Home? Where is Home?

"For those who are visiting, welcome to Malaysia. For those who live here, welcome home!" the Air Asia pilot enthused after landing at the Kuala Lumpur airport.

We were walking towards the immigration after 3 weeks of back breaking, but really fun vacation in Manila when our 2 little angels, Gabby and Dani circled back to the airplane. Dani kicked a stone hoping to send it flying back across 2,000 miles of clouds and into the Philippines where her Ama(s) and Angkong live. Gabby pouted, "I wish we can stay home longer".

Home? Where is home? It is quite clear that Malaysia is now their physical sense of home. Malaysia has been our home for 2 years already (a third of Gabby's life and 2/3 of Dani's were spent here in this land of intriguing diversity). But emotionally, they maybe connected somewhere else -- their stories couched closely to the loving hands that held them when they were born, to cousins and friends who shared Barbie toys with them and to the thickly woven tapestry of stories from photos of their birth and growing up years. Both our children were born in Singapore, lived for a year in Thailand and have spent their last 2 years in Malaysia. By citizenship, they are both Filipino and Singaporean and their roots are Filipino and Chinese. They are Southeast Asia and yet they are isolated -- products of third culture families.

Gabby (6 YO) and Dani (3 YO) are third culture kids, spending a significant part of their developmental years outside our culture. While they can relate to a certain extent to the abundant lights and food during the most important fiesta in the Philippines-Christmas time; to Muslims praying at mosques and feasting heartily during Hari Raya Puasa; to the dozens of oil lamps (vikkus) looking like a fairyland of lights during Deepavali in Indian streets and homes; to feasting over the delicious (yet sinful) mooncake pastry filled with sweet bean paste, lotus nuts and salted egg yolks during the Chinese mooncake festival and to the excitement of seeing water doused over cars and people, all in good fun to celebrate the Thai New Year at the peak of its hottest season in Thailand, they can never have full ownership in any.

That's why stories play an important role in our lives. For our family, our photos sizzle with real life stories about friendship and important people, places and events. Our children retrieve stories and move back through the place and time of the most important events by checking out the family scrapbook every now and then. It has been a favorite family past time!

Every life is a story. This blog is a way of sharing ours, of letting family and friends know that we maybe in one more place at one more time in the world, but we are still HERE.


Love,
Cherry