Annie, are you ok?
When I turned five, my parents threw a big house party. Our home on Fairgreen Drive was filled with family, friends, kids running all over it, and the aroma of my mom’s Filipino party specialties. I recall the sheet cake from Goldilocks, topped with a ceramic prairie girl, whose bonneted head doubled as a flower pot. And I remember the gifts! The piles of gifts that all the guests brought for me. After the party, my mom allowed me to open them. I had never been terribly into dolls as a girl, but one doll I received — a Little Orphan Annie rag doll — was particularly dear because of the squishy little Sandy peeping his head out of the pocket of her signature red dress. By the time I had opened this gift, I had already torn open a gluttonous share, so many that it took me days to recall Little Orphan Annie. I wondered aloud to my mom: Where is Annie? “Oh, you have so many toys, Anak. We sent her to your cousins in the Philippines.” My heart sank. I didn’t get it. My Annie doll? Sent away without asking me? But why couldn’t I keep her? In the balikbayan box to the Philippines? Stuffed between cans of Libby’s corned beef, Cadbury fruit & nut chocolate bars, and wavy soled Famolare sandals? Had she not seen how precious the pocket-sized Sandy was? But then I acquiesced, understanding perhaps for the first time, the concept of privilege and the excessiveness of all the things I had received. And now, 40 odd years later and as a mom of 10-year-old boy and girl twins, here I am on a journey to live more sustainably and minimally and to help my kids understand along the way why we must.
Glossary of Terms
Goldilocks: A Philippine bakery chain established in 1966. In the 1970s, the first Goldilocks store in the U.S. opened in Artesia, California.
Anak: Tagalog for child, or my daughter or my son
Balikbayan box: a cardboard box filled with gifts sent by a Filipino living overseas (known as “balikbayan”) to family and friends in the Philippines
