9/10: Malayo na pero Malayo pa Photo Competition

By: Avreen Roque

The photograph below was taken on my brother and I’s first night in the UK, with my mother on the left, who had emigrated a few months before. At the peak of harsh January snow, we stayed in a student house which my parents begged the landlord to let us rent for a year. A house that was bare and temporary.Warm sinigang broth in a Union Jack cup. A Tesco tray bake to celebrate. A captured moment of our family in refuge and transition, reunited at a round table.

Thirteen years and more than a handful of different houses later, we gathered at my mother’s home. We live separately now, but we find time to eat together. A rectangular table, each of us on our respective sides. My mother's home is alive. A fruit bowl. Magnets on the fridge from places travelled. Thriving plants. Signs of life accumulated and maintained today, tomorrow and the day after. Nowadays, a 'meal at home' isn’t a refuge as much as a pit stop amidst our busy lives; with food that is quick, convenient and familiar. Pancit na bihon. Hovis white bread. Greasy chips from our local fish and chips shop.

In the last decade, our family and everything around us has changed. Parts of ourselves have integrated with British culture, merging with our Filipino selves that stayed and creating something entirely new.

Our worry is not where we will move next, or whether there is enough money to live comfortably, but whether we can find enough time where our lives can overlap again, even just for an evening. In the meantime, what remains is that we eat together.

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