When I was little I used to distinguish my two sets of grandparents not by their last name (as most people do), but by the color of their skin. I had my brown grandparents and my white grandparents.

I loved staying at my Brown Grandma’s house because she would cook me chicken adobo and pancit. We would eat with our hands and she would bite my cheek calling me her “hambib hambib”. She used to sing me to sleep and hang all my favorite stuffed animals on her ceiling so they were the first thing I see when I woke up.

At my White Grandma’s we would stay out at cow camp. They were cattle herders and would spend their summers camping and taking care of cows and sheep. When I would visit, we ate rabbit sandwiches and rode horses and swam in the crick. She would tell me stories of when she got bucked off a horse or the time she saw a mountain lion out riding and how she would’ve killed to have a camera in her hand.

I used to be so proud to tell people that I was part Filipino and part Wyominin’