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First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.

At 8 p.m. on a Thursday, Jean tries to rush her daughter out to school. It’s a hurried conversation and not an ideal way to connect, but it’s some of the only face time she gets with her daughter who lives in the Philippines. She waves goodbye and ends her Skype call.

For nine years, Jean gave up time with her daughter to work. First, she helped a family in Hong Kong raise their children, then she came to Canada to help my wife and I raise ours.

My wife, Natalie, and I are both doctors, and we keep peculiar hours. It’s not uncommon for both of us to vanish in the night at the same time. Starting a family with one parent working this way is painfully hard, managing it with two is almost impossible without help.

Traditional daycares wouldn’t work. Our parents were too old to help or lived too far away. The answer for us was to hire a live-in nanny. Low wages and lack of opportunity often force Filipino women to travel to all corners of the globe to care for other people’s children. Jean was in that position. Her goal was to get a good nanny job, send money home and, eventually, reunite with her family.

Jean’s journey began when she was in her 20s. Her daughter was only 3 when she made the heart-wrenching decision to leave and start a job with a busy family in Hong Kong.

This job certainly took a toll on Jean. Not only because she had to leave her family behind, but because of the attachments she formed with her new family abroad. The work also didn’t conform to a routine. “5 a.m. till the work was done,” she once told me.

Jean was looking to leave for a better future for her and, eventually, her family. I heard about her through a colleague.

Six months earlier, our little girl Nina was born and I was looking for a Filipino nanny. My mother is Filipina, and I was familiar with this brand of child care. The hallmarks are unyielding devotion and tenderness, mixed in with a spattering of Asian discipline. It’s the type of existence that makes you feel like you are floating in the warmth of the womb.

It was a complicated journey to find Jean and get her here, but we did, and both sides took a giant leap of faith.

Jean was a tiny bundle of optimism, fear and jet lag when she arrived. She had a slight frame and weary eyes. We live in a rural area two hours from Toronto, and I remember the first car ride to our house, her new home. I was nervously pointing out the barren fields of frost covered corn-stubble like some eager tour guide. Her eyes glazed over. I wasn’t selling it well.

The first months together were challenging. Jean was in yet another new country and even further from her own family. It seemed like a revolving door of pain. Occasionally, in a quiet moment, she would tear up. But she kept her pain private; she never complained or saw us a source of the hurt. There were some awkward moments initially, but Jean is a natural and we trusted her immediately.

Jean lived in our basement, which always made me feel guilty, but we provided as much as we could for her. Late at night, I could usually hear her speaking with her daughter. After a full day of giving her all to our family, it struck me that her daughter got the scraps. My heart sank.

Sometimes, on the weekends, she would leave her Skype connection running so that she could be present with them while they were at home. There was comfort in the grainy static, even if they were physically thousands of miles away.

Jean and Nina bonded. Nothing can prepare you for the moment your child asks for neither you nor her mother but instead seeks the nanny. We didn’t blame Jean, but it was hard not to harbour resentment. We wanted Nina to love Jean but forget about her once we came through the door. We wanted it both ways. That isn’t the way it works. We had to learn that Nina’s attachment was natural and wasn’t something to fear.

The years passed, and eventually, we had another daughter, and we started to figure it all out. The kids loved us and her as well. We were all a happy family in my eyes, but there was still a hole in Jean’s heart. Every day was one day closer to her being able to bring her family to Canada.

A decade of sacrifice ended in 2018, when Jean welcomed her daughter, now 12, and her husband, Victor, to Canada. She could finally breathe.

It took some time for everyone to adjust, but her daughter adapted to life in Canada with ease. She even came over and played with Nina sometimes. I was so pleased that they were together as a family, but I still felt a hint of guilt. Whenever I saw Jean’s daughter, I knew that we had been part of the machinery that took her mom away.

One day I asked Jean how her daughter was doing. She opened up. “She’s good. Honestly, I hope she does her best in school and makes the most of her opportunity here; otherwise, what was the point of giving up so much?”

I broke down. Years of guilt and unspoken pain rushed into the room.

“I know what you gave up. You gave up everything for her and us,” I said.

Tears streamed down both our faces.

I hoped at that moment she understood how much I respected the decisions she had to make, and the courage required to make them.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

After that, I made an even greater effort to thank her whenever I could but I could never fully address the terrible predicament life had dealt her and her family. The inequity was simply too difficult to face.

Ramesh Reddy is from Niagara Falls and currently lives in Southwold, Ont.

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