‘Uwi na’: A bittersweet sentence I have been hearing from aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and distant loved ones since I was a kid. It translates to ‘come home already’. I find it special that the action of returning home has its very own word in Tagalog, rather than having to be expressed through a verb and a noun. What makes the sentence bittersweet, is that I’ve always heard it from a phone speaker, from someone in an entirely different part of the world.
I was born in the Philippines. Specifically, I was born in Quezon City, which is just a few hour’s drive from my hometown, Batangas. Batangas was the first place that taught me what home was.
My parents and I immigrated to Canada before I turned a year old, which is why I don’t have any memory of my childhood prior to leaving. I’m 18 now, and I can say without a doubt that Ottawa has become a home for me too. But I think anyone can agree that there’s just something special about your first home, especially when most of your family still live there, and even more so when your visits back are always years apart.
Coming from an immigrant family is a lot more than just long plane rides and getting used to goodbyes in the airport. It has presented me with complex feelings and experiences that I can only hope to properly put into words, but I think it’s worth a shot.
I have been back to the Philippines four times in my life, but it’s only the last two trips that I can remember well. I was only 3 the first time my family went back to visit, then we went again when I was 6. The next visit, however, wasn’t until six years later. I remember finding it difficult to fully process that we were really going to be back, which makes sense considering I was in middle school at the time, and any memory about the Philippines I could unearth was from when I was a toddler. On the day before our flight, I recall being unable to believe that in 24 hours we would be seeing family I hadn’t seen since I was in the first grade. Said family wasn’t just distant relatives; they were the cousins who fueled the interests I still have today, the aunts and uncles who took care of me as if I was their own daughter, and the grandparents who constantly made sure that no day passed without me laughing.
Being an immigrant child means constantly missing family, and having an unshakeable feeling of being far away from them. In my experience, the feeling is weaker on some days and stronger on others, but it never completely goes away. Just a few weeks ago, I had my playlist on shuffle when a song I always listened to through my grandparents’ car speaker started playing. I ended up reminiscing on my memories tied to that song for the rest of the day.
I think the best way to describe missing people so far away is that it comes in waves. I’ll go weeks without thinking too much about it, but once one random encounter in my life manifests itself into a memory of the people back home, it all comes crashing back.
My most recent trip back to the Philippines was just this July, five years after the last visit. Despite the fact that I had both started and finished high school within this time, it felt like it hadn’t been that long since the last summer my family went. However, my sense of time was proven terribly wrong. What dawned on me immediately after seeing my family again was that a lot changes over five years. I think being away made me forget that just as I wasn’t a little 12-year-old anymore, my cousins weren’t either.
Being an immigrant kid means growing up separated from everyone else. Unfortunately, I grew apart from a lot of my close-in-age relatives because of seeing them so seldom. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel a sense of belonging around my family in the Philippines despite my time with them being so limited. Yet there has still always been a lingering wish that I didn’t have to grow up so far away from everybody.
This summer, my parents and I stayed in the Philippines for 34 days. It sounds like a long time, but days have truly never felt so fast. Before I knew it, we were packing up our luggage and driving to other houses to say our last few goodbyes. I’ve told people before that I’ve never felt anything more gut-wrenching than the feeling that comes on the last day: the living room walls echoing cries instead of laughter, hugging loved ones while dreading how long it’ll be until the next time, and waving out the car window as your family members become smaller and smaller, desperately trying to get one last look at their faces before the tears turn them into mere silhouettes.
Being an immigrant kid means always having a part of yourself somewhere else. For the first few weeks after we got back to Ottawa this summer, I didn’t even feel like myself. If I weren’t distracted, my mind would linger back to this inexorable feeling that I had lost something. I recall not wanting to video call my family nor play any music that I listened to during the trip out of the fear that I’d get that sinking feeling again. Like all things, however, things got easier.
Eventually, that heavy feeling got lighter. As I mentioned, I still have days when I miss my family a little more than usual, but I’ve come to accept that that’s just a part of my life that I’ll have to learn to live with. Plus, if anything, I’ve found that my family situation is a pretty fun conversation starter.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t trade my family for the entire world. They are some of the most comforting, selfless, and loving people I have ever known. If it means I can keep all of them in my life, then having my heart stretched across two different countries is nothing but a small ask.