The Terminal 3 Farewell
Every overseas Filipino worker (OFW) knows the specific agony of Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3. It is the departure gate of broken hearts. In August 2014, my son Joshua was eleven months old—just learning how to pull himself up on the living room sofa.
I had thirty thousand pesos of hospital debt from his cesarean birth and zero job prospects in Manila. When a recruitment agency offered me a nursing contract in Dubai, I took it. Leaving him in the arms of my mother at the security gate felt like tearing my own internal organs out with bare hands.
I cried all the way across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. My breast milk was leaking through my uniform while the flight attendants passed out peanuts.
The 8:00 PM Video Call
For nine years, my motherhood existed inside a four-inch glass screen. Every evening after my twelve-hour shift in the cardiac ward, I sat on my bunk bed in a shared apartment in Deira, Dubai.
I would open Skype or WhatsApp. Because the internet connection in Quezon City was erratic, his face was often reduced to blurry green pixels, and my voice arrived with a two-second delay. Yet every single night, I sang him the Tagalog lullaby *'Sa Ugoy ng Duyan'* (The Sway of the Hammock).
I watched him take his first steps on a paused screen. I helped him with mathematics homework via camera. When he scraped his knee in school, I had to comfort him through a speaker while my hands shook because I couldn't reach through the glass to wipe his tears.
The Balikbayan Box and Reunion
Every six months, I filled a cardboard *balikbayan* box: canned spam, Swiss hazelnut chocolates, branded sneakers two sizes too big so he would grow into them, and shampoo. We OFW mothers try to pack all our missing physical love into corrugated cardboard.
Last year, I finally saved enough to return home permanently and open a small clinic in Quezon City. When I walked through the arrival doors, Joshua—now ten years old—ran toward me. When his warm arms wrapped around my waist, nine years of digital screens dissolved in an instant.
To all the migrant mothers cleaning hotel rooms, caring for elderly strangers, and wiping hospital floors across the world tonight while their own children sleep ten thousand miles away: you are heroes. Solas Haven holds your maternal star.
Related Memoirs & Chronicles
Is there a letter lingering in your silence?
Do not let your unsaid words weigh down your heart. Release them to the eternal living constellation of Solas Haven.
Enter the Sanctuary & Release a Star