The Bridge My Parents Built

This is the first essay in a small series of reflections from our family’s return to the Philippines.

The last time I was in the Philippines, I was 21 years old.

This summer, my oldest daughter turns 21.

I did not realize the symmetry of that until recently. I was thinking about flights and passports and packing lists and all the little details that come with taking a family of six across the world. And then it hit me.

The last time I stood in the country where both of my parents were born, I was the same age my daughter is now.

Back then, I was still someone’s daughter trying to understand where I came from.

Now I am returning as a wife, a mother of four, a 50-year-old woman, and a daughter who understands my parents’ journey in a way I could not possibly understand at 21.

This trip feels like more than a vacation.

It feels like a bridge.

When I was growing up, we went to the Philippines almost every other summer. At the time, I am not sure I understood what a gift that was. I knew it meant long flights, hot weather, cousins, food, family, laughter, and being somewhere that felt both familiar and not completely mine.

I knew it was where my parents were from.

But I do not think I understood that my parents were doing something deeply intentional.

They were keeping a bridge open.

They had left the Philippines to build a life in America. They raised us here. They gave us opportunities here. They taught us how to belong here. But they also kept bringing us back there, so we would know that our story did not begin in the suburbs of Maryland.

It began before us.

It began with their childhoods, their families, their sacrifices, their courage, their leaving, and their starting over.

At 21, I do not think I fully understood that.

At 50, I do.

And now, almost thirty years later, I get to walk my own children across that bridge.

I feel grateful to be going back, but I also feel the ache of how long it has taken me. Almost thirty years. I do not know exactly how that happened, except that life kept becoming life. Kids were born. Practices were built. Calendars filled. Seasons changed. And somehow the place that shaped so much of me became a place I kept meaning to return to.

We were supposed to go in 2020, but like so many things, that trip was put on hold because of COVID. At the time, it felt like a delay. Now I wonder if maybe the timing is part of the story too.

Because now Liv is almost 21.

The same age I was the last time I was there.

And I cannot stop thinking about that.

I wonder what she will notice. I wonder what she will understand now, and what she will only understand years from now. I wonder what pieces of this trip will stay with her, even if she does not have language for them yet.

Because that is how culture often works.

Sometimes you do not realize it is being passed down while it is happening.

It is in the food. The stories. The way people gather. The way family expands beyond the people who live in your house. The way your parents say certain things. The way your grandparents carry their history in their bodies, even when they do not talk about it directly.

It is in the things you absorb before you know they matter.

Growing up, the Philippines felt both familiar and not fully mine. America was home, but the Philippines held something older. I belonged to both, and sometimes I wondered if that meant I belonged fully to neither.

I do not think I would have had the words for that as a child.

But I feel it now.

And maybe that is part of why this trip feels so tender. I am not just taking my children on vacation. I am taking them to a place that helped me understand myself. I am taking them to the roots my parents tried so hard to keep alive in me.

I think about my parents and how much I wish they could come with us.

That is the tender part of this trip.

My mom is sad she cannot go. My dad recently had knee replacement surgery, and his dementia is progressing. Traveling that far would be too hard.

And there is a specific kind of ache in going back to the place that made them, without being able to bring them with me.

I wish my kids could see the Philippines through my parents’ eyes.

I wish my dad could tell stories in the way he used to. I wish my mom could point things out and explain what I missed. I wish they could stand beside my children and say, “This is where we came from.”

There are questions I wish I had asked sooner. Stories I assumed would always be available. Details I thought I could collect later.

But later changes.

Later becomes dementia.

Later becomes surgery.

Later becomes caregiver exhaustion.

Later becomes realizing that memory is not something we can take for granted.

And maybe that is part of why I feel called to go now.

Because if they cannot take my children back, I can.

I can carry what they gave me.

I can tell the stories I remember.

I can ask more questions.

I can let my children see, even imperfectly, that their family’s story stretches farther back than they know.

And this trip is not only about my parents’ story.

It is also about the people who helped shape our family in ways that are hard to fully explain.

We are going with my sister Ronnie, her husband Craig, and their two boys. We are going with Juliet, who has been part of our family for so many years. We are going with Christine, who has been like an older sister to my kids.

I keep thinking about how many different kinds of leaving are inside this trip.

My parents left the Philippines first. They were the first in their families to leave for the United States. They left parents, siblings, familiar streets, language, food, and a way of life they knew, so they could build something different for us.

And Juliet left too.

She left her family in the Philippines to work in the United States and send money back home. She left people she loved so she could provide for them from across an ocean. Her oldest daughter was was 5 years old and her oldest son was only 6 months old when Juliet left.

I do not know how to fully hold that.

Juliet has helped raise my children for so many years. She has been part of the daily rhythm of our home. She has loved my kids, cared for them, watched them grow, and become family to us.

And at the same time, she was separated from her own family. She had her youngest daughter, Christine, in the United States and was able to bring over her son when he was 19 years old, leaving her oldest daughter in the Philippines.

