My Other Mother

My nanny helped raise me. Now it’s time for me to get to know her children

- WILLIAM PANG

“WHAT DID YOU know about me when you were young?” I asked Angel. The question had been on my mind for years.

“That she took care of you day and night,” Angel replied.

I smiled awkwardly, not quite sure what to say. Growing up in Hong Kong, I’d had all the love and attention from Angel’s mother, my former live-in nanny, that a child could expect, whereas Angel saw her mother for only three weeks a year, when her mother would fly home to the Philippines.

I’d thought that, after my nanny retired, she would finally get to parent her own children. But, when I visited Auntie Zeny’s house, last December, I was surprised to see that her living room was plastered with relics from my childhood, including a foam Mufasa with its head half severed and a stained Santa Claus refrigerator magnet that used to hang on our fridge door.