Parents

This year, I moved out of my parents’ house in Brampton a few weeks after I turned 24. When I first told my parents that I was moving out, I thought it sounded like a pretty big deal. In retrospect, it really wasn’t: my parents moved across continents when they were my age. As a first generation Filipino-Canadian, I often forget about the sacrifices that my parents have made so that their kids could have a better life.

Manila, ca 1950 (my dad was born in 1950, my mom in 1951)

That sounds like the backdrop of a tired immigrant narrative, but that’s because you can probably identify with this in some way. If you go back far enough to when your first family members landed on this continent, you might end up with the same story. Different times, different places, different circumstances, maybe. Beyond all that, I’m sure the stories are the same.

On the day that I completed my move, I told my dad, “Congratulations Dad, you’ve successfully gotten all three of your kids to move out.” Dad laughed and gave me a hug. Before that, I noticed a look on his face that, for the briefest of seconds, was a mix of sadness and what I can only describe as the physical incarnation of “holy shit, where did the past 24 years go?”

The next day was a family party, and I headed to Mississauga to meet up with everyone. At the party, my mom handed me a card as my dad looked on. I cracked the card open, and the one sentence that struck me was a question that my dad said he asked himself the night before: “‘Where was I when Joe was growing up?”

Yonge and Eglinton, near my apartment

So maybe my dad’s not the master of rhetorical questions, but his was a good one. That night, while I was celebrating with my family, I gave the question some serious thought. While I was growing up, both of my parents were busy working multiple jobs to provide for three kids while at the same time adjusting to a new culture and way of life that was far from that of their native Philippines. Parents are (usually) amazing people. Despite their shortcomings and parenting methods that are, at times, downright questionable, they’re people who will stand behind our most outlandish ideas. When I was six, I told my my parents that I wanted to be a writer. Day after day, I handed them sheaves of paper filled with crappy drawings of dogs with gigantic ears and people whose legs came out of their heads, coloured with highlighters in shades of neon pink, green, yellow and blue. The letters of my name were scrawled in crayon across entire pages. My “books” were three or four sheets of paper bound with staples and scotch tape, but to my parents, they were limited-run first edition prints, complete with the author’s signature. When I was in the midst of failing math in high school, they signed the tests that I had to bring home. The only question I ever recall being asked about these tests was, “Did you try your best?” to which I usually responded with a non-committal grunt. When I told them that I would apply to English and double major in Communications, they went a little wide-eyed, but nodded anyway. The only thing my dad told me was, “make sure it makes you happy.”

Watching TV with my dad

Moral support aside, my parents–and yours too–made a big economic commitment bringing kid(s) into the world. Money isn’t so easy to come by these days, or at any time really. Despite that, our parents still managed to bring us up with clothes on our backs, food in our stomachs, and (some) knowledge in our heads. Money was tight growing up. The one example that sticks with me is a little recent: in my last year of university, I had to gather money to have my book published, but a tutor at a semi-underground Korean cram school doesn’t exactly rake in the cash. I told my mom one night that I needed to meet my deadline, and the only thing she said was “don’t worry about it.” Two days later, she transferred over enough money for my whole first run, all out of her savings. I can go back and point out the times that we were hard up, but I think it’s enough to say that both of my parents had a tough time balancing their cheque books, yet they always had enough on hand or put away to give me and my sisters money for that school trip, that class party where we had to chip in for food, gas money when we started to drive, and enough to cover part of our tuition and textbook expenses when we got to university.

At some point or another, I wonder if our parents ever stopped to think about what the hell they’d gotten themselves into, settling in a new country with new people, a new culture, a new way of doing everything. At some point our parents must have wanted to drop it all and go back to what was familiar to them. Despite trials, our parents stuck with the new place that they decided to call home, and in the process they became masters at forging ahead regardless of circumstance.

I drifted a couple of times in this article, and I don’t know if what I’ve written comes to some hard conclusion about anything. I just wanted to point out that for all our shortcomings, successes, failures, our parents have been there to offer us support–moral, economic or otherwise–and that it can be easy to forget about the things they do for us. If you don’t forget, that’s awesome. Keep it up. But for the rest of us, and me included, saying thanks to a parent or parents is a simple thing.

Thanks mom. Thanks dad.

My parents (front, 2nd from the left & front centre), present day.

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