thoughts on place and identity

So now I have been to Iloilo, on Panay, the island where my grandfather was born.

Does that mean anything?  Should it mean anything?

Part of me says it shouldn't mean much.  I only went to the city.  I didn't actually visit the town he was born in - I don't even know where that is.  I didn't meet anybody he knew, didn't do anything special, didn't make any grand discoveries or gain profound insights.

And yet, it feels important, somehow - I've been to the island where my Lolo was born.  Does - does that feel important to you?  Does it sound important?  Because it doesn't sound like much when I say it out loud, and yet I feel like I've accomplished something.

I am not sure if I've been to the town where my great-grandparents were born, but I've been to the state - big-sky Montana.  I've heard my Papa talk about the Great Depression, about raising my grandfather in a shack with holes in the walls.  I saw my grandmama's family home in Georgia, once - I remember a tire swing, and iced tea, and relatives who all said "idear" the same way my grandmama does, and miles of farmland.  I've driven on the highways of greater L.A. with my grandma while she described how everything was different when she was a little girl, when these were roads surrounded by orange groves and a trolley system bore passengers to the city.  The Domonoskes, the Regans, the Larkins - I have known the places that have known those names.

And now I've been to the island where my grandfather, Gerardo Flamiano, was born.  And I don't know if that completes some kind of circle, or fulfills some human curiosity, or is a symbolic step, or satisfies some kind of filial duty, or if it's nothing.

But it doesn't feel like nothing.

***

My mother: "I gave some of your photos to Lolo.  He wrote on back: "Camila's historic visit to Philippines to see my people."

4 a.m. I get this text, and I wake up, and cry a little.  And I smile.  And I am tired and I fall back to sleep.  I don't remember what I dream, but in the morning I set off through the rainforests of these islands to see new mountains, meet new faces, hear new stories.

I may not know my dreams, but I am learning my history.

***

I step off yet another plane, fall asleep on yet another bus, carry my backpack to a new front desk.  I give my mother's last name, instead of my father's, because it's easier to spell for strangers.  They have trouble with "Domonoske" - who wouldn't - but here, at least, no problems with "Flamiano."

I feel like a stranger, another woman's name spilling from my lips.  I feel like an imposter, pulling a Filipina mask over my own pale features.  Playing dress-up as Camila Flamiano, posing as a pinay.  But when they ask, "do you have Filipino blood?" and I say, "yes, one quarter; my grandfather is Ilonggo," they say, "Ah!" like they've made a discovery, and they smile, and announce to the other staff: "she's Filipino!"

***

The taxi drivers, all of them, ask where I'm from.  I say, "America."  Then I add, "But my grandfather's from Iloilo."

"So you're Fil-Am," they say with a smile.  Filipino-American.

The first few weeks, I laughed, awkwardly.  "I guess," I would say.  "A little bit."

Now I nod.

"Yup."