I was digging around my old email and came across this, I can’t believe I actually wrote this!

I grew up in social Petri dish. Two cultures fused together within the
confines of a home. Most of the time, the line that separated these
culture was invisible and immersed seamlessly into each other. Still
there were times when the two cultures are directly opposing.

I was two years old when my mother along with my aunt moved to the
United States from the Philippines to join my grandparents. We rented
the basement of a large boarding house owned by another Filipinos. The
basement was small for five people. We had one bedroom, a
living/dining area, and a kitchen. We shared one small bathroom which
was the size of the lavatory found in airplanes.  Our living area was
divided to make room for another bedroom for my mother, aunt, and me.

Elderly Filipinos lived in the rest of the house.  There was the old
grandmother who played solitaire all day long; a retired couple, who
spent a lot of time in the garden and the kitchen; and other faces
that appear and disappear depending on the time of the day.
It was a dull and quite place during the week. But every weekend, the
house is transformed to a lively party filled with karaoke, food, and
mahjong (a Chinese game). Being the only child in the whole household,
I had my fair share of “mano po” (touching the top hand of a person to
your forehead to signify blessing and respect).  Occasionally younger
kids would come in the weekends but they were either younger or older
than me.  I always seemed to play the part of the older sister or the
younger annoying child. Everyone was an auntie or an uncle, a
grandparent, and a cousin, even if they had no blood relation to us.

The difference in this culture became only apparent to me when I
started school and especially as I got older.  I was not allowed to go
to sleepovers and everywhere I went I had a chaperone.  My
grandparents were especially strict.  At that time, I resented how
they seem to control my life. Often they insisted I stay home, learn
to cook, to clean, to wash and iron my clothes.  When I confided in my
friends, I discovered that they did not do anything like that. Their
chores usually entailed taking out the garbage, preparing the dinner
table, and nothing much really. Even when I went over to my friends
for lunch their dishes were not at all exotic and looked like the food
you would see on TV. For them they were allowed to have boyfriends but
for me dating was out of the question. Due to the strict rule of
grandparents this hindered me from “living a teenager” life. This made
me feel like an outsider especially when I was hanging with my
Caucasian friends in Annapolis who were preppy, pretty, large eyes,
and blonde, and I tan, awkward, small eyes and with jet black hair, I
usually would find myself trying to fit in by doing things and liking
things similar to their taste even though I didn’t really like it. At
the time I thought that was how I was supposed to act since I wanted
to get away from the archaic Filipino traditions and become more
“Americanized”. I would even hear my grandparents call me “Americano”
whenever I tried talk like my friends and talk back. But even though
that was my aim to become more American, I always took that comment as
a sting that lingered.




That episode of my life didn’t last forever, we moved away from
Annapolis and my grandparents. Even though it may have seemed that I
would have jumped for joy when I moved away from the two people I
associated the old country to, I found myself missing them and felt a
void in my life. In the new place we moved I found myself being able
to adjust better, not having the pressure of social status since most
of the people came from minority backgrounds. Even entering high
school I found other Filipinos who were also first generation
immigrants, this was comforting and made me be able to open up and get
more involved in various clubs even the Filipino Association in
school.
Though I found that I was able to find a place that I was at ease
with, I would still have times where I felt self-conscious about who I
am. My Filipinos friends would talk about the Philippines fondly and I
never understood that since most of childhood I tried to separate
myself from it.
But over the years since we moved away from grandparents they became
ill resulting of my grandfather dying of a heart attack and my
grandmother having terminal cancer. She finally succumbed to cancer
when were on our way home to the Philippines to spend her last days.
On the plane back to my homeland, the place that I left about 14 years
ago I thought it was a little ironic, I’m going back for the same
reason I left- for my grandparents. But instead of starting a new life
with my grandparents like I did when I first arrived in America, I’m
going back to the Philippines to celebrate the end of theirs. In the
end it was in their passing I see how my grandparents influenced the
person I have become. He had the strangest taste in food. My love for
Vienna sausage and coffee poured on rice and other daring food- was
the direct influence of my grandfather.
My grandmother spent most of her time doing things for the rest of the
family and her adopted children. She is most endeared by other younger
people because …. She never forgot to send cards for special
occasions. Often slipping cash in the card—even when my grandfather
stopped working because of a heart attack. She never forgot sending
things back home.  The big balikbayan boxes filed with canned goods,
ivory soaps, towels, etc.  Above anything, they taught me love for
family.  When my grandmother was in the hospital during the last days
of her battle with cancer, I stayed with her during the day. I later
learned that my grandmother told my mother that she really appreciated
that I was there. She told my mother, “Kahlil is not like other kids
who squirm at the sight of old people.”  Changing her bedpan and
sponging my grandmother were as natural to me as when she took care of
me when I was a child.
Realizing significance of them in my life, I felt the two polar
cultures the old traditional Filipino and the modern American be able
to live in harmony- with breaking down the wall I built between me and
my Filipino culture it led me to the acceptance of who I am.

Growing up in a multicultural home and balancing values and beliefs of
these cultures is really a discovery of one. Its what I find is
uniquely- me, that what I was running away from in my childhood
actually was the tool that I was able to use to acknowledge who I am
and where I come from.