X is for Xylem

 
Xylem: ushering the flow between roots and shoots

Two hundred and one, two hundred and two...we stood at the tail end of a line of balikbayans and red-lettered cardboard boxes jammed with gifts at the San Francisco Philippine Airlines kiosk. Even on a weekday night, this line to Manila was the most bustling of them all. As I etched my parent's Philippine address onto luggage tags, I reflected on how their return to the homeland has deeply changed our family story. This airport, this passage between here and there, embodies our family's story of two worlds. Somehow, in the movement of bodies, passports, pasalubong (gifts), embraces, through currency and translation, we had learned to build, mend and stretch a family line across the Pacific Ocean.

When I hear about Pin@ys like me in the States learning to connect to tradition, I usually hear this is about searching for roots. "Know your roots." "Be proud of your roots.""Don't be ashamed of your roots," they say. But proudly acknowledging roots is one move; embodying them, carrying them, and keeping them alive is yet another.

In the plant world, I've seen how something will survive only if the whole is nourished. Roots, stem, leaves, flower, bud - life is resilient but they all depend on the soil, sun and air that surround them. I ask what lessons plants could have for a human family, for a culture and tradition like ours living in diaspora.

To stay alive, to deepen our groundedness into the 21st century, we must go beyond the surface, go even beyond digging those proverbial roots. There must be a channel through which that sap, that nourishment can continue to flow. In Western biology, this channel is called xylem - the planet's literal veins that carries water and sap to leaf, bud and new growth. In the world I live in, this channel is called ancestor, teacher, recipe, song, and story.

The time to part finally came. All around us a hundred movies and a hundred stories unfolded. Couples embraced their goodbyes, while solo flyers put on a fixed expression, readying themselves for the next thousand miles. We, too, were our own little movie, and waved hands at each other through the glass security windows until we couldn't see each other any longer.