That is the part I want my children to understand too.

The American dream has always had another side to it. For some families, it is an opportunity. For some, it is education and safety and possibility. But it can also be separation. It can be distance. It can be missing birthdays and ordinary days and whole seasons of someone’s life because love sometimes has to stretch across oceans.

Juliet is the only one of her siblings who lives in the United States. Her entire family is in the Philippines. She has spent years loving and helping raise my children while being oceans away from her own family.

And now we get to meet them in person.

We get to celebrate her 60th birthday there, with the people who raised her and love her and have shared her from across the world.

That feels sacred to me.

And I keep thinking about what that must have felt like for Juliet.

To have her two worlds together for the first time.

The family she came from and the family she helped raise.

The people who knew her before America, and the children who know her because of the life she built there.

What a way to turn 60.

And what a gift for me, at 50, to witness it.

Because so much of this season has been about seeing things from a wider lens. Not just my own story. Not just my children’s story. Not even only my parents’ story. But the fuller picture of the people who have loved us, carried us, sacrificed for us, and shaped our family in ways we may not have fully understood while we were living it.

For my kids, I think this gave them a different lens on the Philippines too.

They were not only seeing where their grandparents grew up.

They were seeing where Juliet grew up.

They were seeing the family she missed while she was caring for ours.

They were seeing that love can belong to more than one place.

And maybe that is another kind of bridge.

I do not think I fully understood the sacrifice inside Juliet’s love until I became older. She was helping me raise my children while living far from the people who raised her. She was part of our everyday life, while carrying her own family across an ocean.

Family is not only blood.

Family is also the people who show up in the daily rhythm of your life. The people who hold your babies. Drive the carpools. Help make dinner happen. Sit in the ordinary moments. Witness your children becoming themselves.

Juliet has been part of the architecture of our home.

Christine too.

And I want my children to see that too.

I want them to understand that while Juliet was part of our everyday life, there was another family missing her in their everyday life. While she was helping raise them, she was also loving her own family from far away. While she was showing up for school pickups and meals and ordinary moments in our home, there were birthdays, milestones, and ordinary moments in the Philippines that she could not always be there for in the same way.

That is a kind of love my children are old enough to understand differently now.

They get to see the family Juliet left behind, but never stopped loving. They get to meet the daughter who was just a little girl when Juliet left and is now almost 40. They get to see that love can stretch across oceans, but stretching does not mean it was easy.

And maybe that is one of the quiet gifts of this trip. My children will see not just what Juliet has meant to us, but what she has carried for all these years.

And now my kids will get to see where Juliet grew up. They will get to meet the family who shaped her. They will get to understand, maybe in a new way, that the people who cared for them also came from somewhere, also left people behind, also carried stories of their own.

That is another bridge.

Maybe this trip is not only about showing my children where their grandparents grew up.

Maybe it is about showing them how many kinds of family have helped make them who they are.

I am realizing there is more inside this trip than I can neatly explain. There is joy, of course. There is gratitude. There is the excitement of bringing my husband and children to a place that shaped me.

But there is also grief.

There is the ache of going without my parents. There are questions I wish I had asked sooner. There is the tenderness of watching my oldest daughter turn the same age I was the last time I stood there. There is the quiet hope that my children will feel something, even if they cannot name it yet.

And there is the humbling realization that some bridges take a lifetime to understand.

I keep thinking about what my parents gave me by taking me back every other summer. At the time, I probably thought they were just taking us to visit family.

But they were doing more than that.

They were giving me roots.

They were giving me context.

They were giving me a way to understand that I could be both Filipino and American. Both their daughter and my own person. Both grateful for the life they built here and connected to the life they left behind.

And now, in this half-nester season, I feel the weight and beauty of that differently.

My kids are older. They are beginning to build their own lives. I cannot control what they remember or what they value or what they carry forward.

Part of me wants this trip to mean something to them. Maybe more than I should admit. I want them to feel connected. I want them to understand the sacrifice, the culture, the story.

But I also know I cannot force meaning.

I can only offer the doorway.

I can say, “Come see this part of your story.”

I can say, “This is where your grandparents began.”

I can say, “This is part of you too.”

And maybe they will understand some of it now.

Maybe they will understand more of it later.

Maybe someday, when they are 50, something will hit them the way it is hitting me now.

That so much of what our parents do for us is not fully understood until we are old enough to see the sacrifice underneath the gift.

The last time I was in the Philippines, I was 21.

This time, I am going back at 50.

With my husband.

With my children.

With my sister’s family.

With Juliet.

With Christine.

With joy.

With grief.

With gratitude.

With the ache of who cannot come.

And with the quiet understanding that my parents built a bridge for me long before I knew I would need it.

Now I get to walk my children across.

And I have a feeling the bridge is still teaching me.

A question for you: What bridge did someone build for you before you understood you would need it?

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Or shoot me an email: val@drvaleriewoo.com

Hearing your stories inspires me to keep sharing.