I love my daughter’s home. I love its airy expanse, its creamy carpeting, and the wide glass windows that allow the light to filter through so the house is always filled with light. The house is surrounded by trees and flowering plants on three sides, with a wooden deck that wraps around the back from the master suite to the dining area. The French glass doors from the kitchen leading to the deck enhance the illusion of outside living indoors. At this time of the year, chez Peterson is our family Paradise.
The first to greet me at the door are Pudgy and Bear. Pudgy is my daughter’s pug puppy; his name suits him to perfection. He’s chunky and heavy (35 pounds) and round as a butter ball perched on four stubby legs. For some reason I cannot fathom, my daughter is crazy about him. Bear, my grandson’s frisky Chihuahua, is about a foot high, weighs all of five pounds, and the farthest thing from a bear that you can imagine. Except Bear doesn’t know that, judging by the way he bullies Pudgy relentlessly. No one gets through the Peterson door without running the gauntlet of Pudgy and Bear’s excited barks, frantically waving tails, and slovering tongues. The two of them together serve as a highly effective early warning, door alarm system.
My 13-year old grandson Cole hears the commotion and comes up from his room in the basement. He has lingering signs of the flu, but even sleepy eyed and slightly sallow from spending the last two days in bed, he is still a strikingly handsome boy. He has his father’s fair complexion and physique and his mother’s fine features and black glossy hair. With his dark slanted eyes, trendy hair (bangs nearly covering his eyes) and cool teen attire (obviously not my lingo), I’d be surprised if he’s not already creating quite a stir among the giggling population in his middle school. We’re growing another heartbreaker here for sure.
And here comes Jason, my son-in-law. He gives me his usual enigmatic smile and leads me upstairs straight into the kitchen where Shasha is performing magical things with pots and pans. I have had the pleasure of calling this young man son for close to 14 years now, but I have yet to break through his reserve. If there is one thing I will change about Jason, it’s that he would talk more. He will do things for me: prune the shrubs and tree in my yard, pull up the weeds and gather up all the detritus in his wake without prompting; climb up the ladder to put new batteries in my smoke alarm; figure out the strange noise coming from my car; carry things for me; put up with me and my strange ways and laugh good naturedly at my stumbling Filipino tongue that still gets tripped up in his language -- but I have yet to spend five solid minutes of conversation with him. I tell him the strong silent type isn’t necessarily always a good thing but he just smiles.
We have called my daughter Sharon “Shasha” or Sha for short, since the day she was one and her two-year old brother Dexter called her by that name. She gives me a smile and a warm hug, dishes up bacon and omelet and warms a pot of nilaga. “What is this?” I ask. “Are we having breakfast or lunch”? “Breakfast,” she says, “but I want you to have some of my nilaga.” She is beautiful, this daughter of mine, as well as an excellent cook. I hardly ever go to Maresol anymore, one of the few Filipino places (you can’t really call them restaurants) I infrequently visit to appease my craving for the food that nurtured me through adulthood. Shasha whips up sinigang, nilaga, tinola and bibingka with as much ease and panache as pot roast, baked salmon, frittatas, quiche, and French toast casserole. This is one trait she definitely inherited from her father whose love for cooking has become both an avocation and a career.
I came to visit that day to get help with my blog. I wanted to make it more appealing and easier on the eye and I knew from past experience that what would take me days to figure out would be merely minutes of creative fiddling for Shasha. Cole is soon helping out, too, and Pudgy and Bear are right on his heels. Jason pokes his head in and hands me a beautiful bouquet of roses and hydrangea from his garden.
On my way out, mission accomplished and feeling well fed, I take time to appreciate the inviting way the large living room opens up into the dining area, so perfect for entertaining and family get togethers. It’s a very welcoming home, one that invites you to curl up in a couch awhile or to linger by the tall windows and gaze at the spectacular view of the Narrows Bridge and Puget Sound. But today, I am struck by an unassailable truth. The Peterson home conjures up warmth and food and family and love because its occupants, both human and animal, have made it so.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Her Past is her Present (my mom’s story)
Published 7-16-10, Manila Standard Today
My mother was a stunning beauty in her youth. With her dark, thick wavy hair, fair complexion and bluish gray eyes, she was often compared to the young Liz Taylor. Her looks were so striking that people literally stopped in their tracks to stare at her in admiration. She was christened Helen but most folks simply called her “Mestiza.” Tisay.
