Family of Foreigners

“You speak Tagalog?” She asked me. I replied I did, in Filipino. “Bisaya,” she muttered under her breath, making fun of my American accent. She stared at me, her almond-shaped eyes dark. She was dressed in jean shorts and a tank top, exactly what I was wearing, but her clothes looked small and weathered on her. This was my cousin, Jeng-Jeng. She was named after my mother, whom she seemed to idolize.

I was fifteen and with my mother in Nueva Vizcaya, a province in the Philippines where my grandfather was born and raised. It was exactly how he had described it to me as a child: muddy, rice fields for miles surrounded by dense, green forests. The pineapples that lined the fields, growing out of the ground, were the biggest I had ever seen in my entire life. The air was heavy and humid, but it was also sweet and new. It was an air I had never experienced in Michigan. I felt I could keep inhaling and still be unable to fill my lungs with enough of this fragrant air. Nueva Vizcaya was a farming community, but it was an entirely different species of farm. Everything about this place breathed "exotic."

Jeng-Jeng bombarded me with questions about America. She wanted to know anything and everything. I answered as best as I could as she leaned in close to me, touching my hair, my skin, my clothes. I felt like a foreign import, something to be observed and discussed. She revealed that she wanted to be like my mother. She wanted to make a life for herself in the United States. She held my hand, asking me to promise that I would visit her in her new life.

Feeling her rough hands in mine reminded me of holding my mother’s hands. Her skin was tanned, leathery, and innately strong. Jeng-Jeng and I shared the same blood, yet we were entirely different people, solely through circumstance. I felt humbled. I realized how lucky I was to be a child of two worlds. I was not just on vacation: I was home. I felt a newfound appreciation for my uncommon life and my family of foreigners.