Mainly Mita

Here’s the long delayed second part to my original post of the same title.

Medical care can be a sensitive issue between partners.  It’s not something you discuss when you’re about to get married.  At least, my husband and I didn’t.  We only go to that serious talk well into our marriage.  Now we both know what the other wants when a medical crisis happens in the future.  As a “just in case”, I’ve told my side of the family too.   When it comes to the serious matters, my parents are both very respectful of their children’s spouses and never meddled in our lives.   But still, it’s best to be safe.

My family can after all, be contradictory.  One minute they are telling me I should take better care of my husband.  I gave him the tail end of the stuffed grilled fish we once had at my mom’s place and the parents were just aghast that I was so rude.  He doesn’t like fish heads….what can I say.  The next week, they are telling me I baby my husband so much, to a point where I’m making him the center of my universe.  This is because I adjust my menu to suit his tastes more than mine.  I figure I’m in my country and anything I have a craving for, I can always have at my mom’s house or at any restaurant.

Oh and there was the issue of letting my husband go off without me to Davao City and Subic!  There have been break-ins in our area and you really cannot leave the house empty for very long so I decided to stay home while my husband took his friend and his son for those short jaunts.  Well,  I trust him first of all.  No matter what color he is, he can take care of himself just as well as anyone else, anywhere.  And he did fine!

The fact is, my family never really had to interact with my husband until we moved back to the Philippines almost two years ago.  Serious adjustments and a change in outlook was required from all parties, including myself.

When we got here, our rental was not as ready as we wanted it to be.  All our things were coming a couple of months after our arrival and my parents were kind enough to offer us a safe haven.  But it’s a small house, and several other people living there.  So we camped out in a portion of the living room, with the sofa serving us our only means of privacy.  I was very surprised at how my husband coped with this arrangement.  He did fast-track our move into the empty house but over-all, he did great with our inital living arrangements.

I talked to him before our move.  Actually, I prepared him long before we even took concrete steps to move back.  Always, I’d tell him how Filipino families are.  The fact that I never subjected him to any outrageous, in his American eyes, situations throughout our courtship made him appreciate my efforts to cushion the impact for him.  He has thanked me more than a hundred times for this.

In the past too, he didn’t understand my closeness with my nephews and got jealous of the time I spent with them.  Just this morning, he was telling me how terrible he’d feel if the boys moved away with their mother.  It’s a real possibility since their father is a non-Filipino and lives overseas.

Before the second anniversary of our move comes, my husband has even suggested we fix up my parents’ old place so we could move in with them.  It will solve our problem of wanting to travel without having to worry about coming back to an empty house. For my parents. it will also solve the problem that comes with living in an old house.  Butfor me, it’s a turning point and important milestone marking what perhaps is the final step to bridge the gap of our differences as an interracial couple.

At times, I still can’t help but blurt that out to my husband of almost 7 years.  Strangely, the fact that we are so different still surprises to this day.  Underneath the visual differences between my husband and myself, there are several more layers contributing to the “colorful” life we live.   But, if we both were a little less sensitive to our differences, we probably would not have survived.

The cultural difference is the most obvious of course.  We lived in two different countries, on opposing sides of the planet no less, for most of our lives.  Our upbringing was influenced by different traditions and attitudes.  Over-all of course, we were brought up with the same basic Christian values but there are still a lot of differences.  Strangely enough, I was raised more liberal than my husband was.

The biggest difference we had to overcome was the Filipino openness against the American need for privacy.  For Filipinos, total candidness is a must or we die a slow death.   Americans on the other hand, need a certain amount of space clear so they can breathe.  Filipinos are like frogs who think nothing of jumping into a small, crowded pond full of other frogs, but the American frog will find his own space, in a less-crowded pond somewhere.

We were reminded of this fact late last year when our neighbor’s daughter came home for the holidays with her big, strapping Canadian husband in tow.  The woman is about my age and she and her husband had been married as long we have.  But unlike our experience, they met and married in Canada so he never visited the Philippines nor met her family before.  In fact, we later learned, this was her husband’s first trip outside North America.  And what a trip it turned out to be.  There was a medical emergency involving the wife soon after they arrived and that just changed things dramatically, bringing out all the cultural differences possible in a cross-cultural marriage.

