The Real Work pt 3: The Kitchen Story
This is the third of a four-part series on intergenerational wisdom and wounds. I didn’t know it was a series when I started it. October is Filipino American History Month. I dedicate this newsletter to my grandmother, Eleoteria Basalo Tanio. I hope that even a small fraction of her bravery lives on in me.
the heart of the matter
The Kitchen Story
A big part of my own healing is exploring how wisdom and wounds are passed down through family stories. Like most families, I inherited an official story from my parents. This story is used to teach both our history and the values that children are expected to uphold. Trigger alert: This story mentions family violence.
Eleoteria was born in Cebu, Philippines in a rural village. I don’t know much about her early life, except that they were poor, she had multiple siblings, and her little sister was her best friend. Both of her parents were taken by the Spanish Flu in 1918, sending the kids into grief, disarray, and even deeper poverty. At that time, the Dole Company was recruiting Filipino men to come to Hawaii to work the pineapple plantations. Her older brother decided that he would go so that he could send money back to the family. They decided that my grandma would go with him for company. When they left, her little sister hugged her so intensely that she broke Eleoteria’s sandal. My grandmother boarded the ship holding uncertainty, courage, and a single shoe. She was 14.
She met Aguido, my grandfather, soon after she arrived in Hawaii. There was one woman for every seven men in the Filipino camp, so Aguido moved fast. He asked for her hand in marriage, but her brother intervened saying she was too young. Aguido pressed on, and her brother eventually agreed that they could marry, but that they couldn’t live together for two years. Eleoteria moved in with Aguido when she was 16, and then had a child every other year for 20 years. My mom was the last of 10.
Grandpa did backbreaking work in the pineapple fields. Grandma supplemented their income by taking in laundry that she did in the irrigation ditch, and by selling her famous bibingka - a coconut cake wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over open coals. It really is the most delicious dessert. They worked hard and scraped together savings over time. They bought property from Dole and over time built homes. Money was tight, but food and shelter were never worries. Their children wore two shoes to church every Sunday.
Through this story, my siblings, cousins, and I were taught our origins. We were taught our family values - hard work, thrift, loyalty. Antos (AHN-tos) is a word we heard a lot. It’s a Cebuano word that means endure, push on, bite the bullet. It definitely means stop complaining because your parents and grandparents had it harder.
As I grew up, I realized that there was more to the story. There was pain that we didn’t discuss in polite company. I started thinking of this as our Kitchen Story because I learned this through bits and pieces when my mom and her sisters prepared food at family parties, and I would sit outside the kitchen and pretend to read a book.
I learned that Eleoteria had refused to leave Cebu, and that her brother had beaten her until she complied. Her little sister had tried to pull her away from the struggle, and she broke her sandal in the scrum. Eleoteria boarded that ship with her bruises, overwhelming grief, and single shoe.
I learned that my grandfather made arrangements for marriage with her brother, and I didn’t hear anything about her agency in the process. I learned that after her eighth child, the plantation doctor told my grandparents that she couldn’t survive another child. She delivered two more babies after that, and when my grandma gave birth to my mom, the doctor also brought my grandfather in for an involuntary vasectomy.
I learned that on payday, families would go into the sugarcane fields and hide, the men standing guard with their harvest knives. They hid from single men in neighboring camps who would get drunk and come into town to “cowboy” the women. I was an adult when I realized what cowboy meant.
Sometimes I imagine my grandmother hiding in the cane. She’s just 20 years old. She has two children and a third in the belly. She hushes her toddler and reassures her four year old. She forces herself to stay present despite a familiar terror. At dawn they return home carrying the sleeping children and grandma thinks to herself, what is this life? How have I found myself in all this suffering?
Antos means endure, and also means to hold your suffering in silence. It connotes strength, even as it asks us to accept our burden as fate.
I know that both my Family story and my Kitchen story inform our family interaction. I come from hard work and ingenuity. I also come from suffering and family violence. The hardship and violence of my grandparents' life seeped into the way they raised their kids. They had high expectations, faith, and love. They could also be unforgiving when they doled out punishment. Respect for authority, especially one’s elders, was absolute.
I hold compassion for all parts of the stories, even as I work to interrupt negative cycles. I don’t want my kids’ inheritance to include violence, reactivity, triggers, and shame. I’m working to break these patterns. It's the hardest work I've done. I have so much gratitude for my parents, grandparents, and ancestors for doing the best they could with the knowledge and contexts they possessed. Somehow these amazing people, especially the women, blessed their families with care, love, and guidance amidst great hardships and pain. It’s that legacy that I hold close, as I work to undo patterns that no longer serve me or my kids. This journey of breaking patterns and fostering positive family dynamics has been greatly supported by the insights and techniques I teach in my parenting classes focused on positive parenting principles.
we’re obsessed with
K-pop Yes, so is the rest of the world, but my obsession is different. At least two of us in my household have ADHD. Music has been proven to enhance focus for us folks, because it distracts part of our brains that need to be distracted. Music without lyrics works best. I love K-pop because it has energy and beat, but I don’t understand Korean so the lyrics don’t hurt my focus. Here’s one of my faves.
Date Days Date nights are rare for for my husband and me. Yeah, we need to do better, but also, we are trying to take advantage of flexible daytime hours (we both work from home and the kids are in school) to connect. On Friday, we are playing hooky and going hiking, and then to a winery. Please don’t tell our bosses.
where we’ve been
Thank you to the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Families for inviting me to present on Supporting Spirited Kids.
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