WORD NERDS: this is NOT your nanay's blog

I cannot listen to this song. Maybe you can.


Not that I despise it, I just can't listen light-heartedly. I don't think I've ever listened to this song with dry eyes, if you know what I mean. When I was younger, I could never understand how I could learn to love a man I didn't know.

I get so angry... even still. I swear, I can't get past the second verse without turning tension into a fist that clamors against a 14-year absence. I can't sit still while welling up with memories of constructing Father's Day cards for no one but the sake of completing a second-grade assignment. Everyone else had a recipient.

I can't cry for the Pinays that Danced With Their Fathers on their eighteenth birthday celebrations. I wouldn't dare give them my tears. This song is for those who don't have their fathers with them. I have carried resentment for watching them mock my sorrow. I don't hate you for having a father, I hate that you misconstrued the meaning.

I remember all of it. The EMTs, ambulance that carried you away, the kids in the apartment complex gathering around and gazing at the spectacle of firetruck. I remember their marvels at men in uniforms and the shame I felt. I can easily recall my stoic self. How heroic it must have felt to be so numb. I wish I could be that strong now. I never got to say goodbye. I'm sorry.

A heart attack does not stop love.


x_magsalita.

Labels: pinay, storytime, vignettes

I was never into doing Show and Tell back in grade school. Probably because I was hella shy and afraid of the kids snickering at me. And maybe, to some degree, I still am. So I guess I'm making up for the major lack of Show and Tell now... with this blog.

I took Asian American History I and II back in 2004. But not once was the case of Filipina Narciso and Leonora Perez mentioned while we were studying the various waves of Filipino immigration.

Then last month, as Beats Rhymes and Rice at UC Irvine was fast approaching, Magsalita schooled me a little bit on the infamous court case.

Once I heard that it took place in Ann Arbor, MI in the '70s, I realized there was the strong possibility that my mom, at the very least, could tell me something. When my mom first immigrated to the US, she lived in Westland, MI, just outside of Detroit, for about 5 years. She and her 2 sisters worked as registered nurses in the area.

Also a few months ago, my mom was going through some old papers in her bedroom. I happened to be at home at the time. She showed me an old newspaper of her and my auntie protesting about something. I just wasn't sure what they were protesting for. I only so much as glanced as the newspaper. Didn't think much about it at the time.

Little did I know when I moved into this house with 4 other girls, it would be like 6 Degrees of Separation.

One of the girls... her boyfriend's mother happens to be one of the defendants in that infamous case. And how does my mom fit into the picture? She and my auntie protested in Ann Arbor after the verdict was announced.

The newspaper that my mom saved for over 30 years.


See the 2 women in all white standing next to each other? My mom's on the left, my auntie's on the right.




Shit matters as much now as it did back then.
I love my mom. She's awesome to the power of 10 and more.
And it really is a small world after all.

Labels: pinay, resistance, storytime

So it's Lent. I say, "So what? BFD (Big Fucking Deal)."

What's Lent?

"Lent, in most Christian denominations, is the 40-day liturgical season of fasting and prayer before Easter. The 40 days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where, according to the Bible, he endured temptation by Satan. Different churches will calculate the 40 days differently.

The purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer - through prayer, penitence, almsgiving, and self-denial - for the annual commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, as celebrated during Holy Week, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigor during Lent are prayer (justice towards God), fasting (justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards neighbor). Today, some people give up a vice of theirs, add something that will bring them closer to God, and often give the time or money spent doing that to charitable purposes or organizations."

- Lent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I guess I got sick and tired of Catholicism, much to the dismay of my mother. What a quarter's tuition is at the university I'm attending is equivalent to what she paid each year for the first 8 years of my 12-year private Catholic education. When I got to high school that tuition doubled to about $5000-6000/year. When Catholicism is part of your everyday academia for 12 years, it makes you not want to be Catholic. Or maybe that's just me.

