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Decades ago a group of Fil­ipino Amer­i­can immi­grants came to the states by way of the US Navy and began refer­ring to their group of friends as the kabuti (mush­room in Taga­log) as more and more mem­bers of their fam­ily kept pop­ping up around them… like mush­rooms. They remained close over the years, and their chil­dren grew even closer. No fewer than four groups of sib­lings have grown up in this extended fam­ily closer than most blood rel­a­tives: The Kabuti Kids. Every­one is just about reach­ing the age where it is becom­ing harder and harder to spend time with each other and some of them felt like it was nec­es­sary to keep a per­ma­nent reminder of this very sig­nif­i­cant famil­ial connection.

Kim’s tat­too is writ­ten in an ancient script called Ali­bata (or bay­bayin) which is long dead in the Philip­pines. The tat­too lit­er­ally trans­lates to Ka Bo Te which is about as close as you can get to the way the mod­ern Taga­log word is actu­ally pro­nounced. Kim got the idea awhile back and a few of the kids seemed to be really into it. I think aware­ness of ali­bata amongst non-academics is fairly recent. Kim had to tell her dad about it after she showed him the tat­too. He’d never heard of it before. We have found a num­ber of ali­bata tat­toos on the web and I get the feel­ing that the embrac­ing of the script is a part of an effort being made by some Filipino-Americans to get in touch with their roots.

I have become so close to these kids in the last three years that I wanted to (and have been encour­aged to) get this tat­too myself. I decided to wait for two years when Kim’s younger cousin CJ will be old enough to get hers. I think she wants it more than any of them.

I wanted to get kabuti ampon (ampon means adopted) but the ali­bata trans­la­tion for ampon comes to be closer to apo which is the word for grand­child and makes no sense. Maybe I will just spell out ampon, in Eng­lish let­ters, beneath the script.

Inci­den­tally, this was my first time in a tat­too par­lor. We went to Fuzion Ink in Nor­folk, which has become a “best of the best” gallery for the tat­too artists in Hamp­ton Roads. The artists there seem to be top-notch from what I saw of their work, and every­one was super pro­fes­sional, warm, and invit­ing. I have always been inter­ested in tat­toos but I never had any idea what to get. Now, I think I want a tat­too more than ever.

In Kim’s own words:

I can hon­estly say that all my tat­toos have spe­cial mean­ing for me. How­ever, this is the most mean­ing­ful one by far. I can’t think of a bet­ter group of peo­ple to have shared the last 21 years of my life with or a bet­ter way to pay trib­ute to them. Now they will really be with me every­where I go.

I grew up with more love and sup­port than any­one could ever ask for. My extended fam­ily con­sists of 5 extra sets of par­ents and count­less broth­ers and sis­ters. My Uncle Meng dubbed the fam­ily the Kabute (Kabuti) because we seemed to be grow­ing expo­nen­tially with every pass­ing year. The name stuck and has become a part of our every day vocab­u­lary. On the week­ends it’s enough for Justin to ask “Hey, what’s the Kabute doing?”…I auto­mat­i­cally know who he’s ask­ing about. We have Kabute Kid’s Day when every­one who has a job calls off from work and can­cels all plans. That day is meant for hang­ing out with the fam­ily from Fil­ipino break­fast* until the inevitable poker game ends at about 3AM the next day.
As we get older we find it harder to see one another as much as we would like to. Jobs, school, and chil­dren just don’t allow us to do all the things we want to do some­times. When the idea of the Kabute tat­too pre­sented itself almost every­one responded pos­i­tively with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Now the baby who I used to babysit when he was 3 months old was going to go to a tat­too par­lor and get ink with me. It still amazes me when I look at the kids (now adults but they will always be the kids to me) and real­ize just how much we’ve shared together. They are the most amaz­ing group of peo­ple I’ve ever known. They’ve shaped me into who I am today…and I’m sure the impact of the Kabute is no less for their lives.

Ali­bata or Bay­bayin may not be the most beau­ti­ful script in the world, but it holds a spe­cial mean­ing to me and my Kab Kids. Some accounts say that the Spaniards tried to use Ali­bata to con­vert the Fil­ipinos to Catholi­cism by using it to trans­late Catholic doc­trine. Let’s be honest…when you force your gov­ern­ment, your reli­gion, your lan­guage, and even your names on a group of peo­ple you see as “God­less and bar­baric” you can’t expect them not to pick up your alpha­bet as well. Even­tu­ally, the Pinoys were con­verted; Span­ish was taught in schools and found a place in the Taga­log lan­guage; Bon­do­coy and Guan­lao became Sanchez and Villanueva…and the use of Ali­bata died. Ali­bata was an obvi­ous choice for this tat­too. It sig­ni­fies a return to my roots before all the cor­rup­tion set in. Before out­siders came in and forced their ways upon the Philip­pines. It sig­ni­fies my roots with the Kabute…the fam­ily that knew me before I grew up and the cor­rup­tion of the out­side world was set in me. It’s a reminder to never for­get where I came from and never for­get the peo­ple who love me most. A return to my roots and an unbreak­able con­nec­tion to my real family.

*_{Fil­ipino break­fast is the best break­fast ever…if you’re ready to con­sume your weight in meat. It con­sists of at least 4 kinds of cured and fried meats, fried fish, fried eggs…all sit­ting on a bed of freshly cooked with rice. The egg yolk can then be sopped up with a pan­desal (Fil­ipino rolls) and every­thing washed down with a cup of coffee.}