I have always found amusement in having people guess my ethnicity. It’s hard to tell exactly what I am when I take such a 50/50 split of both my parents. If I’m with just one of them, it’s hard to tell we are related, but in between them there is no mistaking the fact I have my dad’s smile, or my mom’s nose. I love my mix of Caucasian and Filipino. I loved growing up with my dad’s six-foot stature and broad shoulders of a construction worker and my mom’s small figure of barely five feet constantly scurrying around helping others. I not only am a mix of my parents’ facial features and have a height that falls directly in between theirs, but my personality favors that same half-and-half, too. My dad’s loud, extroverted and often outspoken tendencies and my mom’s classic Asian acts of service and detail-oriented style continue to mix in me. I complement loudly and make friends with ease due to my dad’s influence. Thanks to my mom, I have the stamina and organization to show them I care.
I always joke that my parents have four things in common: hard work, their love for God, and my sister and me—and even we came later. Their parenting skills clashed occasionally on strictness. My mom is more conservative and once yelled at my dad for buying an ice cream cone on the Sabbath when they were dating—very characteristic of her conservative values.
When I would come home late on a school night, at about 10 pm after a Bible study with some friends, my mom would yell at me, referencing how when she was growing up in the concrete jungle of Manila, she had to be home before the sun went down. But my dad was more just, content I was out late at a Bible study instead of out partying like most kids my age were.
When it came to teaching me to drive, my mom said if it were up to her, I would not be driving until 18. But because of my dad who was driving trucks and tractors on the farm at 12 years old, I was driving on his lap by eight years old and had my permit and license as soon as the state allowed it.
My mom is classically smart—had only one C on a assignment all through both grade school, high school and college (it was in fifth grade for handwriting, and she never forgot it). My mom’s scholastic drive would be impossible to live up to and stress me out—trying to would haunt me, if it weren’t for my dad’s background. He dropped out of high school and got his GED, starting his own successful business that he has continued to support us with.
I loved it when my parents would tell their love story, my dad ambitiously chasing and my mom trying hard to ignore, or at least not show her reaction, to his obvious gestures. She played hard to get until she was standing at the altar. I always thought it was him who was lucky to marry her, and she was the one who was stepping out on faith in this wild divorcee and newly born-again Christian. That was the way they portrayed it when we invited visitors over for Sabbath lunch and they were asked how my parents met. It was not until later that I realized that the reason so much of my dad's family was not at the wedding was because of her nationality and timing of it (my mom's visa was about to run out at the time of my father's proposal). A lot of my father's side of the family assumed she was only marrying him for the green card and that the marriage would not last.
Growing up in such a contrasting yet loving home has taught me a lot about not only working through differences but using them as strength. I feel like because of my parents’ cultures and differences in how they were raised, they can cover more ground. I hope others can strive to see differences as a strength like my parents have shown me.