Growing up, I found myself in a perpetual state of conflict over who I am. I am Chinese, and Filipino. Living in this city does embrace my mixed identity, but slight cultural ethnocentrism pushed me to align myself as more of a Filipino. However, this pride also runs from my admiration with my mother’s family.
My nanay, my mom’s business-oriented mother and my grandmother, gave my mom this necklace back in Maramag, Philippines. Within whirling dust, open skies and green fields, and the sun’s rays drizzling down from the canopy are prominent images of the landscape in there, my nanay’s restaurant business flourished.
Nanay loved to spoil my mom with bags and jewelry, establishing my mom’s presence and the jealousy of several other peers and teachers. These toxic feelings led one teacher to send my mom and the boy who teased her to the principal’s office one time. When Nanay caught whiff of the news and she and the boy’s mother both came in, she jumped in to harshly castigate the boy and his mother. Her outrage shook the office and the boy’s mother. After that, the boy never dared my mother again.
Even though nanay was extremely passionate, I remember her tenderness towards me when my family and I visited Maramag one time. I think about how she ran her life and my mom’s life, and how even when her only moors were her house and her restaurant, she still kept galloping forward just like that golden horse.
– Anna T.
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