The Pseudo Expat

I’ve been blogging a little too much about So You Think You Can Dance lately and neglecting the other parts that The Pseudo Expat is about:  single parenting and Christianity. There was a Filipina on SYTYCD though up until last night so that sort of covered the Filipina-American thoughts.

Some things are a bit too private to talk about so I avoided it until I learned from it and can now discuss it here.

I was driving down Old Hickory Boulevard, admiring the leaves in their different stages of death — explosions of deep reds, yellows, greens, and oranges — as if holding on to dear life in bursts of color defying the inevitable, their shouts of, “We live! We live! We live! Look at us!” falling on the deaf ears of their fallen comrades littering the ground, brown and dry, when the prosaic cycle of life came to mind. It is a beautiful death, this being born a leaf: to be birthed, to live, to color, to wither, and then to die, not unlike us humans.

We come into this world, we live for but a sliver of time, bursting with life, and then we slip into eternity. Something I’ve been thinking of a lot these days. It probably has to do with my turning a new decade last July. I’m thinking more and more in terms of “the rest of my life” and “the second half of my life”; thinking more about the impact, if any, my life has had; thinking about how good, or bad, a parent I’ve been.

Me with blonde and red hair as 5B

I left behind a successful eighteeen year career as a freelance voice talent for radio and TV commercials in the Philippines and a fourteen year career in radio — the last five of which were as a morning show host — at the peak of our success. Interspersed within these were various stints in theater as an actress and as a freelance production assistant, and then a two year stint as a communications training manager. I left all of these behind to work full-time in a non-profit Christian ministry. I was there for two years before life shifted gears again when I came home to the U.S. in 2007.

Contrary to what I had been told about how easy it would be for me to get a job in the U.S., it took me sending out more than a hundred resumes and registering on countless online job search websites before I finally found work as a club concierge for a luxury property in Orlando, on the basis of being referred by a Filipino manager who worked there. Lesson learned? It really does matter who you know! Sometimes. Of course, God was working out a lot of character issues in my heart by allowing me to eat humble pie big time.

All of that pie ultimately led to an amazing turn of events that involved Twitter, Multiply, and a string of e-mails. After fourteen months as a concierge, the non-profit Christian ministry I worked for in the Philippines hired me for the Nashville office.

But that story is not what this blog is about. This one’s about coming to terms with my daughter’s becoming an adult.

We went through a major tug-o-war these past three weeks. On one side, her insistence on moving to the West Coast to study at an expensive art school; on the other, me and my raindrops of cost, cost, cost, and asking the tough questions of whether she is ready — spiritually, emotionally, mentally, financially — to leave.

I have so many stories to tell, both good and bad, and I realize that she will have to find and make ones for herself to tell some day. Hopefully, hers will be far happier and joyful and glorifying to God than the many twisted tales I wove before He found me. I pray that everything she’s learned about Jesus from the time she was five — and is still learning — will be all that will pull her through for the rest of her life.

So the other night I made the tough decision to let her go and learn what she needs to learn. That’s the plan.

And while I enter the Fall of my years, the leaves of my life explosions of deep reds, yellows, greens, and oranges, I pray her Spring will be beautiful and exciting and memorable and filled with lots of good stories for her to share with her children some day.

I know even without meeting her yet that one day I will have a granddaughter, who on the verge of turning 20 will be aching to spread her wings. If I’m still around, I will look my beloved offspring in the eye, smile, and mouth the words, “I love you. Now you know.”