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A Filipino Western Relationship story
Steven Scott barely knew his father, and knew almost nothing of his forebears. Steven's mom had grown up during the Great Depression. Her father had worked for Northern Pacific Railroad, and she had gotten from him the idea that they were better off if they kept moving. So as a child, Steven got used to constant change; in the fifth grade alone, they moved three times. His mom also clung to her Depression-era frugality and relentless work ethic. During the summer, rather than pay a babysitter while she worked, his mom would drop Steven off at the movie theater in the morning. Steve would sit through Mary Poppins four times in a row; then his mom would pick him up. By his high school years they had landed in Spokane, terrain familiar to his mom from her childhood. When his older brother got into drugs, Steve kept his distance. Later, his brother died in a motorcycle accident. The Scotts were down to two.
When Steven obtained his driver's license at 16, he took a long solo trip through the American Southwest. The way he chose a college was simple: Eastern Washington University was local, and it was cheap. After college he went to work at Kmart in management, and the company moved him to Arizona. He described himself then as bathe least Irish Scott there ever wasn't He had been to church only twice in his life. His sense of culture had been extinguished, and so had any sense of family He spent most holidays alone, and it did not bother him. He thought nothing of this. He sent a card; that was enough. He called his mother four times a year. He enjoyed his privacy and independence. At his house in Arizona, he had everything to himself He had the pool to himself the bathrooms to himself the kitchen to himself If you had visited him then, dinner would have been awkward, because there was only one wood chair seated at the dining room table, and only one placemat in front of it. The others were in storage. One set was all that was necessary.
That year, he made a decision: He was never getting married. “Who needs a wife?” he asked, and his empty house did not argue with him. He was good-spirited. He did not feel he had lost anything, because the way he was raised, family was never emphasized. He held no grudge about this. You don't miss what you never knew.
That October, he flew to San Francisco for the wedding of his one friend from Spokane. And at this wedding he met a woman, a college roommate of the bride. Ning Canlas was Filipino. Her family moved to Chicago when she was four. He didn't ask any more about her family, and she didn't ask about this.
But something opened in him the moment he met Ning. He doesn't know where it came from. Around her, he felt instantly at ease. They wrote and talked by telephone for a month, and then Ning flew to Arizona for a 3-day weekend. Both felt what they had found was acutely special, and neither wanted to part. On their last night together Ning asked him the dreaded question: "So when's the next time I get to see you?''
Steven's answer shocked him: "Well we could do that, we could plan the next time we'll meet. Or-or, I suppose, we could also just get married.''
In this way, Steve sorts proposed, and Ning sorta accepted, and they were happy Ning did offer one caveat, though. "You know, before we get married, you're going to have to come to Chicago and meet my family''
"Sure, sure," Steven replied, carelessly "Of course."
Her dad actually telephoned about two hours later, just to check in on his daughter. Perhaps Steven might have thought this odd-a dad calling a boyfriend's house, on his daughter's second date, a grown daughter, with her own apartment and job? But this oddity was lost in the excitement over Ning's big announcement, which she immediately shared with her father. Quickly Ning handed the phone to Steven.
This man was talking with such a thick accent that Steven couldn't really make out what he was saying. But his tone was welcoming and enthusiastic, so Steven was giddy To this day he is not sure what Ning's dad's speech was about, but he thinks it concerned what makes a good marriage. Steven just kept saying 'Yes, yes, yes'' at every pause, and they seemed to get along great.
In early January, Steven flew to Chicago to meet the Canlas family. Right before he left his house, Ning called. When you change planes in Dallas, some of the Dallas contingent will be there to meet you."
The Dallas contingent?
