Finding Your Path as an Immigrant in Small-Town America (A Multi-Post Series)

As a baby, as a child, you’re not making big life decisions. You follow your parents. They’re the ones choosing where to go, what to do—and you go along, trusting their choices, even if you don’t fully understand them.

As a parent, you want the best for your children. Sometimes that means leaving behind everything you know, crossing oceans, and starting over in a country that promises dreams can come true.

My family moved to Oregon from the Philippines in the ’90s. It was my dad, my mom, my older sister, and me—all four of us living in a three-bedroom house with some old white folks. (My little sister wouldn’t join us until the 2000s.) They were kind, and they were makers. There was a woodshop in the backyard and a candy maker in the kitchen that made the whole house smell like sugar.

Early on, I was exposed to craftsmanship—tools, textures, process. The roots of what I’d one day do began there.

But things didn’t always make sense. Why was my dad gone during the day? Who were these old white people? Why were they so nice to us? Why did they let me watch Land Before Time in their living room, but not in my parents’ room? I remember when my mom got a job and had to leave at night. Then it was just my dad, my sister, and me at bedtime.

All of those choices make sense now. They were building something—slowly, carefully, like in a woodshop.

Eventually, we moved out of that house and into a townhouse a few blocks away. Still in the same small town. Still figuring it out. But it was a beginning.

My sister and I at the kitchen table with Daryl - one of the kind ol’ folks who opened their home to us.