Item #3 after name and gender: Citizenship?

Ay, Pilipino pa rin, Ate,” says, Florie, with sister, Daisy, who have lived in the same Vancouver rental apartment for the past 15 years. Theirs turn out to be the status of most caregiver-friends, too, or in stores working behind cash registers, at food courts, picking up your tray for cleaning and stacking, and in supermarkets, assisting you in self-serve checkout counters. 

Like them, Florie and her sister, would rather just renew their Permanent Resident (PR) cards, and when visiting the Philippines, their passports, and apply for a visa, even if quite costly and often fraught with worry over some unexpected requirements. What about voting? Florie crinkles her nose; she watches political goings-on in the Philippines at “mga nagbabagang balita,” on to a teleserye and ends the evening there—does it matter if she missed Elbowgate at Parliament House in Ottawa? “Ano ‘yon?” she asks me.

I’ve never heard her speak in English, but of course, why would she? No Filipino, who has sized up the other as one, does; in fact, stories abound about all-Filipino crews in some manufacturing companies, who continue to defy rules against using their native language at work in deference to others. Settled and feeling at home, volume, accented with crisp expletives, does not even figure for them as disturbing. Not in Florie’s jobs though—she reveals that she has picked up sentences and phrases from her employer and her ward, which had proven quite enough.

“Maliban sa passport, wala namang pinag-iba, di ba, Ate?” Florie throws this rhetorical question at me. As permanent resident, soon after five years (two in the new rules though only a working permit on arrival) of caregiving, her life has not been that much different from the Canadian-born next door neighbor, except for an invisible screen—Florie’s health insurance saved her through a small brain tumor, and then, while still under treatment, a difficult pregnancy and childbirth, finally, past the scare of multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosed at its onset, as well as added sustenance with British Columbia’s child-care support for her son.

In a way, I agree with her—when filling out forms that ask a summary of who I am, I would wince as I write, “Canada”, on the blank for citizenship/country, and hear an inner accusing voice with a finger, wagging at my nose, “abandoner”—for what, again? If I say, “just for this soundless afternoon as I write, where a cardboard-light plastic wall clock fill in seconds of finite peace,” you would raise a brow at my pretense. I won’t deny but rather accept it, as I do, when Eleanor pins me down in my attempt to evade the truth.

She, on the other hand, who has lived all of her 47 years in New York, admits switching citizenship for the least high-faluting reason, “convenience,” or an end to long lines that a Pilipinas passport subjected us with oftentimes lengthy questioning at the far end by an immigration officer—during the Marcos years, in her timeline, that is (in the late 1990s and on, for me). She had left for further studies at Columbia University soon after graduation at the University of Santo Tomas, planned to return, but rocketed instead, in publishing jobs at Random House, McGraw Hill, and Penguin, among a string of others.

Indeed, I had long pretended that I swore allegiance to Canada and Queen Elizabeth II for noble reasons like being a true “member of a polis” the way the Greeks defined it. I did via volunteering for causes, marched in protests, even stood before city council and spoke for a neighborhood in danger of dwarfism from a new development. But in the end, I realized, like Eleanor, that beyond borders, only a passport truly identifies you—the rest of it lies simply in the life you had always known, such as Florie’s, but can’t wear.