Sure enough, when Steven got off the plane at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, two of Ning's cousins were at the gate to greet him and escort him to his connection. It turned out there were at least a hundred Canlas’ in Dallas. They were curious about this man their cousin intended to marry. At this point Steven thought the greeting committee was cute and endearing. It made Ning exotic. The cousins were talkative and friendly. Though they were there to judge him, oddly he did not feel judged. There was something about how Ning’s family assessed a person that was very different from the way Steven's family did. All families are judgmental, but not all families are judgmental to the same degree. Many families judge people like they are vetting a candidate for the Supreme Court. Every fault is magnified and scrutinized. There's another way to do it-more like the way people are patted down on the way in to a rock concert. As long as you're not bringing in any handguns, knives, or alcohol, you're welcome to join the party.
Steve's undersized family looked for often petty reasons to exclude someone. Ning’s sprawling family found reasons to include anyone. From their point of view, this newcomer Steven had a job, an education, and he made Ning happy That was good enough for them. When Steven got on his next plane, they called ahead to Chicago.
"Thumbs-up," they declared.
In Chicago, Steven walked into a party that had been gathered on short notice. Not many could make it. So there were only six cousins, two parents, a grandparent, a handful of aunts and uncles, and a dozen or so friends from their church. They embraced Steven like a long-lost brother, which was awkward for him, because in his family there were no outward displays of affection. Dozens of new names were thrown at him, in one ear and out the other, but luckily Ning had briefed him on the usage of “lola” and “lolo” for grandparents, “manang” and “manong” for cousins. Aunts and uncles were just 'Auntie'' and "Uncle.'' These are titles of respect, and they are always used when addressing an elder, so it was not odd to use them as shorthand.
And then the good-byes! It was not sufficient to yawn and point to the coats and simply wave the guests away wholesale. It had taken Steven the whole night to meet everyone, and now he had to say good-bye to every single person there-and each of them also had to say good-bye to every person there. Filipino good-bye rituals can last an hour easily. Steven was overwhelmed, but still game. Ning’s aunts sent him home with an ice chest packed with lumpia, a type of egg roll. He had passed the Family Test.
Were they genuinely judging him? Or was it a formality just to make her family feel included? Ning said, I joke about it as the Family Test, but it was not so much about their approval as their opinion. I really wanted to know what they thought of him. I had made a few mistakes with boyfriends in the past, guys whose faults I didn't see coming but they spotted from the start. So I trusted their judgment, whether they liked him as much as I did."
"And they liked him even though he was not Filipino?''
"I had been coached for years to marry a Filipino, but the moment they met Steven that expectation vanished and never returned.''
"So on what basis did they judge him?
"His character. He is open and forthright and has a sense of humor and is easygoing. My aunt said the moment she met him, she took pity on him, but that's really a botched translation from Ilocano, our dialect, where the word means something more akin to 'compassion.' Her heart went out to him. 'Simpatico' is what a cousin said she felt. He was a man they were going to enjoy sharing life with."
"If they had not liked him, what would you have done?
"I don't know. It would have made it very hard. At that time, my parents were going through a rocky patch in their marriage, and so I was hyper-aware of not wanting to make a mistake in my choice. If my family did not love him as I did, I would have been very careful."
In March, Steven moved in with Ning, into her Gold Coast studio apartment. Kmart allowed a transfer. The wedding was planned for late May. However, there was a glitch. All of Ning’s siblings moved in with them, too. They did not want to live with their parents while the parents were fighting. So there were six people living in one studio apartment. Can you imagine what this must have been like for Steven? From a ranch house all to himself to a studio with six adults sleeping on every inch of floor? From a family he rarely saw to a gaggle of strangers putting rock salt on their fruit and charring fish on the stove and stuffing the refrigerator full of food he could not and green mangoes and something called "baboong"? He joked that they were "the Boat People" and the others took up the joke in good spirit.
They liked "the White Guy.''
Still, though, Steven did not really understand what he was getting into. In the haze of romance, he did not put it all together. He figured her siblings would move back to their parents' soon enough and he and Ning would have their own life. It really only sank in when they started recognize--greasy sausages premarital counseling through Ning’s church. Steven attended this counseling with the attitude Sure, whatever can't hurt. But Ning took it very seriously-again, because she trusted her pastor's input. This pastor had known the Canlas’ for decades. In their first session he looked straight at Steven and drilled him.
