My family, including myself, are immigrants that moved to the United States throughout the latter half of the 20th Century. However, my father remained in the Philippines and one of the things that he entrusted in my mother to give to me one-day was his pair of sunglasses. I was 7 years old when my mother first gave me the sunglasses and she said, “these are your fathers and they’re very expensive back home so please take care of them!” As a mother, of course she was right. The sunglasses are vintage Ray-Ban Clubmasters, dating from 1985 when the brand was especially popular in America, as seen in movies such as "Top Gun." However, the value I find isn’t so much the brand-name, but the concept of what my father saw through these sunglasses. Whenever I wear them, I can’t help but think about the countless sights that my father saw through them, especially when taking into consideration that he was a sailor. In a sense they reflected his own dream to one-day travel to the United States. Whether it was the vast seas or the country in which he grew up in, my father saw life as it was through these lenses. Perhaps that is why he gave them to me, so that, despite our immense distance apart, we may in a sense be able to see life together through the same sunglasses. Through them, I live-out his dream.

– JPD

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