Reflections of an Immigrant

It was quiet when I woke up.  It was quiet while I was eating my breakfast.  I waited for Laudi, Daddy’s caregiver, to arrive.  It was so quiet that I thought maybe Daddy passed away in his sleep.  Laudi usually takes the bus, but today, she arrived via Uber.  She’s doing extra shifts this weekend because our weekend caregiver isn’t available.  She offered to help because we didn’t have anyone else, and she didn’t want Daddy to be without assistance. As she started her shift, I gave Laudi a brief update of what happened yesterday after she left.  Then, she peeked in Daddy’s room.  He was still asleep.  Moments later, I heard them talking.  Okay, I thought, he did not pass away yet.  I went to his room to ask what he wanted breakfast.  When I walked in, he was talking to Laudi, smiling.  This is not a common occurrence.  He is a grumpy 89 year old man.  Some days, he is downright mean.  It’s his pain, dementi...

After the company that my father worked for in Tokyo went bankrupt, we moved back home to Manila. My parents had to start over. Because it was hard to find jobs, they decided to start a small business. My mother is a good cook, so they opened a restaurant. My mother was in charge of cooking. My father was in charge of operations. They woke up at dawn every day. Because they didn't have a freezer to store large quantities of food, they went to the market every day to buy what they were going to serve that day. By the time they got home, it dinnertime. The next day, they did it all over again. Amidst of the chaos of running a restaurant, they still found a way to get to know their loyal customers, who affectionately called them "Mommy" and "Daddy". When they had to shut down the restaurant due to financial reasons, my mother once again used her skills to earn some money. She baked cookies and made quilted bags and pencil cases that were sold for a small profit. Th...

On Saturday mornings, my mom likes to do gardening. She’s been taking care of our garden ever since we moved into our home. Mom has a variety of plants and flowers, some of which have been around for a long time. Others are new, replacing ones that didn’t blossom and had to be thrown away. When an occasional storm passes, the rain and wind destroy some of the plants.  When the weather clears, she trims the wilted flowers and leaves. If needed, she prunes back the branches. In our backyard, along the side of our house, is a flower bed filled with roses. During our kitchen remodel a few years ago, our contractor had to remove the roses to repair rotted wood flooring on the exterior of the house. She was disappointed. After the remodel was completed, she planted new roses. Within a few months, they were in full bloom, flourishing even more beautifully than before. Mom’s garden continues to evolve. There’s always something to do. She’s either trimming leaves, fertilizing, or planting s...

I grew up in the Philippines. Back then, on the first day of school, students crowded around blackboards in the front of the school, and each student searched for her name to find out her assigned classroom. Every year, I searched for my name, but year after year, my name would not be listed. Then, I went to the principal’s office to find out why. It was always the same reason – we didn’t pay the tuition. Instead, my parents gave the school a “promissory note”, a promise to pay, at a later date, when we had the money.   The principal reluctantly assigned me to a classroom.  Then, I awkwardly walked in the classroom late, ashamed and sad. I hated school. I never studied. My grades were barely passing.  When I was 12, my family and I left Manila to come to the US. We came to America to work. My brother, who had to stay behind because he was over the 21-year-old age limit, told me that I would have lots of opportunities if I studied hard and got good grades. I didn’t want to...

It was 1990... I walked off the plane and stepped into a world I never imagined. America. My aunt and uncle, who I never met, greeted my parents, and we loaded up their gray Dodge Caravan with all our luggage. Exhausted from the 14 hour plane ride, and with residual nausea from the turbulence on the flight, I decided to close my eyes for a few minutes. Next thing I knew my aunt and uncle were laughing at me because why on earth would a kid sleep on her first day in a beautiful country? I teared up, but didn't want to show it. I didn't really want to to come here. I wanted to stay home in Manila with my older brother and sister who were over the age of 21, and were not able to come with us because of the age restriction on US petitions. For my parents, this was the only choice. Looking back now, thirty years later, I realize they made the biggest sacrifice of all. They were in their fifties, and decided to pack up and move to California, in the hopes that we would have a better ...

In the fall of 1991, I started school in the US. I was seventh grade at the time and my mom enrolled me in the French school near our studio apartment in the Nob Hill area of San Francisco. I was a fan of the television show Beverly Hills 90210, and that was the image I had of school in the US.   In the first few weeks of school, I quickly learned the basics, like the Pledge of Allegiance and the words to America the Beautiful. I learned that when the teacher takes attendance, the response when your name is called is “here!” and not “present!” like we do in the Philippines. There’s a girl in my class named Marianne, and I learned that her name is pronounced like the name Mary Anne, not MAH-ree-ahn, like we do in the Philippines. My aunt gave me a pair of white K-Swiss, which I wore to school one day. I learned that these are called “tennis shoes” not “rubber shoes” like we call them in the Philippines. Marianne noticed them and said, “Those are awesome shoes!”  There were a fe...