CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – I told my daughter Maria Regina who now lives in Newport, Birmingham, England to seek out Filipinos in her area so she can maintain her mother tongue and build new friendships.

I gave that advice to her last year when she was still unpacking her bags and boxes and settling into her new home.

Every time we chat at Skype, Facetime or at Facebook I would ask how many Pinoys she made friends with and she would tell me none so far.

Yet she saw or noticed some Pinoys or what she thought were Filipinos in the mall, parks or even in the church.

I was worried because I remembered six years ago when I was new here in North Carolina and I sought out Filipinos or Pinoys who live within my neighborhood. I felt isolated then, but not lonely of course because my husband Ronnie and his family provided me company.

But being Filipino born, you long to seek out fellow Filipinos and I finally found them at St. Mark Catholic Church and the rest is history. It was only a few months later that I found out there are many Filipinos in the Charlotte area.

I don’t want my youngest daughter feeling that isolation. I know Simon and his family provide GG the best company to alleviate whatever pangs of loneliness she must have felt.

There is just something in meeting these Pinoys and when you do find them that feeling of familiarity sets in and you sense a kinship that was missing when you first set off in a foreign country.

GG told me she was okay and it doesn't matter if she still hasn't found some Filipinos then. By the way, she is strong and can stand up for herself but she was on a mission that I sent her out to do and that is to find a Filipino community in her area.

She kept looking and one day she sent me a message asking if I knew of the Cabunoc family in Tagoloan town, Misamis Oriental. Having grown in Tagoloan, I replied yes.

Then she messaged me again, telling me that she met Maita Cabunoc

Mann. She said she met Maita at the supermarket while she was with her husband Simon Boddison, who pointed out a Filipino looking woman to her.

GG then smiled at Maita and she smiled back, then they greeted each other and pretty soon, they engaged in casual conversation. When Maita mentioned that she was from Tagoloan, GG was pleasantly surprised and they shook hands, starting a friendship right there and then.

I talked to Maita on Facebook and I learned that she is the granddaughter of Nang Kiki Emata Cabunoc. Maita grew up and lived in Butuan City, Caraga Region but her maternal grandparents are from my hometown of Tagoloan and I knew them all.

In fact, I think they are distant relatives on my father's side, the Ematas, with her grandmother “Nang Kiki” and my mother side being the Cabunocs.

I could not trace my mother's roots anymore she being in heaven, God bless her soul. But I knew Maita's grandparents and her mother Aida Cabunoc who is two years older than me.

I was first year at St. Mary’s High School and I knew Aida was in third year. Aida Cabunoc was a classmate of Cherie Pacheco Nairn who is now based in the US.

Don Sergio Yap, the father of Atty. Yoyoc Yap who's running for mayor of Tagoloan town, lawyer Oscar Musni who is running for a city council seat in Cagayan de Oro City, Lourdes Ramayan-Casiño, Boy Casiño, Yolando “Bobot” Casiño, Aaron Neri, the barangay chairman of Macasandig, Cagayan de Oro City and many others I can mention.

Maita’s mother Aida sported shoulder length hair and is a morena or brown-skinned. Her school uniform was wrinkle-free, like the uniforms worn by soldiers.

Yes, I remember those days at Tagoloan Elementary School and St. Mary's High so clearly as if they only happened yesterday. I remember Aida's siblings and it was indeed a rare feat for GG to find a town mate from Tagoloan in England.

I remember Nang Kiki, Maita's grandmother who is famous for her rice cake or “puto” that she peddles in school. The “puto” she sold was so white and fragrant, covered in fresh banana leaves.

I can picture Nang Kiki with her little basket filled with puto covered with fresh banana leaves to protect them from the dust. The banana leaves made the puto so fragrant. Our snacks or merienda in those days consisted of puto, maruya (fried banana fritters), banana cue (sweet fried banana) and siakoy (donut fritter). Maita also told me that she and her family visited Tagoloan during fiesta time and All Souls Day on November 2.

Maita is a nurse by profession and was working in Saudi Arabia. “I love cooking, love roaming around Telford with my bike, see the beauty of nature here which some people don’t notice,” Maita said. She loves listening to the songs of Adele.

She traveled a lot in Saudi Arabia and noticed that Filipinos there are very friendly. While she talked and as I wrote this piece, I was reminded about this ancient Chinese belief that every person is connected to everyone they will ever meet and to anyone that will ever be important to them, by invisible threads.

This belief states that the threads may stretch or tangle, but they will never break. I was instantly captivated, not only by the paradox but the sheer truth of that Chinese saying. It could be true.

I do believe that every person we meet in our life and the people whose lives bump into ours, get entangled with the threads of our lives and somehow become part of our own existence.

As we age, with each passing year, the threads grow tighter, bringing us closer to the people whose lives are destined to intertwine with ours in some way.

Now I am contented that GG has a friend there in Telford who came from a place where our grandmothers and grandfathers are related and are friends to a new generation.

The third generation met in a far place away from Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental, away from the Philippines. Strange yet wonderful indeed how the people we met early in our life could somehow find a way to connect to us again.

*****

Susan Palmes-Dennis is a veteran journalist from Cagayan de Oro City,

Misamis Oriental, Northern Mindanao in the Philippines who worked as a nanny and is now employed as teacher assistant in one of the school systems in the Carolinas