The Runaway Adobo

Dearest Lala and Abbie,

I want to tell you a story, though it is not the sort you might expect. It is not about a princess locked in a castle tower, waiting for her prince, nor is it about how I traveled the world in the glossy way like most people do, boat rides drifting through Venice, skis slicing the white slopes of Switzerland, highways unfurling across America, or a sunburned walkabout in Australia. 

This story is quieter.

It is about how I traveled through life the way some people traveled back roads jolted awake by potholes, gripping the door handle, laughing at the bad timing of it all. When I saw the world through the scratched, stubborn window of a beat-up old Toyota Corolla, the kind that rattles when it starts and at times refuses to drive, the kind that carries groceries, arguments, tired sighs, and sudden joy all in the same day.

From that window, the view was not always beautiful. Sometimes it was rain blurring streetlights, dust rising from roads that led nowhere special or sometimes it was driving through the heat of the summer sun when the the air conditioner was dead. But sometimes unexpectedly it was breathtaking, the slant of the afternoon light, a familiar wave of a hand, the lights in the tennis court where I sat in the car watching A-oh play tennis behind the unwashed windshield filled with bird poop and fallen dandelions or just the comfort of knowing where I was going even when the road felt wrong.

It was not always a smooth ride but I felt the movement knowing that I was still going somewhere. This is how I saw the world through dents and delays, through laughter that came after tears, through a dusty windshield that proved I had been places, even without needing a stamp in my passport.

And I kept looking out that car window for as long as I could.

Sometimes, when I was traveling passing dinner take-out shops and the slow green canals on my way to the university where I used to teach, a memory would rise up like an early morning mist. 

I remember when I was young, my sister and brother packed inside the back of a truck stacked high with wooden crates. It was still early morning, the air cool and unfinished, as we traveled the long road to your papu’s new church assignment. The road felt endless but it was an adventure. We bumped and swayed together, bodies pressed close, our favorite snacks on our hands and our laughter bouncing off the sides of the truck.

Your mamu had packed too much food, as she always did. There was chicken adobo, rich and oily, and rice wrapped tightly in coconut leaves, the kind we called puso, warm and comforting in the hands. The food made the journey feel safe, like home moving with us.

Then, hours into the trip, something unexpected happened. A chicken, a parting gift from a neighbor suddenly leapt from its cage and out of the truck. In an instant, everyone jumped down after it. The chicken ran wildly down the road, wings flapping, clearly delighted by its sudden freedom. Trucks and cars honked in protest as the road slowed to a halt, while the adults shouted and laughed, chasing a bird that had no intention of being caught.

Even now, I could see it clearly that a chicken darting ahead, the noise and confusion, the joy hidden inside the inconvenience was a chaos, harmless and full of life and as we drove passed familiar sights I smiled, remembering how freedom once looked like a chicken on a busy road, and how happiness, back then, came wrapped in banana leaves over shared laughter and the thrill of driving forward towards a new home.

And as we drove in our beat up Toyota car, your A-oh humming behind the wheel I could still remember that day. I was young again. The tires rattling against the road and the world passing by in fragments. As my little sister and brother softly breathed along the hum of that humungous truck I watched the road ahead. I did not know what the new home would be like, only that it was waiting somewhere at the end of that long, dusty drive.