Care, Distance, and the Cost of Leaving Home — DIG
That imported microwave wasn’t meant for cooking. When my siblings and I opened it, we peeled back layers of clothes and found phones and a PlayStation Portable tucked inside — as if the box had been quietly holding a second life. It had traveled across oceans from the United Arab Emirates to our home in the Philippines, sealed inside a balikbayan box my mother sent in her place. My mother was a single parent raising five children. When I was six, she left for Abu Dhabi, joining millions of Over...
