Guk mal! Da! Auto Ja Nein Mehr are just some of the words that my son has been using. Even his way of catching our attention is in German. He says Hallo instead of Hello. When he falls down, he says hopalla instead of the easier ooops.

I know that he will grow up to be multilingual, slowly but surely. Tagalog and English should also be part of his life. Apart from that, Filipino culture should also be imbued in him. However, I still cannot stop my heart from literally aching everytime I hear him speak more German. And, even this early, I can see him becoming more and more German. He is half German and we do live in Germany. This is our reality. I may have already accepted that fact but… I still cannot stop myself from wanting to call it unfair that he is more German than Filipino. The immature part of me, would want everything to be equal. That he gets his fair share of my culture. But, sadly, that is not how it works. I am outnumbered. By the influence of his environment, more than anything else.

I am not saying that it is bad for him to be more German than Filipino. Just that, in my mind and in my heart, I would have wanted him to be more Filipino. After all, isn’t our home country and our own culture always the best in our eyes? And the longer that I am away from the Philippines and the Filipinos, the truer it is.