Someone Else’s Mother by Caroline Irby

“I grew up in London with a Filipina woman, Juning, taking care of me and my brother Nico. Juning, who had four children of her own living on a small island in the Philippines 7,000 miles away. Her husband left her when their children were young, and all financial responsibility for the family fell to Juning. […] Now, as an adult and a mother myself, the notion that Juning lived apart from her children for three decades is painful to imagine, and I can’t shake off a feeling of strangeness that their lives and mine carried on in tandem for all those years, mine with their mother, theirs without. My parents chose to employ Juning, and her influence on my life has been so extensive, I can’t say where it starts or ends.”