Child of an Immigrant

It was a hot summer night, and we could hear and smell the rain hit our gravel road as the three of us sat on the front steps of our house. My mom, brother and I were up talking while eating halo-halo (a philippine dessert). Every summer night, the three of us would stay up until 12 a.m. just talking and laughing together. The simplicity of the trees hovering over us and the fact that there wasn’t another house for miles away was something that the three of us used as a way to bond closer together, since we were all each other had. It was always just us three ever since I could remember, since my dad wasn’t really around much back then. Although many of our summer nights were the same, I remember this day very clearly and ever since then, my life has changed for the better.

As we ate our ice cream, my mom told my brother and I about her life before she had us. As a child of an immigrant, I have had a hard time connecting to my filipino roots since we don’t have any filipino family living here. As well as only knowing my white side of the family, I never knew what it meant to be filipino. My mom grew up in Luzón, Philippines on a small farm, ten miles away from any other people. She explained how despite living far from other kids, she never felt alone because she had her mom and her siblings to do something with. She would play in her family’s rice fields or help her mother with dinner. Which was similar to my life when we moved to Oregon, I was not used to living so far away from other people but I always had something to do because I had my brother to play with or my mom to spend time with.

I wondered why she didn’t talk about her dad nearly as much as she talked about her mom so I asked her about it. “What was your dad like?” I said. She told us that her dad wasn’t around much either, he was always off in the city, making money and going to parties, while her mother was left at home to take care of her kids and the house. My dad and grandfather both asserted themselves as the “money providers” and left my mom and my grandma to take care of us and the house all alone. I remember hugging my mom and wanting to take away the pain in her voice as she told us about her dad.

Although reminiscing on the pain her father caused her was hard, my mom continued telling us about her life. She told us that her family was and still is very poor, they barely have enough money to survive and rely on their farm for their source of income. Their house was nothing like the one we have here in the United States. Her house back in the Philippines was made out of bamboo and various metal/wood scraps they could find. She told us about the rain storms that would happen and since her house was made out of bamboo, it would be scary because of the lightning. She said you could practically smell the burnt bamboo whenever lightning hit their farm. Growing up, I was always very scared of rain storms as well as thunder and lightning, so I could only imagine how scared my mom must’ve felt every time they had a storm. It made me feel grateful that my brother and I were able to grow up in a nice house and a steady food supply, which is what my mom didn’t get to have.

However, despite their family’s circumstances, my mom said she wouldn’t change her childhood for anything else. She loved growing up in the Philippines, playing with her siblings and being able to go out and swim in the rivers behind their house. She also had a very close bond with her mother, as I have with her, and she said back then, if she could, she would’ve stayed in the Philippines with her mother. The two of them would do many things together, since my mom was the youngest, she would tag along with her everywhere she went. Which is something that I also did a lot growing up, because I never wanted to leave my mom’s side. She told us stories of how her mother would take my mom shopping in the city and she would always get her halo-halo as a treat, which she has given to my brother and I growing up. In that moment, I realized I had more in common with my mom than I thought.

As the rain started to slow down and the hours in the night passed by, my mother continued to tell us all these stories of her growing up in the Philippines and how different it is, and how much she misses her family there. I started to have a better understanding of my filipino heritage and what life would’ve been like if she never left. I was grateful that my mom could tell us these stories of what her life was like because it makes me feel even closer and more connected to her. Furthermore, even if she does miss her family and home there in the Philippines, she says ultimately that she doesn’t regret leaving, because if she didn’t then she wouldn’t have my brother and I.

We finished the night off by saying I love you to each other as we hugged and finally went inside to go to sleep.