My parents often tell me, “Kristian, we don’t regret moving to America. Life is much better here than if we stayed in the Philippines.” As a middle-class first-generation American born and raised in the suburbs, I compared myself to others I knew from my own world. Thankfully my parents gave me accounts of their lives growing up in the Philippines, so that I might have more perspective on life. Their lives are easily divided into two halves: pre-immigration and post-immigration. Their transition to new life fuses their graduation from college, their marriage, their first child, and their move to the United States. From childhood in the Philippines, to a new life in another hemisphere, to acclimation as Americans, my parents have lived eventful lives and will continue to do so.
My father, Noel Mosquito, and mother, Lourdes Bautista, grew up in the Philippines in the late 1960s. In some respects my dad had a better life than my mom: he grew up the second of three children of an engineer and his wife. My dad would always tell me stories about his childhood, such as his experiences climbing trees, catching spiders for spider fights, or eating too much food cooked by his aunt. My mother, on the other hand, was the youngest of seven children, where her eldest sibling was already married. My mom had to do all sorts of chores to help out in the household with her aging parents.
In their adolescence, my parents led two completely different attitudes. My mother worked hard both at home and in school. Though hard work, she managed to graduate salutatorian of her high school and went to college for Chemical Engineering. In contrast, my father mostly slacked off in school, letting his mom do his homework and relying on his natural talent for math and standardized test taking to pull him through college. While my mom was an upstanding good student, my dad was known to smoke and hang out with a “bad” crew. They met at my mom’s 18th birthday party (her debut, the Philippine equivalent of a Sweet Sixteen or a quinceañera), started dating, and got engaged when he was 18 and she was 19. When they were 22 and 23, my mom became pregnant with my sister and a hastily arranged wedding was set for March 1990. In August of that year, my mom gave birth to my sister.
In preparation for the economic situation of the time, my dad had studied physical therapy to take advantage of the need for physical therapists in the United States. Thankfully, by the time my sister was born my dad was guaranteed a job in New York City. Now graduated, married, and ready for a new job, my dad quickly matured from a teenager to an adult. He departed for New York City in 1991, while my mom remained in the Philippines to take care of my sister.
My dad’s arrival in New York City was not overwhelmingly difficult because of connections, but it had its troubles. First, he spoke English well, albeit with an accent, because of the high frequency of English usage in Philippine colleges. Second, he had secured a job before he boarded the plane, guaranteeing him financial stability. Third, his job as a physical therapist at Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island found him meeting with other Filipino immigrants, working the same job he did. As such he had a group of friends to associate with and the logistics of immigration were taken care of. Troubles, however, came in the form of a new culture and distance from family. My dad was barely an adult when he moved to NYC, and already he had to adjust to a new world with new customs. He told me the story of how disgusted he was at food waste in America. Leftover food would just be thrown out and not even be given to the homeless. He also experience racism from some Americans who felt immigrants were taking up jobs in the 90s. The greatest difficulty was not being able to see his wife or daughter, while he sent money back to Philippines until they could come over too.
In 1993 my mother and sister moved to New York to meet up with my dad, officially completing my family’s immigration to the United States. They got an apartment in Astoria due to the convenience of travel to work. My mom had difficulty transitioning to her new life: like my dad, she was young, immature, thrust into responsibility with a child and living away from friends and family. Furthermore, my mom’s Chemical Engineering degree did not apply for chemical engineering in the United States. Financial need meant she had neither the money nor the time to go to American college to affirm her degree, as she had to work odd jobs for an income.
As time passed, my parents slowly adjusted to life in America. That was it: they had left the home country and would forever live in the New World. My sister, who had spent three years in the Philippines, had to begin school in America with a mix of Tagalog and English, along with inexperienced parents who decided to be safe than sorry when raising her. Conservative parenting grew some resentment in my sister from her youth until she moved out of the house just last year. My family moved to Jackson Heights in 1995, and I was born as the first American citizen in my extended family in February 1996. The final major change in lifestyle happened when, in 1998, my family moved from semi-urban Jackson Heights to suburban Bellerose, Queens, where they bought the house we have lived in for the past 16 years. From then on, life no longer meant transition to a new world but rather meant raising two children as Americans, and adapting to the changes in technology.
Today my parents hold citizenship in one country: the United States. They speak English at home the majority of the time and only speak Tagalog about 25% of the time when seeing other Filipinos. To this day I have no other relatives on the East Coast. My closest relatives live in Ottawa and after that come my relatives in California. Instead of growing up with actual cousins or uncles or aunts, my family consisted of the Filipinos my parents met in the early 90s and the Filipinos from our church. I consider myself American, but I realize the changes my parents had to go through to bring me to this point.
