00:01
when my mother first came to America she
00:05
left behind my father and three-year-old
00:08
brother to work in a hospital in
00:11
Richmond Virginia where the only person
00:14
she knew was the Peace Corps volunteer
00:17
who stayed with a family when she was
00:19
just a teenager the East Coast is cold
00:22
during the winter and there are no
00:25
blizzards in a rainforest the first
00:27
lesson
00:28
a Filipino learns in America is how to
00:30
find warmth back home the president has
00:34
consolidated his power and declared
00:37
martial law he says it’s for the good of
00:40
the country the Communists he says want
00:43
to kill us the Muslim extremists he says
00:45
want to kill us
00:46
and only he knows what’s best for the
00:48
people how do you say to your child
00:52
we’ll see each other again
00:54
just hold on it won’t be too long if you
01:00
can’t be certain my mother is a woman of
01:04
great faith great faith is never
01:06
acquired with ease each day is a
01:08
mountain and you carry the weight of
01:11
distance behind you I imagine the day my
01:15
father finally arrived was the first day
01:18
he’d ever seen his own breath in the air
01:21
that this was the day my brother learned
01:24
our mother keeps all of her promises
01:27
when they made me I thought I was just a
01:30
piece of clay they found on a Virginia
01:32
Beach that they took across the whole of
01:34
the country five days on the road with
01:38
nothing left to discover because every
01:40
journey is it meant to become an
01:42
awakening of ourselves we moved to San
01:46
Francisco live next to the animals at
01:50
the zoo next to an ocean that was the
01:53
only thing connecting us to home one day
01:57
my mother opens her stomach and asked my
02:01
father to place me there for safekeeping
02:04
each day they coax the fires in her
02:07
belly at night we listened to the songs
02:10
of lost creatures
02:12
we were at home with so many living
02:16
things that were far away from home I
02:20
wonder what it is like to give birth to
02:25
a child who will belong to another
02:28
country who becomes the foreigner then
02:31
which one of you is truly displaced what
02:36
do I get to be in this new country the
02:39
birth of a new world for my parents or
02:43
the death of an old one there’s a price
02:46
to knowing you are both a thing that
02:50
creates and destroys just by being and
02:54
still they will love you and to be loved
03:02
can never be painless
03:06
[Applause]
◊♦◊
Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
◊♦◊
Talk to you soon.
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
