I grew up in a small rural community in the Philippines, surrounded by rice fields, simple homes, and people who knew one another. Some of my earliest memories are of bright green rice paddies stretching into the distance, the sound of people talking and laughing, and the ordinary sights and smells of village life.
When I look back now, those memories sometimes seem almost like a painting by the late Fernando Amorsolo, the first ever designated Filipino National Artist. The warm sunlight, the green fields, the people working and going about their daily lives. It was beautiful, but life was not as idyllic as it may appear in those memories. There were also poverty, political turmoil, corruption, and the feeling that ordinary people had little control over their future. Even as a child in the ’70s, I sensed that there had to be something beyond the world I knew.
Eventually, that desire for something different led me, or IMO my wife led me, to the United States.
Coming to America was exciting, but it was also a huge adjustment. Everything seemed bigger and faster. I was learning a new culture, finding my way around a new country, and trying to build a future at the same time.
When I was younger, I imagined doing many things with my life. I wanted to be an artist, a writer, maybe even a world traveler. But life has a way of changing your plans.
I became a husband and a father. With a family to support, being the breadwinner became my priority. Nursing became my profession, and eventually I found myself working at a nationally ranked teaching hospital in Los Angeles.
Nursing was never boring.
Some days were exhausting. Some were heartbreaking. Others were incredibly rewarding. There were alarms going off, phones ringing, doctors and nurses moving quickly through the halls, and patients and families dealing with some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
Somewhere in all of that, I learned that nursing was about much more than medications, procedures, and medical knowledge. It was about people. It was about listening, staying calm when someone else was frightened, and sometimes simply being there. It was also working alongside wonderful colleagues and feeling that I was a part of a work family.
I had moments when I felt proud of what I was able to do. I remember helping save patients’ lives, and for a brief moment, I felt like some kind of superhero. Of course, nursing quickly brought me back to reality. The grueling 12-hour shift. Multiple tasks at once. Trying to keep my sanity while caring for patients and dealing with their families.
And then there was being a parent.
One of my favorite reminders that life doesn’t always follow the script came when my son decided to test the laws of gravity while hanging in the playground parallel bars. The result was a broken arm and a trip to the emergency room.
There is something strangely surreal about walking through a hospital as both a nurse and a worried parent. Suddenly, all the clinical knowledge in the world doesn’t stop you from being a dad who is worried about his child.
Those experiences — both big and small — shaped me in ways I didn’t fully appreciate at the time.
Now, after many years in nursing, I have finally hung up my stethoscope and packed away my uniform. Retirement has given me something I didn’t have much of during my working years: time to slow down and think.
And, perhaps more importantly, time to return to some of the things I had put aside.
Writing. Photography. Art. Travel. Storytelling.
The creative side of me that was there when I was a young boy in the Philippines never really disappeared. It was simply buried beneath the responsibilities of work, family, and everyday life.
Now I’m ready to dig it back up.
I want to write about the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the experiences that changed me, and the memories that have stayed with me all these years. Some stories will come from my childhood in the Philippines. Others will come from my years as a nurse, a husband, and a father.
I sometimes find myself thinking about the reasons I left the Philippines in the first place. As a young man, I wanted to escape the political chaos1, the greed, the graft and corruption of the trapos2 that seemed to limit the possibilities for ordinary people. I came to America believing I was leaving those problems behind and entering a society built on greater opportunity, fairness, and the rule of law. Yet, decades later, I sometimes look around and wonder how far we have really come. The political and social climate in America today can feel increasingly divided and unsettled, with money and influence concentrated in the hands of a very small segment of society. In some ways, the problems I thought I was leaving behind have taken on a different form here. That realization has made me reflect more deeply on my journey, not with regret, but with a greater appreciation for the complicated realities of both the country I left and the country I chose to call home.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I simply want to observe, remember, question, and share what I have learned along the way.
In many ways, this feels like coming full circle.
I started life surrounded by rice fields. I spent much of my adult life walking hospital corridors. Now, in retirement, I’m finding my way back to the creative dreams I had as a young man.
Maybe that’s what growing older really means — not leaving your past behind, but finally having the time to understand it.
So this is a new chapter for me.
I’ll be sharing memories from the Philippines, stories from my nursing years, moments from family life, and whatever else catches my attention along the way. Some stories may make you laugh. Others may make you think. A few might even bring back memories of your own.
After all, life rarely turns out exactly the way we imagine it.
Mine certainly didn’t. And I’m grateful for that, and there are still stories to tell.
PS: Full disclosure: I needed AI to help me jump start this rusty writer’s mind. In my younger years it would have been an easy job spin a yarn and craft narratives, but like an athlete needing to up his game, I enlisted ChatGPT and Grammarly to coach me and refine this piece. I am sorry, I promise I will be back and it is going to be me, not some electricity-hungry and water-hogging voracious robot housed in a sprawling complex somewhere in rural America.
- Marcos’ martial law: Golden age for corruption, abuses | Inquirer News ↩︎
- Trapo (noun) is Filipino word for old useless clothes that has been repurposed as wash rags or as a mop to clean floors. Used as a slang for traditional politicians, it denotes that they are the lowest form of life in a society. ↩︎