"Do you realize what you're getting into with her family? By this he meant, rhetorically Son, I don't think you do.
What do you mean ?" Steven asked.
"Do you even know the size of her family's
"Ive met them ",
.
"No, you have met just a small part. There are several hundred Canlas’ in the United States alone. Do you know what this will mean for your marriage?"
"I guess not,'' he admitted.
"You are not just marrying Ning, son. You are marrying this family. They will become your family. They will be in your life, in your business, help raise your children, and expect you to care for them when they're in need."
Steven sat back and really thought about it for the first time. Until then, he had assumed that he and Ning would have their own life-her extended family would be in the periphery, and he and Ning and any children they had would be his family But he had fallen in love with an oldest daughter who has certain obligations in a Filipino family Ning took these obligations seriously: She is one of two in the family who knows everybody's birthday by heart, and always sends a card. Several hundred birthdays are magically stored in her brain.
The pastor's speech daunted Steven. "But I loved Ning and wanted to be with her. There was some trepidation on my part, but never did I once consider not going ahead with it."
If there are two camps in our society-one that includes extended family, another that shuts them out; one that puts family above everything, another that declares family is important but rarely acts like it-then there has never been a wedding that has better represented what can happen when these two camps are thrown together. There were 125 guests crammed into the small wedding chapel. If that church had been a car, the passenger side would have scraped the street. If that church had been a boat, it would have capsized. Only two guests were from Steven's family-his mother and her husband. They represented two-thirds of his entire family (his stepsister was grounded by an airline strike). The other guests were from Ning’s family, they represented only a third of the American Canlas’. Ning has fifty-two first cousins. Steven has none. Steven's family was prompt and on time and staring at their watches within minutes. Ning’s family was on island time, give or take an hour. In Steven's family they can barely make eye contact. In Ning’s family they squeeze and hug and wave grandly and kiss easily.
It was only a semi-traditional Filipino wedding. Ning did not inflict on Steven's family many of the rituals distinct to her culture, such as the passing back and forth of thirteen gold coins or the wrapping of a cord in figure eights around their necks. But when the bride and groom took their first dance, Ning’s family members darted out and pinned money to the newlyweds' dress and tux. Steve loved this! He loved it!
You might wonder how Steven had managed such an amazing turnaround in a mere seven months. In the back of his mind there remained a notion of marriage he had developed over time. In vowing to never marry he had been vowing to never have a marriage that resembled this unpalatable notion. And so every curiosity and novelty that Ning’s family threw in his way served to build a new path, a way around that obstacle.
His marriage to Ning did not resemble the thing he had rejected. This big happy family, the siblings on his studio floor, the long goodbyes-he had never imagined such things. They breathed new life into a tired idea. They made his marriage ordinal; they transformed marriage and family into an adventure. So when his new in-laws-his -family—began pinning twenties and fifties to the tails of his tux, he was thrilled, because weddings can feel like you're buying into some ancient crusty pact (reminiscent of that old notion), and the money dance reminded him that he was not.
So many newlyweds are discouraged when their wedding and their marriage turn into something they never expected. Steven had the opposite reaction. The less it resembled what he expected, the better. In truth, Steven was an easy convert. He did not have to be won over. Like most people who have decided family is not important, he simply needed to be shown that the family he would create did not have to imitate the family he came from. From there, warm feelings evolved naturally without effort.
"I've adopted them as the family I never had," he said. But that wasn't strong enough. "The Canlas’ saved me," he added. "I've learned so much from them. They've given me an impression of what family can be. I wish l'd had these ideas in my background." Still, this didn't manage to capture what he feels, so he tried this: "What we have, as a family-despite the problems and rough patches-it's paradise for me. I consider this paradise.''
