Live a Little: My Filipino Family

This week my “Live a Little” post is centered around making amends and cherishing family.  Nearly 25 years ago I lost all contact with my brother and my father.  I was young and thought I knew the answers to all of life’s questions.  In the process of being the free-spirited, know-it-all that I was I alienated myself from my family.

When I was a baby my mom and dad divorced.  I was raised by my mom (she is not Filipino) in Upstate, NY and my brother was raised by my father (in the Philippines and California).  We didn’t talk all that much and due to the distance we weren’t exactly close.  We talked once or twice a year as I grew up and maybe a bit more as I entered high school.  Upon graduating I ventured out to the West Coast to visit my dad and his family.

The visit didn’t exactly go as expected.  I was raised in an Italian family with a bunch of siblings, my mom, and stepfather.  I was raised that the loudest child (and often times the worse child) got the most attention and I exceeded at getting attention.  As a matter of fact my family would say I was famous for my AGRs (Attention Getting Routines).  I was everything a child raised in the USA was supposed to be.  I wasn’t, however, like the girls found in the Philippines and this caused some distress between my father’s wife and myself.  Needless to say, my visit in 1985 was the last time we talked.

Fast Forward.

As we get older we realize we aren’t immortal after all.  What used to seem like an endless amount of time doesn’t seem so endless once you turn 40.  I figure now at the age of 45 I have lived over half my expected life time.  The things I took a stand against in my past don’t seem so important in my present.  In 2009/2010 I reached out to my brother in California (thank you Facebook).  Within the year my husband and I flew out to meet my new sister-in-law, my niece, my brother, and my dad (his wife since passed).  Instead of bucking up against the culture I didn’t understand as a young girl I now relish in it’s traditions, it’s food, and it’s people…my people.

I belong to a Filipino Family and I live a little of their culture everyday to share with my children.

Join me and live a little…