First of all, their plan was to stay with her family for the duration of their vacation.  When you move into a Filipino home, that usually means sharing space with not just her parents, but the brother, the sister, the sister-in-law, the brother-in-law and several nieces and nephews - and the family dogs….all in a small, cramped space.  The space is not all bad… you have most of the necessities minus the hot running water, but still, with so many more people sharing the air and the space, breathing is just that much more difficult for a Westerner.  For Filipinos, it’s always been, “The more, the merrier.”  And yes, Filipinos want to “make sure” you are alright and will constantly bug you about one thing or another , usually making sure you are well-fed.  It’s part of Filipino hospitality to never leave a “guest” alone….to allow this to happen would be rude.  For a Filipino, there’s nothing sadder than for a person to be alone….and that shall be rectified by hook or by crook!

When a medical emergency happens, the Filipino family gets involved.  I’ve seen this happen in our own family.  The spouse is not the only one who has a say about a patient’s care, it’s the whole family.   Regarding medical care, it’s an unspoken rule that elder siblings of the patient has to be consulted.  For a Westerner spouse not used to this practice, it may feel like he was being pushed away.

The other day,  my husband was writing a post on inheritance for his Philfaqs blog.  He turned to me and asked if I knew how crazy the law was. He explained and it gave me a headache. Read what he wrote and if it doesn’t make your head spin, let me know.

This is just one example of how protectionist Philippine laws are. When you enter into a marriage, I doubt majority of us ever think of these things. When I was married  in the US, I didn’t even think about these things.  In the Philippines, if you are an alien who has invested your life savings in Philippine property you can get very badly screwed if your Filipino spouse dies and your children are all non-Filipinos.  My poor husband will be left with hardly anything if I died before he did!

My little conversation with the Spouse made me remember something I wanted to write for this blog. I always wanted to look up the 1987 Constitution and see what needs changing. So I looked it up and looked at the Family and Revised Penal Codes too.  Gee, the laws for the family are so strong, but so anti-women! And our adultery law says that women who have carnal knowledge with men other than her husband is guilty of adultery, get this, even AFTER her marriage is declared void.  For men?  Oh, it doesn’t matter if he has all the carnal knowledge with any woman any day - so long as he doesn’t “cohabit” with the woman, he’s fine!

And what is the beef with illegitimate children? I’d feel so marginalized I’d start a party list group for illegitimate offspring so they would have representation in Congress!

I’ve made an initial list of amendments I personally feel the Constitution needs, including a complete shift since this form of government doesn’t work for us. Perhaps I’ll come up with more, but for now, this is the list:

A shift to a Federation of States with four states, namely: Luzon, Bicol, Visayas and Mindanao. Each state will have its own set of laws and local government headed by the governor, who are elected by the people.

Parliamentary form of government headed by a Prime Minister duly elected by the Upper and Lower House from within their ranks. The Head of State is the President. The Presidency will be occupied by each state in rotation every 10 years. States will elect their own candidate.

Lower House representatives will number 250 and will come from the different provincial districts and party lists duly accredited by the federal election body. These representatives will carry 5- year terms, with no term limits. The Upper House will be composed of 25 members proportionately representing the 4 states.

Enactment of a Federal Election Law that will cover not only the conduct of federal elections but campaign funding provisions as well. There should be a provision for public funding of campaigns to limit patronage politics.

Abolition of the Commission on Election and replacing with a federal regulatory body that will oversee election and campaign laws. Adoption of an electoral college with electors coming from and appointed by the dominant, national parties. Electors cannot be in public office. The electoral college will strengthen the 2-party system and should be adopted until such time when the political party system has strengthened. The electoral college will also be tasked with affirming the qualification of candidates.

Separation of Church and State shall be inviolable. This text should be included: “There shall be no interference whatsoever of the sacred religious feelings in State affairs and policies.”

Reference to the spiritual development of the youth should be removed. This is not the duty of the state.

