Gratitude for my Mom
By Jean-Paul R. Contreras deGuzman | He/Him/His | San Fernando Valley Hongwanji Buddhist Temple
My mom is part of the vast wave of Filipina medical workers whose boundless expertise, labor, and care have upheld the modern American healthcare system for nearly 60 years. In the shadow of America’s violent conquest of the Philippines, she came to this hostile shore in the early 1970s, where she worked as a nurse in Mobile, Alabama.
As a single, brown woman she entered a fraught world where the legacies of Jim Crow segregation were all around her. She remembered not knowing which bathroom to use: the ones marked “colored” or “white.” When she moved to Baytown, Texas she confronted the racism of white superiors who questioned the intellect and professional quality of Filipina nurses.
But, she survived and persisted, motivated by an unstinting dedication to support her family back in the Philippines and lift them out of the poverty in which she grew up.
In Los Angeles, she spent almost 30 years treating oncology patients at the USC Norris Cancer Center where she developed a reputation as a tough boss but a compassionate healer. In that time she also was a single mom, raising me. Somehow she managed to attend the back-to-school nights and holiday musicals.
We lived in a neighborhood without a park and I still remember how she’d bring me to the old school PlayPlace at the nearby McDonald’s even though her muscles ached and eyelids drooped after working three jobs.
Hers is a story shaped by global forces of colonization and exploitation, all too often refracted through gender inequality, but also one of inimitable strength. She’s been retired for almost 10 years now and currently enjoys traveling and the world of ballroom dance, a life never imaginable when she worked tirelessly to bring us material comfort.
Although a devout Catholic, she has been incredibly supportive of my deepening interest in Buddhism. Perhaps her experience as someone who has always had to carve out her own journey, often defying the assumptions placed on her, has led her to share compassion for my unexpected path.
She has held up the entire sky for us, and for that, I am immensely grateful.
My fashionable mom in the 1970s.