Pressed to elucidate what it is, exactly that's so great, Steven boiled it down to something simple. "They care. They genuinely care about each other. So when I walk in a room, they light up. They burst out of their chairs, their faces beam, they are enthusiastic. I have never had that in my family; never seen a whole room light up just because so-and-so walked in. 'When Ning and I travel, there is always a relative nearby who wants to see us. Not out of duty, or habit, but because they care because the sight of us makes them happy''
This is how Steven talks today, but it took a few years to get used to, and he and Ning were forever discovering new depths to the contrast between their family styles. For instance, when Steven's stepfather died, Ning was shocked at how the funeral unfolded. The family sat behind a sheer curtain, and the visitors filed past them without a word or even a glance. If anyone cried, you sure couldn't hear it. There was no body to pay respects to, just a photograph and an urn. At the brief reception afterward, people made small talk, ate a cocktail plate's worth of food, and left. Not long after, one of Ning’s cousins in Dallas was killed in a car accident. At this ceremony, relatives took pictures of themselves with the deceased in his open casket. They wailed openly. When he was lowered into the ground, the entire family sobbed and only managed to remain standing by gripping one another. Each person went to the head of the casket and told a story. Then they went back to another cousin's house and told funny stories late into the night. A1l of the cousins chipped in some money, up to five hundred dollars each, to pay for the funeral and help his family. Just as the Canlas’ grieved, they fought, they let it out rather than hold it in.
In the first years of marriage, Steven and Ning found that their jobs had them working different schedules. This upset Ning, because her father-a doctor-had worked long hours, and she did not want that pattern to repeat itself in her marriage. So one morning she lit into Steven about his work hours. Later that day he showed up at her office with flowers and a big apology. He really thought they were on the brink of separation. She laughed. To her, it was just a fight. She was letting off steam.
"You mean, you're not leaving me?" he said.
"You believed me?"
In fact, one of the notions Steven needed to learn was how invulnerable their marriage was. In his family divorce was common. His mother was divorced twice, his stepsister once; even his brother had managed to get divorced before dying. So he considered marriage to be enormously fragile. lf you consider it fragile, you're wary of rocking the boat by expressing your needs, so those needs go unmet, which is far more dangerous in the long term. In Ning’s family divorce was unheard of. Among her fifty-two cousins, for instance, there had not been one divorce. And while her parents fought through many hard spells-fought loudly dramatically-they never considered splitting up. So Ning had no qualms about speaking up or expressing herself because according to the notion in the back of her mind, nothing could really threaten her marriage to Steven.
The best aspect of having a huge extended family emerged when Ning gave birth to Candy. Steven had those memories of sitting through Mary Poppins all day and he sure didn't want his daughter to experience anything like it. He needn't have worried. The way Ning had grown up, she barely learned to walk because there was never a pair of hands to hold her. And so it would be with Candy. Ning kept working until Candy was three, so Candy practically lived with her grandparents, who were only seven miles away. Just as Ning had an intense bond with her maternal grandmother, Candy had a bond with Ning’s father, who doted on Candy in a way he never had with his own children. This made raising a baby much less overwhelming to Steven. The new responsibility was never daunting. Steven never had to worry who would care for his child if something happened to him.
Over time, Steven made several attempts to spread this new spirit into his mother's family For the most part, his efforts failed to change anything. Right after the wedding, he began calling his mom weekly (rather than quarterly), but he admits his true motive was more to impress Ning than to get closer to his mother. The regular calls had their restorative effect, though, and his mother began visiting Chicago four times a year. This culminated in a big trip to Disney World with Ning’s parents and Steven's mom and stepsister. The week was an absolute disaster. The contrast in styles made everyone uncomfortable. The Scotts and Canlas’ were like oil and water. It was in Orlando that Ning learned the Scotts do know how to fight after all-at least with one another. As the story of that week was told and retold for years, it took on a nickname: the Great Experiment.
More experiments were conducted over the years, but the gains were temporary Steven has remained close to his mom, but to him the remnants and shards of his past-primarily his stepsister's family-are not worth lighting for. One family can often heal its in-laws by osmosis, but in Steven's case the gap was too great between what he expected, now that he's a Canlas’, and what the Scott’s side delivered. When he flew to Reno, where his mother and stepsister lived, the room never lit up. He predicts that when his mother dies he is likely to let that connection to her side go.