Growing up, I was proud to be Catholic. I guess you could say it felt like this special club, going to a Catholic school and all. You want to feel like you belong when you're growing up, right? When junior high rolled around, I started to feel increasingly detached from the religion. I'm not sure why. Adolescence? Menstruation and PMS? Boys as a new religion? Discovering the mall as an escape [Oh, Pinayism.]?

When I was a child, I assumed that everyone in my extended family was Catholic. But I later found out that wasn't the case. Some of my cousins didn't even get married in the Catholic Church. Another cousin and her family converted to nondenominational Christianity. Two of my cousins who are around my age haven't gotten confirmed either. That, and my "father" (I use that term very loosely) didn't fast during Lent. He ate meat on Fridays, too. Maybe it was a matter of consistency, or lack of it.

My cynicism grew when, for one, the Church's scandals started surfacing. If priests and other religious authorities can't resist temptation, then we're screwed! Two, an isolated incident during my senior year of high school. A friend called me out, asking if I was still a "V." I didn't respond back. This was after we had a guest speaker talk to the student body about abstinence and waiting until marriage to have sex. I had already lost my virginity the previous year. Naturally, I felt out of place. A black sheep. I thought Christianity, much less Catholicism, was about being compassionate, forgiving, loving your neighbor as yourself, not judging others, etc. That day, all of that went out the window.

I haven't gone to church every weekend since junior high.
I haven't given up anything for Lent since grade school.
After high school, I stopped fasting and not eating meat on Fridays during Lent.
I haven't been confirmed.
I haven't gone to confession since high school.

When I have children, I would want to let them make their own choices in regards to religion, among other things. To each, their own.

Pray for that.

Labels: religion, storytime, words

Inspired by Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. It's a classic, please believe it. I also recommend You Bring Out the Mexican In Me if you haven't read it or been inspired by her work already. I'm constantly trying to figure out what this blog is for. And another reason is that I'm trying to create a space for myself that allows me to grow as a writer. Here goes...

The N Word

My best friend Lola was African-American. She taught me a lot about why white people and black people didn’t get along, even though in school we always learned about white people freeing black people and other colored people. The stupid boys in the class would say that Lola always wrote about African-American history. I never got to learn about Filipino history in my elementary school textbooks. I would always only ever find one small paragraph at a time about the Philippines and the war they were in. I can’t really remember which one it was. But Lola was lucky because she got to learn about African-Americans during Black History Month or once when our fifth grade class got to see a play about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I remember that play because Lola was mad when the actors asked the audience to pretend that a character was supposed to be black when they wore a black cloth around their necks and that a character was white when they wore a white cloth around their neck. Black people’s skin is not black. They should be wearing brown, Lola said. I agreed but I was still confused.

Me and Lola and the other girls in our fifth grade class used to bring our lunches to school in our Arctic Zone lunch packs. We used to eat inside with the other kids who got free lunches, but I told my mom that it was easier for me to be with my friends if I just brought my lunch to school. The kids who brought their lunches were only allowed to eat on the benches outside in the sun and since those benches were filled with people we barely knew, we decided to sit on the ground and have a picnic-style lunch. Lola and I always ate lunch with Melissa, Ruben, Katie, Jenna, Alex and Corina.

Katie and Jenna were the leaders of our group. They didn’t live in our neighborhood and their parents were always able to pick them up right after school. Sometimes Jenna’s mom would eat lunch with us. Katie and Jenna always got us together to hang out and get ice cream together during lunch time and we would always follow them. The one time no one ever followed them but followed Lola and I was when Jenna called Lola the N word for no reason at all when they were playing together. I guess Jenna got mad at Lola, but that doesn’t give her the right to say that word. Didn’t she pay attention when we were learning history? That word was not supposed to be used anymore. I hope she got in trouble with her mom.

All of our friends huddled and hugged Lola because we wanted to comfort her and stop her from crying. That was the first time I had ever seen my best friend cry! It was as if the world stopped spinning and my heart stopped beating because I always just knew that Lola was such a strong girl. Everyone else knew it too.

x_magsalita.

Labels: Sandra Cisneros, storytime, vignettes