Dissolution and review of the current Civil, Family and Penal Codes. A new law should be drafted that will allow divorce, allow more equality for women, alien spouses and illegitimate children. Adultery and concubinage should be decriminalized or even scrapped altogether.  Sex between consenting adults, no matter the civil status of the adults,  is a personal matter and the state should not get involved in it.

The law on inheritance should be reviewed and made more equitable for illegitimate children and alien spouses.

Equality under the law in the Philippines will not be achieved because the Pinoy brain is so used to judging an individual based on his social and financial standing.

If this was not true, no Pinoy would make reference to his own standing in life in online forums -  using anonymous nicknames.

If this was not true, any individual’s opinion would count but no, we have to qualify the person as so-and-so or a graduate of such-and-such school or holding such-and-such position.

It’s good rhetoric to invoke equality in law but it’s all lip service at this point and cannot be achieved unless we make the change within ourselves.

This is a post I wasn’t particularly looking forward to write. In a couple of posts back, I wrote about my misadventures with our 15-year old maid, Cyril.

She left last Monday after I found a couple of things of mine in her possession. This was not the first time but this time, I was bitterly disappointed. We had spoken after the first incident and she seemed remorseful enough but didn’t say a word. The ridiculous thing about it is, I gave her a warning before we cleaned the closets in her room.  Even more ridiculous is,  she took inconsequential things that I probably would have given her or bought for her - if only she had asked me beforehand. I made it a point to ask her if she needed anything before I did my weekly shopping and even if she didn’t ask, I bought her all her toiletries and over the counter drugs.  I had just bought her a fresh supply last week in fact.
This is more to me than just losing some material things. When you see something of yours in someone else’s possession, you feel violated, no matter how trivial it all seems later. One thing she took was one of those small hotel soaps I saved from the Avalanche Ranch in Colorado, where Spouse and I celebrated our 5th anniversary. It wasn’t just a piece of soap, it was a souvenir of a very happy time that will never happen again. I already explained to Cyril how it was important that since we lived in the same house, we have to trust one another. This time I had to explain much more. I didn’t rant, I didn’t rave, I was just so sad and disappointed my body became limp.

I know I got through to her about the lying. Even if she knew she’d get in trouble that last day, she didn’t lie when I asked her if there was something else of mine she took. When I first asked her about this lying business, she said it was the first thing that came to mind, which I found very worrisome. How can anyone trust a person whose first instinct is to lie?

On that last day, she didn’t show any remorse. Initially I saw the fear in her eyes when she was caught. When I took her aside to talk to her, the defiance in her eyes got stronger. After all the little and major boo-boos that happened, she never once apologized. I told her this and asked her if she knew what “sorry” meant. She told me she didn’t, which I didn’t believe of course. Still, I explained to her, “If you step on someone’s toes…what do you usually say?” The defiance didn’t leave her eyes and I sadly said, “It seems you are not going to say it today too.” And that’s when I told her she could leave.

Oh, I didn’t fire her. She was the first to say she wanted to leave. We already agreed last week she was going to finish this month and not come back. That’s another story in itself….she was getting lonely at night and didn’t like sleeping alone in her room, not a maid’s room mind you, a regular spare room within our house. She was negotiating with us about the terms of her employment and I was willing to accommodate but my husband wouldn’t hear of it because she just started with us.

I really thought we were getting somewhere with our lessons. Our pace going through the exercise book got faster because she could read better too. I still had to explain what the words meant sometimes, whether they were old or new words, but her vocabulary was picking up.

I had real hopes for her. I had hopes she’d see there was a broader world that wasn’t always cruel or mean. I had hopes she’d have a better life than what her mother knew. I had hoped she would grow to be an independent woman who was capable of making her own mind and directing her own course in life. I had hopes she could one day be confident enough to open her own bank account, make choices that affect her community and the country and even vote responsibly some day. I still hope that future is hers whether or not I see her again.

I hope  it will be, perhaps it will. Just before she walked out our gate, she came back sobbing her eyes out and unexpectedly said, “Ma’am, I’m really sorry for what happened.”