As the youngest child and only girl in a family of doting parents and four older brothers, mom lived a sheltered and privileged life. My Irish/Scottish-American grandfather sailed to the Philippines with Commodore Dewey on his flagship The Olympia and fought the Spaniards in the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898. Thus he became part of our history that saw Spain’s more than 300 years of reign in the Philippines come to an end. He fell in love with a Spanish-Filipino beauty named Cornelia so when The Olympia sailed from Manila, he stayed behind and made the Philippines his new home.
When she was 18, one of my mom’s brothers brought home a friend from college. He was the dashing scion of an old Castilian family that had settled in the Philippines in the early years of their migration in search of spices from the Orient. Having served as bodyguards to King Philip II of Spain, the Toledo brothers were rewarded for their loyalty to the throne with huge parcels of land in the newly conquered territory. The Toledo’s thus came to own one of the biggest and wealthiest haciendas in northern Luzon.
Who knows how long my mom and dad’s courtship would have lasted if those were normal times? But they met in 1944, towards the end of World War II. The Japanese had overrun Manila; and as an American, my grandfather was one of the first to be taken from his home and locked up. The Japanese soldiers were savage conquerors and a menace to young Filipino girls. It became quickly apparent that my mother had to be spirited away from Manila, ideally under the protection of a husband and his powerful clan. And that’s how Helen Maude Laird became Helen Laird Toledo and eventually, the mother of two sons and four daughters.
A few years after the war, Dad decided to strike out on his own, away from the hacienda in Pampanga. He carved out twenty hectares in the jungles of Mindoro and planted it with a variety of bananas, pineapple and calamansi. The farm was located in a remote and isolated mountain area but I don’t remember feeling lonely there or bored or scared. Our closest neighbors were the Mangyans, natives of Mindoro. They came to the farm to trade wild boar’s meat and fresh venison for rice, salt, and gaily colored beads, which both men and women proudly strung around their necks. In truth I think they came for Mom’s cassava cake, which smelled wonderful as it baked in the open fire. Mom had learned to keep house and cook, and best of all – bake the most scrumptious cakes and sweets this side of the universe.
But all good things come to an end. As soon as we reached school age, we were sent to town to live with Grandma and Grandpa Laird while we attended elementary school. It was a time of learning and adjustment, and for me, the beginning of a love affair with books and all things American.
Pretty quick we were packed off again, this time to Manila with Mom, to continue our education: the boys to San Beda College and the College of the Holy Spirit for us girls. I went to the University of the Philippines after that, got married, and raised three children of my own.
The Marcos regime was coming apart at that time and life in the city was getting increasingly perilous. We felt an urgent need to leave, not just the city, but the country. Luckily, we discovered that in those early years when we lived with our grandparents, Grandpa had filed a petition for U.S. citizenship for all of us. His foresight proved heaven sent; it allowed us to immigrate to the United States after a simple swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Manila.
Nearly two decades later, Mom and I pore over old photo albums and reminisce about the past. She laughs softly, impishly, and for a brief moment I glimpse the beautiful, vibrant girl she once was. Mercifully, her long-term memory seems unaffected by the insidious cobweb that increasingly smothers her daily life now.
Mom doesn’t cook or bake anymore. She leaves her magazines untouched on the coffee table. She no longer listens to Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra and even the huge flat-screen TV in her bedroom has lost its power to engage her. She lies in bed or sits in her rocking chair, face slack, eyes dreamy and distant.
My mother’s past is her present. The threads that bind her to the here and now grow increasingly tenuous as she spends more and more of her time in the Philippines of her youth. In the not too distant future, she will look at us, her children— the center of her world— and see only strangers. Until then, we treasure each moment she remains, still Helen, mother extraordinaire.
