Assignment 19: Lena Ilagan

For most Asian households, rice is the primary staple of the home.  For my family, it's unsolicited advice (though rice is a close second).  My father, the champion of unsolicited advice, has dropped many loads in the past, but in some of those loads shines a gleaming pearl of wisdom. These pearls all gleam in different lights, some funny, some sad, and some useful. One of my favorite pearls came from a rather old clam, one which had been building up micro-fragments of sand within its fleshy core for many years.  We were in Merida, Mexico, when my father gave me one of the best pieces of advice I ever had. The music of hundreds of birds rang throughout the square, and the sun was setting, blanketing the city in a cloth of soft gold and pink, while the smell of food vendors hawking their skewers of crackling chicken and beef and long, steaming, and sugary churros permeated the air. It was one of the most picturesque moments of my life; it had rained earlier, and everything was so clear and crisp, with every sense launched into HD mode.  I was sitting with my father on a park bench in the square, and we were listening to some street performers sing.  I asked him what they were singing about, and he told me their song was about dreams.  My father often gave his unsolicited advice in the form of his many parables about his adventurous childhood.  One recurring theme of his tales of the crackling, dusty heat of Nigeria, and steamy, pungent atmosphere of Manila was that I needed to work hard to get the things I wanted.  He lived in many countries as a child, and never had a stable home, so he always told me variations of the same story: he saw something he wanted, but being the poor child he was, he had to work extra hard and do xyz to get it.  After some time I had all together ignored his advice, simply waiting on my parents to do everything for me.  But in this very moment, this golden, shining moment of my memory, my father gave me a piece of advice, one which stood apart from all others.  When I asked him about what his dream as a child was, he told he this:

I always dreamed of having a good family and being able to take them to all of the places I've been. But when I was a kid, that was just a dream.  I never thought I'd get here.  I had to go through years of torture, but it was worth it.  I'm here now, taking my family to different places, having a great time with them.  I love my life now, and I hope you work hard enough so you can do the same things with your family.  I want you to love life.

This piece of advice struck a nerve in me, whether it was the setting, or the nostalgia, all of it places that advice in the center of my pearl necklace.