Though Steven had a lot to learn about family from Ning, he also had something to teach her: She had never learned how to say no to her family. She had never insisted they respect her borders. They had not let her become an independent adult. By this measure, she and Steven really had opposite pasts. Consider how Steven was allowed to drive throughout the Southwest by himself at sixteen. Ning’s father did not even allow her to get a driver's license at that age "You're too young, it's too dangerous!"
Then consider the way Steven was allowed to find his own way academically. He was never pressured, and as a result he's always enjoyed his work. It's his; his motives are in the right place. Ning was ordered to follow her father and become a doctor. She was sent to Stanford as the family's Great Hope." Not only did that not work out, but Ning credits this overbearing pressure with her failure to ever find her own soulful connection to work. Today she has a loveless job behind the register at a drugstore.
Her real love is music. She plays the harp and teaches cello. She, like all her siblings, was raised to the sound of “harana” on their father's guitar, and they spent their childhood in front of a piano. As teens, they "rebelled" by switching to the violin. Music had been their father's first career; he only took up medicine because his parents told him his jazz combo was no way to provide for his new family, even though he was fairly successful as a musician. (Medical school is what brought him to Chicago.) And so he passed this same warning on to his children. They were encouraged to play but never told to be great. Music was to be a hobby not a profession. He meant it. When one of Ning’s brothers moved to Los Angeles to make it as a musician-and inevitably struggled (who doesn't at first?)-this caused a great rift. He was treated as an outcast and did not speak to his father for five years.
That never would have happened in Steven's family. Perhaps it was inevitable that at some point Steven was going to buttheads with Ning’s parents. It was only a question of when, and of whose side Ning would take.
Their pastor had been dead-on during marital counseling when he predicted Ning’s family would "be in your life, in your business." This intrusiveness, let's call it, is characteristic of Filipino families in general, but by no means limited to Filipinos- I have heard this trait described hundreds of times, by families of every size and from every country. I interviewed a sprawling Sicilian family that was on the verge of exploding like a grenade under the constant pressure of being loyal to its patriarch, but I also interviewed a mom-and-pop duo in coastal Virginia who had driven their two adult children away by never respecting their independence. The size of a family does not correlate with whether or lot it respects autonomy; not to do so is a damaging trait. It destroys core families than it preserves.
Were does it come from? From tradition and imitation, partly But it's exacerbated by fear, usually the fear that the family will fall apart or fail if the rule by an iron fist is not maintained. So families that migrate internationally often bring with them a tradition of patriarchal control, but it can get much worse in the new surroundings. The Canlas’ intrusions were minor compared with other stories I heard.
'When Ning's daughter was born, her parents stepped in. At first this was great. When Candy was three, Ning decided to work part-time. By the time Candy was four, Ning realized her daughter had been allowed to become a spoiled brat. She had assumed her parents were teaching her daughter obedience and respect, as they had Ning, but apparently they'd thrown all that out the window. They were raising a princess. Ning recognized she had to take control and chose to stay at home fulltime. She needed to discipline her daughter, but did not want to spank her child as she had been spanked, so she and Steven began taking parenting classes. The classes were so great that Ning went from being a student to a teacher-facilitator. She had learned to say no to her daughter, but still hadn't learned how to say no to her parents. Was there a class for that?
Missing their granddaughter, Ning’s parents began showing up uninvited at Steven and Ning’s house. Not once in a while, which would have been charming, but every single evening. Once there, they routinely criticized the way Ning treated her daughter-and not in private, after Candy had gone to bed. At the time, Ning and Steven were trying to wean Candy off a bottle. "If she wants the bottle, give it to her. What's the harm?"
"Mom I'm trying to establish some rules here."
Dad piped in. "A hard spanking's the only way to get her to listen."
"You're not touching her!''
