When I was 3 years old, my parents flew us to the United States from the Philippines. They sincerely believed that the USA could offer greater opportunity for their family; they took the risk to relocate to a foreign land and leave the comfort of the country they were both familiar with: the Philippines. Thirty-four years later, I am so grateful that they had the courage to make that international move into another country. I can’t imagine living and growing up anywhere else.
Although they left the Philippines more than 34 years ago, along with them they took their Filipino culture which was embedded in their actions and demeanor. Because they were my parents, they sprinkled my life with their rich Filipino traditions through the way they raised me. Moreover, other relatives like my aunts, uncles and grandmother also taught me to embrace my Filipino culture and to never forget where I came from.
Some traditions they taught me were grand and were worthy of self-pride, however, others, like the 7 crazy superstitions below, were traditions I’d rather distance myself from being associated with to protect my own credibility as well as to stay true to my Catholic beliefs. I can only take the superstitions as they are: mere superstitions.
I call them “Filipino” superstitions only because I first heard of them from my Filipino relatives. I have yet to hear of these superstitions through any non-Filipino channel.
Crazy Filipino superstition 1: “Turn your plate.” My mother would instruct my sister and I to turn our plates whenever someone left the table during a meal. By turning our plates, we were ensuring that the individual who left the table would arrive at their destination safely. Failure to ‘turn your plate’ would prove an ultimate demise for the person who just left. Wouldn’t it have been more polite if that person just waited for everyone to finish eating before leaving?
Crazy Filipino superstition 2: “Don’t cut any string off your clothes when you are wearing it.” My mother warned us never to cut a stray string off our clothes if were currently wearing it. If we did, we would be increasing our chances of undergoing surgery. The clothes we wore symbolized our own flesh, thus, cutting anything from it like string or tags would lead to a surgeon cutting our own flesh. She could attest to it because she apparently was guilty of not following this superstition, then soon after she had to go through a hysterectomy. Consequence or coincidence?
Crazy Filipino superstition 3: “Don’t sweep the floor at night time.” I remember sweeping the kitchen floor after dinner when my grandmother began scolding me with extreme fear in her voice. “Don’t sweep the floor at night time!” she said loudly. I was quite alarmed because it was one of the very first times that I took initiative in participating with the household chores. Needless to say, I let her keep charge of cleaning the kitchen. I later found out that sweeping the floor at nighttime would lead to bugs and worms falling from the ceiling. I would be afraid to sweep at night, too, if I had known sooner.
Crazy Filipino superstition 4: “Don’t eat the hardened rice at the bottom of the pot.” My mother was big on education and success. She made sure that her children never ate the hardened rice or “tutong” at the bottom of the pot. The “tutong” is the scorched rice usually found at the bottom of a pot of rice cooked over a stove top. Eating the “tutong” would cause whoever consumed it a lifelong fate of being last in school, last in career, last in everything. My sister and I stayed away from the ‘bad luck’ rice not because of the ill fate it might bring us, but more because it just didn’t taste good anyway!
Crazy superstition 5: “Bring uncooked rice and salt when you move into a new home.”
When my husband and I bought our first home, my mother, his mother and the rest of the clan all said, “Bring uncooked rice and salt.” My husband and I were more concerned about bringing in a crucifix to make sure that God’s love and presence would fill the corners of the home. Instead, they, who were also devout Catholics, wanted us to bring rice & salt. Rice & salt were symbols of wealth and good fortune. By bringing them in, we’d be ensuring our fate as we lived in our new home. Instead of starting an argument, my husband and I just laughed, then brought all 3 items inside. We needed the rice and salt to prepare for lunch anyway.
Crazy Filipino superstition 6: “Don’t cut the baby’s hair until after her first birthday. My daughter had so much hair when she was a baby that it grew quite uneven during her early months. As a concerned mother, I wanted to trim the edges of her hair just to make her overall appearance a little neater. As soon as I mentioned my intentions to my Filipino clan, I was met with an adamant, “No, you should wait until after she turns one year old.” They said that if you cut it before her first birthday, you will cause her to have a short life. What mother would want that for her child? So, I waited it out and convinced myself that her head was too wobbly anyway to be able to trim her hair evenly and NOT because I believed in the superstition.
Crazy Filipino superstition 7: “Apply wet string on the forehead to cure hiccups.” When my husband and I had our first child, we had to attend classes to prepare for her baptism. Rather than bring the baby to the class, we asked my husband’s mother to watch the baby while we were away. That was the first time we had ever left the baby to anyone else to take care of; the baby was always with my husband or myself. We still trusted my mother-in-law, but as new parents, we were just apprehensive. When we finally returned from the class later that evening, I was eager to reunite with our daughter. I rushed through the door and walked towards my mother-in-law who was carrying the baby. When I took a first look at my baby’s face, I saw a white string on her forehead. My mother-in-law said in a very authoritative tone that she had put a wet string on the baby’s forehead because before we arrived, the baby was having a hiccup episode. My husband and I said, “Huh?” With both of us having degrees in the health profession, we couldn’t see the correlation of how wet string on the forehead could possibly cure hiccups. We just said, “Thanks, Ma,” then wiped the string off our daughter’s forehead, since the baby was no longer having hiccups anyway. Was it another coincidence, or did it really work?
As an adult, I doubt there is any truth behind those crazy superstitions. It could be my exposure to the American Culture that has caused me to be a skeptic, but I could never deny that those superstitions are part of my Filipino Heritage. It adds color to my otherwise black & white existence…
