Motherhood for Dollars

“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.