I was around eight when my mom told me she wanted a grandchild with blue eyes. We were just hanging out in the backyard, sitting beside each other on a hammock, when she said, “Gusto ko ng mestizong apo!” She told me she wanted to see them in person, as blue eyes aren’t something you typically encounter in ordinary Philippine settings.
“Mestizo” is a Spanish word that originally described a person of Spanish and indigenous descent. Over time, the meaning evolved to a broader definition: a person of mixed race. In the Philippines, a mestizo is someone who is half-Filipino and half-foreigner, or, in simpler terms, a “tisoy”—someone with evident Caucasian features who is conventionally attractive.
My mom and I were among the many Filipinos obsessed with them. Back then, I saw them as the most attractive people in the world. I admired their bright white skin, blonde hair, tall height, pointy noses, and blue eyes. My mom wanted me to find a man with those features—an American, essentially.
My search for “the one” began before I even got my period. I was a naïve young girl, eager to make my mom’s wish come true. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t handsome, rich, or intelligent. As long as he had blue eyes, I would marry him.
But it wasn’t as easy as I thought. When I learned about genetics in high school, I realized that a child wouldn’t automatically inherit a parent’s rare trait. I was never good at science, so I asked my classmates to calculate the probabilities for me.
“Only 50%, Jew. You need to make sure blue eyes are his dominant trait.”
I had no idea what they meant by a dominant trait (this is my confession to all my science teachers that I just winged it back then). My classmates took deep breaths and tried their best to explain the topic to me.
For years, I believed that a rare trait, like blue eyes, meant a stronger gene. Turns out, the rarer the trait, the harder it is to inherit. That day, I realized my child could also inherit my black eyes, especially since they’re my dominant trait. All my family members have either black or brown eyes. That lightbulb moment made my plan even more specific: I had to find a man whose entire family had blue eyes. I needed to be sure.
So it became my mission. At some point, it turned into my purpose. I searched for those blue eyes in magazines and films. I studied English diligently until it became my favorite subject and, eventually, my college major. I memorized “The Star-Spangled Banner” and learned all the U.S. states. I prepared myself to become a full-fledged American citizen one day.
My goal was to give my mom a grandchild with blue eyes. I never even bothered to ask her why she wanted it so badly. At the time, I believed it was the key to making her truly happy. She rarely smiled and had been strangely indifferent since I discovered what was in Dad’s camera.
But as I grew older, the road to happiness led me to other paths, and I found myself tempted to explore the unfamiliar.
My mom and I were so close that she even knew about my biggest crush in high school—the short boy with black chinito eyes. She also knew about the others: the one shorter than me who turned out to be gay, and the rest who weren’t particularly remarkable. None of them were mestizos. They were all Filipinos, and most of them radiated the rainbow.
At 20, all I had in mind was the slow burn of falling in love with my classmate—a Filipino with dark skin and black eyes—which didn’t work out in the end. I also tried matching with different guys on dating apps, including those with blue eyes, but being with someone from a different race felt like a betrayal, as if I were a traitor to my kin.
I’ve always found it hard to adapt to a culture that’s too different from mine. I didn’t want to marry someone who couldn’t understand my kanal jokes or my sudden Bisaya puns. I couldn’t live in a place without organic ingredients for my favorite sinigang. I couldn’t imagine paying too much for bananas. I couldn’t bear the cold; I already shiver when the electric fan is set to 3. And I couldn’t imagine missing caroling and singing karaoke during Christmas.
Marrying an American isn’t just about having blue eyes and bright white skin; it’s acculturation. It’s forgetting the lyrics to “Lupang Hinirang.” It’s missing monthly fiestas and traditions. It’s eating burgers and pizza for dinner. It’s speaking my mother tongue only during video calls. I couldn’t trade my pride for blue eyes.
At 24, sixteen years after my mom told me she wanted a grandchild with blue eyes, I finally understood what she really wanted: freedom. She wanted to live in America. She believed in the land of the free.
Before she got married, she told me she had an ex-boyfriend who now lives in America. If she hadn’t met my dad, she would’ve been living there today—and I wouldn’t even exist. But I do, and I guess I felt obligated to make that American Dream a reality for her.
Before I could tell her I couldn’t, she died.
That dream was buried with her in 2016.
My mom spent her remaining years in the Philippines, wearing old, tight shoes that gave her blisters. She never had the chance to step onto the land of the free.
She always told me she wanted to separate from my dad, but divorce isn’t an option in the Philippines. Our country doesn’t believe the depth of your wounds is grounds for divorce—not even for annulment. And even if my mom had considered the latter, she didn’t have the money. Marriage is tying the knot, but no one warns you about the abrasions when the rope gets too tight.
