I Am Such a Cheat

I am republishing a post I wrote last year on a different blog. I know, I know, it's cheating, but here it is anyway.

My husband, who is Irish-German Lutheran, is taga-Davao. He is white outside but brown on the inside - like an inside-out coconut. That's why in his blog, http://www.samokdaddy.blogspot.com/, he is concerned about the seeming un-Filipino-ness of his - our - kids. I am not. And I am the Asian-Pacific Islander sociologist who vowed many years ago that my kids will speak Bisaya in America. Hah! The only consistent word that my 4 year old uses is tsinelas. He puts on one tsinela, then the other tsinela (try arguing with a 4 year old that you call those things tsinelas with an s, whether you have only one or both).


We don't eat a lot of Filipino food. I have a rice cooker, and about two pounds of rice in the pantry for when I'm really homesick.


We don't have a Filipino cable channel. I do read about what's going on back home. Inquirer.net and sunstar.com.ph are my windows to home.


We don't sing Filipino songs - heck, I don't know any Filipino kid songs. I sang Lupang Hinirang to Lkmbini on board Northwest when I got tired of singing Elmo's world and other kid songs. She loved it.


No Filipino games. I mean, sungka, anyone? I don't even know how to play. I have a sungka thing in the house, currently on display. It was given by my mother-in-law to me. She got it from an American missionary who served in Baguio years ago. Patintero? Maybe when they are older.


No Filipino friends around here. The Filipino community here is, like MLH (my loving husband) said, a little farther than I would like. I have not felt the need to connect with people of my ilk just yet so I don't pack up the brood to go to events. They do a lot of good things there but I don't really think teaching my kids the tinikling would make them more Filipino anyway.


I am not worried they'd lose their Filipino side. It's not a use-it-or-lose-it thing. I know that Lakandula and Lakambini are going to be culturally more white than Filipino, more German Lutheran than Filipino Fundamentalist Protestant. They will like applesauce better than suman. But right now, honey, it's not a big deal. So don't worry about it. Remember what we talked about before? The kids will go home to Davao every two years or so and there they can share with their relatives what it's really about. They can go on an 'exposure/immersion' in some urban poor group, go to the mountains to eat with the natives and the rural poor where they will eat with their hands; they will learn about Filipino driving practices, the bathrooms without hot water, lola's chicken in the backyard. They will do all those things and they will be all right because they are resilient. THAT is being Filipino. And that's what we are teaching them. Remember how they warmed up to lola right away? Remember how they loved the coconut trees, and the dogs, and the neighbor's chicken and cats? The taxis? They learned to adapt to a strange land quite quickly. That's the Filipino in them. And I'm proud.


Right now, let's have them enjoy a trip up north where they can run with their cousins, catch-and-release fish, stay in a northwoods cabin. Let them be Minnesotans.


And I can teach them more Bisaya words at least.