FAMILY

What Might Have Been if I Had Been Adopted in America

It’s a question I often asked myself but the answer was always the same

I saw a post from an aunt who lives in the US, she had a car accident.

Thank God she is okay.

I remember her as a kind person.

I haven’t seen her for more than forty years. She had done well with her life from what I see of her on Facebook.

I talked to her a few times on Facebook, but have never had the chance to see her whenever she comes home to Manila.

She was my Mom’s cousin, and she was adopted as a child.

But to me, she will always be an auntie.

I was supposed to be adopted by my father’s sister, or that’s a story I heard when I was a kid.

It never really bothered me that my parents even thought about giving me away.

It must have been a bad joke, or was it?

My auntie

She’s an older sister of my Dad. The first time I saw her was when the whole clan welcomed her at the airport, after being away for more than a decade.

It was in the late 70s, I must have been around eight or nine.

I didn’t know why everyone had to be there.

When I saw my aunt, she was holding a little boy He had a teddy bear in his hand and he was wearing a cap. Although he could have easily passed as one of my cousins, I soon found out that he was Korean.

And that he was adopted.

Like my Mom’s cousin, the boy who was my cousin would have the word “adopted” before his name whenever he was talked about within the family.

It was a different time, being politically correct was yet to be a thing.

I never got to know my cousin. He was younger than I was, he grew up in the US, and there was no way for us to be close to each other.

But for me, it never made a difference that he was adopted.

We later became friends on Facebook.

What might have been

I am the fifth child. Before me, my Mom had a miscarriage — it was a boy. Every family must have a boy, as it was in my family, so my parents kept on trying even after they already had four children — all girls.

My Dad came from a big family. There were ten children, and my grandmother also had one or two miscarriages. In my Dad’s family, there were only two girls.

I don’t know how it all began, the story that I was supposed to be adopted.

But it is a common joke you hear among Filipinos that you are adopted. It is a cruel thing there to say to a child, but Filipinos only tell the joke if it’s not real.

If you are adopted, it is almost always kept a secret.

As the story goes, my auntie couldn’t get pregnant and she wanted a baby. Maybe she thought about me when she heard my Mom was pregnant again, and my parents then were struggling.

It is also very Filipino to make a joke of asking for a baby from a pregnant woman. But to my aunt, she could have been dead serious.

I didn’t end up being adopted.

I never really asked Mom about it, and I always felt I was my Mom’s favorite son, all because I am her only one.

I could have been an American

In the 70s, my Dad went to the US. As I was growing up I didn’t understand why he needed to come home. Many Filipino left for the US to escape poverty in the Philippines.

But when Mom died, we found a postcard from him in the few belongings she kept. And I understood why Dad came home — he couldn’t leave his family behind. I was one year old when he told me in his postcard:

Be good always, if you aren’t, I’ll not go home anymore. But if you are then I’ll buy you candies, apples and toys. Kiss Mom and all for me, Dad

I knew he missed all of us, especially Mom.

When I was young, like many Filipinos, I saw America as the greatest country in the world. And not a few times that I thought about what my life could have been if I grew up in America.

I even thought about what my life would have been if I was adopted by my aunt.

But as years passed, and I would struggle with depression whenever I thought about what my life could have been like in America, I knew I wouldn't have survived.

I knew I would have died young.

I went to America

I was in my late thirties when I worked as a cruise photographer. All my contracts had an American port.

I first landed in Anchorage, Alaska.

I was happy to be in a place that I only saw watching one of my favorite TV shows, Northern Exposure, even if in reality the show was filmed in Washington.

I count myself lucky to have seen San Francisco and New York. I also had a stopover in Seattle. These were American cities that I only saw on TV and in the movies.

And in those moments while I was in America, the same thought would cross my mind — what my life would have been if I was an American.

But while I loved then what I saw, especially in New York, I knew deep down that America wasn’t for me.

Whenever there was a chance, I would meet up with my cousins in the US. Most, if not all, of them did well.

Some migrated to the US after college, and they landed the best jobs.

But they were also busy, that they could only spend a few hours whenever I happened to be in either San Francisco or New York.

I can’t live their busy lives.

Life in America

Who knew what life would have been for me if I grew up in or migrated to America?

There’s no way for us to know the answer to our “what could have been” questions, and we all have a lot of those questions in our heads.

And with my depression, what kind of life would I have lived in America?

I don’t know if I could have loved my aunt as my mother. All I can say is that growing up I never got to know her on a deeper level.

I came from a different generation, where you only got to speak to an adult if you were asked a question.

As I got older, I tried my best to understand my uncles and aunties. Many of them I didn’t like as a kid or even when I was older.

But now that I’m in my 50s, I know that they were also struggling with life, it could not be that different from what I worry about — relationships, the future, or getting old.

I haven’t set foot in America since 2009, but from what I see online it has changed. I have a grand-niece in the US who I haven't seen yet, I can only wish that someday I would meet her.

My life is full of ups and downs. I would never exchange my life growing up with my Mom for a life in America.

I am glad that when my Mom breathed her last, I was there with her.

And that she was the only mother I knew and loved.

Thank you for reading.