My American Boy

Today was International Day at Jason's school. It is an annual tradition and each student is assigned a country to research. When his teacher found out that Jason was going home to the Philippines last year, she promised to give it to him. We promptly bought him a Barong Tagalog so we would not have to worry about his costume. Besides, he looks very handsome in it :-)

People have often asked us why Jason cannot speak Tagalog. My response to this is because we do not speak it at home. Aside from English, my husband and I speak in Bisaya, which is the dialect we are accustomed to. What is the point of him learning that? He is learning to speak Spanish because it is offered in school and because of our proximity to Mexico. More than half his classmates speak Spanish so it seems more relevant. He can sort of understand what we are talking about and more importantly for him, when we are talking about him.

He does know where he comes from. He looks forward to our trips back home every other year and enjoys seeing his aunts, cousins and good friends. He understands and appreciates the fact that there is more to family than just myself and his father. However, since we are on vacation when we go to the Philippines, he gets to experience only the good life. My mother and sisters take care of all our our needs between brief stays at beach resorts like Shangrila Mactan and Plantation Bay. We get to eat out a lot at nice restaurants, and he gets to enjoy more freedoms than he normally does back in San Diego. It is amazing how much he adapts and blends in. If he never opened his mouth, you would never take him for anything else than a Filipino.

He sometimes gets bothered by the cultural differences, and the sight of children his age or younger, sleeping on the side of the streets. He understands that not everyone is fortunate enough to afford three meals a day, let alone, have someone go out to buy Chickenjoy at Jollibee just because he mentioned he was hungry. The traffic, the dust, the heat, and the dirt bother him but not enough to stop him from spending two hours in the car to get to his cousin's house. He even learned to ride the tricycle in the subdivision where my sister used to live. He thought it was such a fun experience.

Every now and then I ask him if he would like to go back to Cebu and live there. The answer is always the same, his home is in San Diego. His best friend is a quarter Japanese but looks totally Caucasian. They have known each other from way back in Kindergarten. While we do not deliberately avoid Filipinos in the community here, we also do not go out of our way to mingle with just people from our race. I sometimes tease him that he is a coconut since he is brown on the outside, and white on the inside. He really dislikes that, he likes to think of himself as no different than anyone else. After all, he is a citizen of the United States of America, the great melting pot of the world.