As a child will do, Candy sensed the lack of a united front, and she turned into an expert negotiator, twisting every no into a lengthy debate. The grandparents remained Candy's primary babysitters-they were quick to volunteer-but Ning eventually figured out that her parents were not respecting the new rules. They gave her milk in a bottle, and then let her stay up late. One step forward, two steps back. Ning screamed at them, but they thought they knew better.
It got to the point that when Ning’s parents knocked on the door in the evening, occasionally Steven and Ning hid upstairs and pretended they were not home. The third time this happened, Steven looked at Ning and said, "When Candy grows up, do you want her to hide from us?" It came to a head on the verge of Ning and Steven's tenth wedding anniversary, Steven was taking Ning to Boston for a romantic weekend, so they dropped off Candy (then seven) with her grandparents the night before they flew east. A few hours later, Candy called in tears, terrified, begging to come home. She had seen her grandparents argue quite often, but she had never seen them fight physically. Steven and Ning were incensed. In their minds, that was it. They picked Candy up and took her to an aunt's. They were up most of the night, stewing with guilt over letting it get this bad. “This has got to stop”, Steven insisted. Run the morning, you're going to call theme's they don't listen to me”.
So for the first time, Steven called them. He had no trouble putting it in a way Ning never could: "This is my family; that is yours. Please don't taint mine. Do not call here, and do not come here. We'll let you know when we are ready to let you back into our lives."
Oh, the scandal! Immediately the phones were buzzing.
"Can you believe what that husband of Ning’s said to his elders!"
Steven was suddenly the outsider, the White Guy again. Ning stood beside him (or maybe a little behind him). She might not have been able to stand up for her own needs, but she would protect her daughter. For three months the grudge did not budge. Both sides waited for an apology. Finally Ning’s father got sick, and Steven immediately took his family to visit. They were at the hospital every day. No apologies were offered, either way and the issue was buried. "My family is great at pretending things never happened,'' Ning explained.
After that, Steven made a rule: The grandparents could come over, but they had to call first. It was a small demand, and one they obeyed forever after, but not without a lot of collateral griping total's siblings. "lf it were not for Steven,'' Ning Said, "I never would have learned how to have my own life. He taught me we don't have to always give our bedroom to visitors, and we don't have to show up at every family event. Never knew I didn't have to put up with it. I tried, but they always wore me down. Steven protects me. He offers the perspective of an outsider, one who isn't Filipino and chained by the expectations that come with that heritage."
Ning summed the story up this way. "Far from being a problem, I think the fact Steven and I came from such opposite backgrounds has been the secret to our success. We've never been able to fall into a pattern, never had a chance to fall asleep at the wheel. Our contrasts have made us conscious, made us stay attentive."
"I think that's true," Steven echoed, with a glint in his eye. "But I don't know if I'll ever get comfortable with how your family likes to have their picture taken with the dead person at a funeral."
This tickled Ning, who added, "Or how we carry a pig's head on the plane when we visit cousins?''
''Yeah, I'm happy in this family but I'm never going to win the 'White Guy Game."
The 'White Guy Game was Ning’s sister's idea. They were down in
Dallas for a reunion, and she decided to put on a contest, a mock version of the game show Jeopardy! Testing all the white guys'' in the family on Filipino culture. In addition to Steven, the contestants included a Mexican spouse, a longtime boyfriend, a niece's fiance, and Ning’s younger brother, who was born in Chicago. They were instructed to count to ten in Tagalog. They were then given a couple of ingredients and asked to name a traditional Filipino dish that included them. Obscure relatives were pointed out, and anyone who could identify them scored a point. Questions were thrown out to the contestants:
"Can you use opallo and wag in a sentence?''
"What plant is a Barong Tagalog made from?"
"How do you hail somebody across a crowd?"
The family roared with laughter as the contestants guessed.
"Seventeen years we had been married'' Ning teased, remembering the contest.”You seemed to have absorbed so little."
"Sometimes it does feel like we-just got married yesterday,'' Steven remarked.
Ning replied, "That's a good thing."
 
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