I remember standing up for a class debate about divorce in the Philippines. I argued that marriage is a union between two people, so when it becomes too crowded, one should be granted the right to leave. I fought for women’s rights to be free from abusive marriages. I had seen it on television. I had read about it in books. I witnessed it in my mom’s eyes. Although my dad never physically abused her, what he did echoed in my mom’s eternity and reverberated in me.
I didn’t win. Instead, I was humiliated like a heretic for having such “liberal” beliefs at 14.
“This is not how a Catholic should think!”
Trembling, I looked at the nun officiating the debate with the eyes of the Fallen Angel at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. She was passionately defending the sanctity of marriage, while I was fighting for my mom’s freedom. From that moment, I began to see religion in a different light.
I am a Catholic educated in three Catholic schools. I served the Church three times a week: Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I was surrounded by people whose faith seemed greater than mine, and I believed in their ability to heal the world.
That’s why I was bewildered to discover that their empathy is selective. They say you can only know a person’s pain once you experience it yourself. For me, though, believing that someone is hurting is enough.
How does a Catholic think? Does it mean adhering to your marriage vow, “Till death do us part,” even if your partner has disobeyed the sixth commandment? Is breaking your vow more sinful than committing adultery?
My mom, along with other women in the organization she belonged to, endured the infidelity of their husbands until their last breaths. They couldn’t do anything. Even if they tried, we live in a country where reputation is valued more than respect. Women are dictated to submit to their husbands. The Scripture says so. The blind fanatics hurl Bible verses at you when you try to escape a punishment you don’t deserve to repent for.
My parents were no longer happy in their marriage. I was young, but I knew. I witnessed how their tight hugs turned into fleeting gestures, how they used to sleep in each other’s embrace until the bed became too small to accommodate their space. I learned early on that love can pivot from ardent gazes to long, silent stares at the ceiling.
I was afraid of it. I didn’t want to get married and have kids. My grief built high, solid walls to keep me from following in my mother’s footsteps. I was a confidant to my solitude, and providing solace for another had become strenuous.
I believed that single blessedness was my vocation in life. My eyes had seen enough tragedies, from witnessing my parents’ marriage slowly lose its essence to watching my mother catch her last breath. I became brittle, like dried leaves left unswept in the backyard of an abandoned house. Small, silent steps of a visitor were enough to shatter me.
I let them shatter me, hearing the sharp crisp of my fragments as they stepped on me.
Love gave me my first tattoos, then broke up with me two weeks after my dad’s passing in 2021. The tattoos are imprinted as a reminder of my resilience.
Love also made me French toast because I didn’t know what it tasted like. In French, it’s called “pain perdu,” or “lost bread” in English. It had to end because I had already found myself.
Now, love climbs mountains with me, hearing my silent screams of sorrow. And if it shatters me, I won’t resist. I will travel with the gust.
All of them were Filipinos. None of them had blue eyes. I was silly for thinking it was as easy as locating words in a word hunt.
As much as I despise smelling the stench of corruption, hypocrisy, the pollution from a congested jeepney, and having barely enough monthly salary, I was hopeful to see the country in a better light. I was rooted in a purpose that I was to contribute to its arrival. It was my mom who told me I should be makabayan. She told me I should become a lawyer who fights for women’s and farmers’ rights.
I may not have become a lawyer, but I knew she succeeded somehow. As early as elementary, my teachers encouraged me to join in different competitions that would showcase my love for the country. I even received a comment on the back of my report card that I was observed passionately looking at the flag while singing the national anthem. I volunteered for the national elections. I speak for different advocacies in our locality. I teach literary theories that will make my students understand the complexities of the world.
Yet, her dreams for me were contradicting. She gave me wings to flee from my country to become a mother of a child with blue eyes, but I was no Icarus.
My mom loved her country, and I know she loved me, but her desire for freedom resisted and pleaded to stay with me. I consoled her trauma and took care of it like an evacuee in the midst of a storm. It was a lost cause who found shelter in my solace.
The storm has to end somehow, and I have to let it go. This is my way of letting it go.
So, how will I give birth to a child with blue eyes?
I won’t, and I guess my mom will never know.
But if she’s looking above from heaven, I hope she’ll forgive me for being just like her, for going back to what hurt her the most: the love of a Filipino, of course, with black eyes.
I just hope my child won’t write about me wanting to have a grandchild with blue eyes because I couldn’t fulfill my dream of being free.
I hope I’ll be free to soar in the sky above the ocean—blue, like the eyes of the grandchild she couldn’t have.
Jewel Mansia is currently teaching at Ateneo de Davao University–Senior High School while pursuing her master’s degree in literature at the University of Southeastern Philippines. Writing is her way of preserving her memories of her departed parents.