***************************
Published 7-16-10, Manila Standard Today
My mother was a stunning beauty in her youth. With her dark, thick wavy hair, fair complexion and bluish gray eyes, she was often compared to the young Liz Taylor. Her looks were so striking that people literally stopped in their tracks to stare at her in admiration. She was christened Helen but most folks simply called her “Mestiza.” Tisay.
As the youngest child and only girl in a family of doting parents and four older brothers, mom lived a sheltered and privileged life. My Irish/Scottish-American grandfather sailed to the Philippines with Commodore Dewey on his flagship The Olympia and fought the Spaniards in the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898. Thus he became part of our history that saw Spain’s more than 300 years of reign in the Philippines come to an end. He fell in love with a Spanish-Filipino beauty named Cornelia so when The Olympia sailed from Manila, he stayed behind and made the Philippines his new home.
When she was 18, one of my mom’s brothers brought home a friend from college. He was the dashing scion of an old Castilian family that had settled in the Philippines in the early years of their migration in search of spices from the Orient. Having served as bodyguards to King Philip II of Spain, the Toledo brothers were rewarded for their loyalty to the throne with huge parcels of land in the newly conquered territory. The Toledo’s thus came to own one of the biggest and wealthiest haciendas in northern Luzon.
Who knows how long my mom and dad’s courtship would have lasted if those were normal times? But they met in 1944, towards the end of World War II. The Japanese had overrun Manila; and as an American, my grandfather was one of the first to be taken from his home and locked up. The Japanese soldiers were savage conquerors and a menace to young Filipino girls. It became quickly apparent that my mother had to be spirited away from Manila, ideally under the protection of a husband and his powerful clan. And that’s how Helen Maude Laird became Helen Laird Toledo and eventually, the mother of two sons and four daughters.
A few years after the war, Dad decided to strike out on his own, away from the hacienda in Pampanga. He carved out twenty hectares in the jungles of Mindoro and planted it with a variety of bananas, pineapple and calamansi. The farm was located in a remote and isolated mountain area but I don’t remember feeling lonely there or bored or scared. Our closest neighbors were the Mangyans, natives of Mindoro. They came to the farm to trade wild boar’s meat and fresh venison for rice, salt, and gaily colored beads, which both men and women proudly strung around their necks. In truth I think they came for Mom’s cassava cake, which smelled wonderful as it baked in the open fire. Mom had learned to keep house and cook, and best of all – bake the most scrumptious cakes and sweets this side of the universe.
But all good things come to an end. As soon as we reached school age, we were sent to town to live with Grandma and Grandpa Laird while we attended elementary school. It was a time of learning and adjustment, and for me, the beginning of a love affair with books and all things American.
Pretty quick we were packed off again, this time to Manila with Mom, to continue our education: the boys to San Beda College and the College of the Holy Spirit for us girls. I went to the University of the Philippines after that, got married, and raised three children of my own.
The Marcos regime was coming apart at that time and life in the city was getting increasingly perilous. We felt an urgent need to leave, not just the city, but the country. Luckily, we discovered that in those early years when we lived with our grandparents, Grandpa had filed a petition for U.S. citizenship for all of us. His foresight proved heaven sent; it allowed us to immigrate to the United States after a simple swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Manila.
Nearly two decades later, Mom and I pore over old photo albums and reminisce about the past. She laughs softly, impishly, and for a brief moment I glimpse the beautiful, vibrant girl she once was. Mercifully, her long-term memory seems unaffected by the insidious cobweb that increasingly smothers her daily life now.
Mom doesn’t cook or bake anymore. She leaves her magazines untouched on the coffee table. She no longer listens to Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra and even the huge flat-screen TV in her bedroom has lost its power to engage her. She lies in bed or sits in her rocking chair, face slack, eyes dreamy and distant.
My mother’s past is her present. The threads that bind her to the here and now grow increasingly tenuous as she spends more and more of her time in the Philippines of her youth. In the not too distant future, she will look at us, her children— the center of her world— and see only strangers. Until then, we treasure each moment she remains, still Helen, mother extraordinaire.
