“They come from alien cultures to fill
our culture’s most important job, raising our kids. We’ve decided to let other
women take care of our children so that we can give them a better life. It’s an
excruciating decision, as the nannies know better than anyone…” Susan Cheever, Global Woman
It’s beginning of September at Vancouver’s
Jericho Park. Today, as I sit alone on a knoll absorbing the sunshine, the oaks
and the maple trees around me are gently shedding their leaves. To my right
lies the duck pond surrounded by weeping willows. To the east, tall evergreens
conceal the apartment buildings that line Fourth Avenue. To the north, the
undulating peaks of Cypress Mountain guard the beaches of English Bay. Yet I
didn’t see the magic nor feel the peace these surroundings offer. Instead I
peer beyond the bay towards the Pacific Ocean. As if I could discern across
this ocean the two adjacent houses in Antipolo, a town in central Philippines
--- where two of my daughters live with their families. This evening, I watch
the bay and I think about them. It’s early morning back there. They should be
waking up soon.
Jericho Park represents the North American
edge of my fractured life, the cliff upon where I could look down at the deep,
invisible divide that keeps my dreams forever incomplete. Season after season,
this park never fails to remind me where my brain says I should be as opposed
to where my heart wants to be, and that getting them in the same place remains
to be done.
But I’ll see my girls tonight when I get
home. We’ll exchange news, trade stories, laugh together and have a good look
at each other, then blow kisses and say, “Bye-bye. Lub you. Mwah-mwah!” Afterwards I’ll go to bed happy, back to my
own life. And they back to theirs. We do this regularly through our web cams.
I’ll have to wait for a few more months though, before I can really kiss them
and hold them in my arms, and distribute the presents I’ve been hoarding in my Balikbayan
Box. My life revolves around these
homecomings.
I’m here and they’re over there because
years ago I made a tough choice. A
single parent at the age of 26, I left my three daughters in my mother’s care
to look after other women’s children in Singapore, then four years later, in
Vancouver, Canada. In return, my
children went to a good school, they had generous allowances, mobile phones,
and all the brand-name denim jeans my money could buy. They had everything,
except my presence.
I remember the first time I left for
Vancouver. My whole family went to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to
see me off. We walked together to the departure gates, as far as the security
personnel would let us. When it was time to go, I kissed each of my three
daughters goodbye, then walked towards the doors. I heard Maricel start to cry.
Maricar and Catherine joined in. My heart was pounding. I walked away, faster
and faster, without once looking back. Because I knew that if I stopped, if I
looked back --- like Orpheus at the gates of Hell --- my dreams would
disappear. But I had to leave. My plans for them were only half-achieved.
While working in another country, I think
about them every day. I silently tallied in my calendar all the birthdays and
hugs and kissies that I missed. I made sure that I talk to my daughters by
phone at least once a week, to send their allowances twice a month, and go home
to them every year. I reminded them every chance I got that I was here and they
were there because I wanted them to have the things I never had as a child. I
told them that going away was very hard for me, but sacrifice was required of
us to break away from poverty and lack of education, circumstances that most of
the people from my farming village in the Philippines will spend the rest of
their lives in.
Until today, I never realized I’ve been
living my life in smug delusion. Although I had been physically absent from my
kids’ daily lives, I’d believed I’ve raised them right, and expressed my
motherly love in a variety of personal and material ways. I thought I’ve
learned from, and done better than other mothers like myself.
“Not so,” writes Catherine, my youngest,
about the past: “When I was a kid, I’d wanted to tell
you, ‘I don’t care about the allowances and the toys. I want you to stay home
with me and my sisters. You’ve always said you loved us. Do you think I believe
you?’ But I never expressed these things because I was afraid that if I did,
you would never come back.”
“Not so,” says Maricar,
my middle child, of the present: “Me, I would never
leave my kids to work in a foreign country. I can’t imagine my child crying
alone in the middle of the night because I’m not there. I know what it feels
like.”
Because I waited too long, I failed to
bring my daughters to Vancouver. Maricar and Catherine both dropped out of
college and got married in their teenage years. Only Maricel, my first-born,
has a university degree. All three of them have their own families now and are
living away from me. Catherine lives in Washington, USA, with her American
husband. Yet, despite these kids having grown up and chosen their own paths,
they remain little children in my mind. I stay trapped in a time warp, doomed
to be fighting my guilt and trying to make up for the years I’ve lost: visiting
yearly, bringing them chocolates, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and umbrellas;
treating them to mall shopping trips… cooking with them, snuggling with them
and telling them stories; treating them like little kids. And whenever I leave
to pursue my own life once again, we’re back to replaying the same old good-bye
drama at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, only this time my daughters
are accompanied by their own children and husbands.
Until perhaps, I promised myself, I’ve
managed to bring all of them to Vancouver. Next time I leave them at the
airport gates, I will look back and wave, because my dream has changed.
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