Abandoned: The Beginning

Chapter One

     When I was three-years-old, my parents left my older brother, my younger sister and me. I have spent the greater part of my life coming to terms with that abandonment. For a year, we lived in the Philippines while our parents made a life without us in the USA. 

     We were cared for by my mother’s parents; stern, cold, grandparents who rarely showed affection. They, along with our mother’s youngest sister cared for my brother (4-years-old), me, (3-years-old) and my sister (just 1-year-old). 

     During that time, my sister would say her first word, calling our aunt, “Momma”; take her first steps, and cry, cry, cry for our parents to return. 

     My brother, a precocious oldest grandchild, often did things like play on a chair near the edge of brick steps. He was standing on the chair when he tried to get a toy car that had fallen. He ended up tumbling from the chair and cutting his cheek open on the jagged brick steps. The bandage that covered the stitches took up half of his face. How did our mother feel when she saw pictures of her son with an injury and she was halfway across the globe? 

     Even after we were reunited, that year apart scarred not only my brother’s face, but our sense of security. Therapy never quite cured my sister or I of the sense of abandonment because, you see, no one ever explained the situation to us. Our parents never tried to explain their absence.

* * *

It wouldn’t be until I was in my 30’s that my siblings and I would find out the truth. Our parents wanted us with them during that first year in the States. The pictures of them holding other children, playing in the snow, at parties with their new friends were not joyful times as the photos portrayed, but frustrating, anxious and regrettable weeks that became months and then a year with our mom begging her father to bring us to America, as agreed upon.

     When we did finally board a plane for the two-day journey from the Philippines to Japan, Japan to the USA, our grandfather, Lolo in tagalog, and our mother's youngest sister, Tita Chet, accompanied us. It was 1968, our first time to travel on an airplane. Back then, airplane travel was a big deal for everyone, not just three young Filipino kids who were going to emigrate to the United States. People dressed up to fly in planes. Think Mad Men International, that's the timing for this leg of my journey.

     On the plane, the three of us, aged 5, 4, and 2 were fussy. The food was unfamiliar. There was a big slab of meat called a ‘steak’ on our tray, something we'd never seen before, and the milk in these containers tasted funny. We cried and were irritable on the long transatlantic flight. When we disembarked in Japan, I remember a finely dressed women with a handkerchief tied around her perfectly quaffed hair having to help me up when I fell down the aluminum stairs onto the tarmack. I was groggy when the plane landed in Japan and don't remember much more than this.

     I remember spending the night in a hotel. There was a time difference or we slept on the flight and weren't sleepy so we jumped on the beds and created a ruckus. Lolo was quite annoyed and kept telling us to go to sleep. We must have but I have no recollection.   

     As I said, it was a two-day flight and when we finally landed in the States, I'm sure my grandfather and parents were relieved. Was the flight supposed to take two days? Were we supposed to stay the night in Japan? If it was an unexpected layover, would our parents have known or were they waiting at the airport only to finally give up and go home alone? Back then, remember, flights were rare and communications entailed switchboards, expensive long distance rates, unreliable service and ungodly lag-times...thinking about the whole ordeal, it must have been a nightmare, really... 

     But we would eventually land. We were going through customs at JFK when our grandfather instructed us. "When I tell you, run to your parents,” he said. As we made our way, we wound up in a long corridor where way far away people stood looking for their overseas guests. We stopped to collect ourselves. Our Lolo peered down the hallway trying to find our parents' faces. When he spotted them, he told my brother and me to "Go. Go now," our grandfather nudged us and in typical Filipino fashion, pointed with his lips and nodded his head. "Run." So my brother and I looked at each other, shrugged and ran. But, I wanted to know, "Which of those people were our parents?" We had forgotten what they looked like. But we ran, I guess, hoping someone would step forward to claim us.

     At some point, my brother stopped running. He told me years later that he had to pull up the zipper on his pants. In any case, I got out ahead. Searching the faces of the people who were standing still as I whizzed by, I was caught by a man kneeling down with his arms outstretched. I could only hope it was the right guy, because to me, he was as much a stranger as the next one. 

     He hugged me and picked me up and kissed me on the cheek. My brother made it and he was embraced by our mom. And after a few seconds, they traded us off. 

    When our aunt arrived carrying our sister, Carolina wouldn't go to our mom. She clung to our aunt, refusing to let go. These people were strangers, after all. She had been away from them for as long as she had been with them. She began to cry. Our mother began to cry. At the time I didn’t know why.

* * *

In 2003, in Cold Spring, NY,my mom was helping me with the kids, with the packing, trying to spend as much time with us before we left. My father had died several years before. She was alone, but doing well on her own. I was very proud of her.

     I didn’t think for a moment, how our move would affect her. I didn’t see how.

     Teary-eyed, she helped me seal a box that would come with us on the plane. “Why would you move your kids to a third world country,” she began tentatively, “when your father and I sacrificed so much to get you out?” I honestly never thought of it that way. I wanted to say, ‘It’s because you gave us so much, that now we can afford to give back.’ But I didn’t say anything. I glanced at her and we moved on.