The emotional pull I was feeling turned physical. I was caught in the between, no man’s land. I was being tagged between two separate worlds, two completely un-identical cultures but I could only stay with one. Snow was trickling down. It huddled together on the tips of roofs, cars and light poles. It was soft and subtle but turned brutal in an instant. When hail started to rain down in fists, on January 1, that New Year’s Day my mother went into labor. A friend rushed her to the hospital, only going 5 mph over the speed limit, afraid of skidding across the icy road. She passed by the never ending landscape of trees, cornfields and the only donut shop in town. It took an hour to get to the nearest hospital. After all it was Indiana, the barren
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Lights? Check. Biscuits? Check. Games? Check. The smell of warm country cooking could not mask that farm smell sneaking in through the window for a taste of my Aunt G’s peanut butter fudge. It was cold and snowing. I had grown accustom to the winter in Maryland. It was a sea of white both outside and inside. My dad’s relatives sat around the couch watching NASCAR, smoking and laughing about an inside joke. Whenever I walked in holding my mother’s hand the atmosphere got tanner. They were always welcoming but no matter what there was always a reason for me to be excluded. I wasn’t there went they all went camping, fishing, out to dinner. I was the one with the Filipino mother, the outside child in my own family. Despite this, I was always proud to show who I was. I didn’t want to be like them although it could’ve meant acceptance. If I were like them my mother wouldn’t be who she is. If being accepted into my dad’s American family it meant getting a whiter mother, then I would want no part in …show more content…
We all gathered in front of the T.V, listening to the news. I looked at my mother and knew she was praying in her mind. I wanted to offer a prayer but I was scared. No one else went to church, no one else prayed but me and my mother. Later that day my dad recalled his childhood: seven siblings, born in Indiana, raised by one mother and numerous fathers, a broken childhood. In my head I compared this to my mother’s: middle-class turned poor, family oriented, immigrant. I wanted to feel sorry for him, for my own father but despite him not making anything in the land of what
I thought were endless opportunity my mother did. Despite being an immigrant she finished college, worked at a well-known accounting firm in the city and supported her
Lights? Check. Biscuits? Check. Games? Check. The smell of warm country cooking could not mask that farm smell sneaking in through the window for a taste of my Aunt G’s peanut butter fudge. It was cold and snowing. I had grown accustom to the winter in Maryland. It was a sea of white both outside and inside. My dad’s relatives sat around the couch watching NASCAR, smoking and laughing about an inside joke. Whenever I walked in holding my mother’s hand the atmosphere got tanner. They were always welcoming but no matter what there was always a reason for me to be excluded. I wasn’t there went they all went camping, fishing, out to dinner. I was the one with the Filipino mother, the outside child in my own family. Despite this, I was always proud to show who I was. I didn’t want to be like them although it could’ve meant acceptance. If I were like them my mother wouldn’t be who she is. If being accepted into my dad’s American family it meant getting a whiter mother, then I would want no part in …show more content…
We all gathered in front of the T.V, listening to the news. I looked at my mother and knew she was praying in her mind. I wanted to offer a prayer but I was scared. No one else went to church, no one else prayed but me and my mother. Later that day my dad recalled his childhood: seven siblings, born in Indiana, raised by one mother and numerous fathers, a broken childhood. In my head I compared this to my mother’s: middle-class turned poor, family oriented, immigrant. I wanted to feel sorry for him, for my own father but despite him not making anything in the land of what
I thought were endless opportunity my mother did. Despite being an immigrant she finished college, worked at a well-known accounting firm in the city and supported her