Personal Narrative-My Family

Back in the days, the women of the Philippines were courted by a man who brought her down the biggest coconut from the coconut tree. The men were to climb the tree with no assistance or gadgets, just their bare hands and feet. This was how my grandparents met. At the time they were only teenagers and would not be married for another few years, but their marriage lasted for over fifty years before my grandpa became a widow. For the first few years of my early childhood I lived with them while my parents worked to establish a foundation for me, my brother, and sister. They were traditional Filipinos, not much Americanized, and lived according to their specified roles. Inside the house my grandma took care of mostly everything, the cooking, …show more content…
There were no gender roles, contributions were expected from everybody no matter the type of housework. Both my parents cooked, my mom brought home the bigger amount of money, and my dad cleaned like a maid. They never said this out loud but they made it a point to know how to wear many hats, my dad especially. My parents knew how to maintain a home - they knew what things needed to be done to sustain our way of living - but they struggled to show us how to live. Their relationship carried much tension from my mom’s affairs and I never really understood the root of their issues until I was much older but I could feel the anger and pain festering in our home. As I child I noticed sometimes they would get along and then all of a sudden my mom’s phone goes off and the next thing I know we have to stop whatever it was we were doing so they could go home to finish arguing. Following this, their differences would be pacified and make up sex made everything better. Afterward their love for each other rekindled for some time before arguing again and it was like this never ending cycle that went on from the end of my early childhood into my teenage years until my mom got the courage to move out. In the midst of all this, I was a young child still trying to have a loving relationship with my parents. I would ask them simple questions out of curiosity and, in return, got this insensitively blunt answer …show more content…
Verbal and physical affection was rare with my mom and maybe it was because she was still trying to figure herself out, but I know I will not raise my daughter in the same way. With me working and going to school and her starting grade school life gets pretty rough but I always make sure that no matter what happens she knows that I love her, I value her feelings, and that there is beauty in the struggle. I want to give her as much verbal, physical, and emotional love so she will never have to search like I did. I also want to provide her the environment to comfortably discuss anything with me. My mom was very insensitive and secretive in her conversations with me. They would be short because the answer to what I wanted to know was “not for kids to know”. But now I see that this is not true- the answers to a child’s curious questions can be simplified and explained in their words. This class has provide us many opportunities to talk about our bodies and I will continue to do so in order to prepare her for puberty and her teenage