150. Notes on a Trip to Taal: #1. Homecoming

I am Marvin, son of Edmund, son of Mariano, son of Isabel, daughter of Basilio, brother of Guillermo and Santiago Orosa. I should memorize that to introduce myself to the Orosa ancestral house and its occupants in Taal, Batangas.  The first and last time I set foot there was in the seventies, a year before I even started going to school.  It was a grand reunion of the clan, a day of song and dances, food, laughs, games, and a dip in the lake in the cauldron of the volcano. I remember a big house that resembled the one in Pola, Oriental Mindoro, which my great grandparents, Pablo and Isabel built a hundred years ago -- big staircases, high ceilings, capiz windows,  majestic with the whiff of history in the air. I came to Taal then with my parents; today,  forty years hence, I'm going back to Taal with my wife and kids,  a repetition of an event, a return from a descendant of Isabel,  the one who eloped with Pablo to Pola.  But maybe, Isabel never left Taal or she probably took Taal with her, for here I am, a great grandson  and a century away, on the road, with  bare memories of a happy event, anticipating that it would be just like coming home.