***************************
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Surviving away from home
Published 6/25/10, Manila Standard Today
Years ago, my friends and I left the Philippines for America and Canada. We graduated the same year from the University of the Philippines with a baccalaureate degree in English. Three of us went on to graduate school, one earned her doctorate degree, and two took additional courses in other fields. All of us held good jobs and responsible positions. We crossed the Pacific, not as supplicants, but as victors carrying our spoils to the new country.
This is our story.
As newbies, finding a place to live initially meant staying with family or friends. “My sister Jo and I lived with an aunt and her twelve children. We babysat our younger cousins, and I was also the designated dishwasher. The second year found me sharing a one-bedroom apartment with four other people. We slept in sleeping bags, and had make-shift furniture. We pooled our meager salaries. (Daisy Ann)
Letty and her husband first lived with his mother’s friend in California. “We paid a minimal fee for what used to be a storage room, so small it was difficult to move about. On the plus side, there was a computer I could use and our landlord cooked Filipino food.”
God bless the Filipino extended family plan! My sister and her husband welcomed me to their home, along with my three children, our mom and youngest sister. Fortunately, it was a three-story house. My children and I made the basement our temporary home. We were, literally, “the people under the stairs.”
CeeCee lived with her sister and husband and took care of her six-month old niece. She continued living with them until she was able to buy her own condo unit. Celia had similar living arrangements. “I lived with Ate Rusty, her husband and 2 kids, ages two and four. It was quite a change from having my own room in the Philippines to sleeping on the couch for almost a year, and on the floor when we had guests.”
Greta and her husband rented their own, but she faced other challenges. “I came to Washington as a GI wife. We had a one-bedroom apartment close to Fort Lewis; no telephone and no car. For months I was a stay-at-home mom and wife. The highlight of my day was checking the mail, walking to the corner store with my three-year old daughter Shen, and welcoming my husband at the end of the workday.”
The next hurdle was securing a job but we didn’t think that would be too big a problem. But there were unpleasant surprises along the way, and a few scary moments.
Letty applied for secretarial and clerical positions but “nobody would hire me even if my typing speed was 85 wpm and I scored high on tests.” She finally secured a part-time teaching job at the local college. When the full-time position opened, her application was turned down because “my degrees were from a non-regionally accredited, US-based institution.” Ironically, Letty is the one person in our group with a doctorate degree and a university-level teaching experience.
So yes, there was discrimination. Daisy Ann said her dead-end work experiences made her realize that “having a B.A. in English from a foreign country shut down, rather than opened doors.” But she plowed on and kept her sense of humor. She quit her first job as an Avon lady when a customer sicced her 6- foot, 200-plus pound husband on her. She acquired a series of seasonal jobs, then started student teaching at a neighboring high school. She quickly opted for elementary level after “…having to look up at six-foot students who called me ‘Babe’ and commented loudly, ‘Ain't she cute?’”
Greta got the first job she applied for, but she had no car and there were no buses where she lived. She ended up staying with friends during the week and riding with them to and from work. She wrote, “My immediate supervisor was a kind-hearted Korean lady who made me rest at the back of the records room during breaks. She even gave me driving lessons. She used to say, ‘In America, you don't need a husband. You just need a telephone and a car.’ "
Celia needed an invisibility cloak; she was a bona fide TNT working illegally in New York. “Sometimes there were rumors that Immigration officers were checking the subway. I would leave home at 6 even if my work didn't start until 9, thinking I could avoid them (they didn’t start work until 8:30). In the afternoon I would walk 20 blocks to a bigger subway station hoping for safety in numbers. One time I was with my family buying tickets when I spotted a US Immigration officer. I bolted for my brother-in-law’s car and cowered in the back seat. It was a July afternoon and the car was baking hot but I was too petrified to move.”
All through those first few months, Celia was so sure she would get caught and sent back so she kept her maleta ready, but in true Filipino fashion, stuffed it with pasalubong. Happily, she met Francis, and he made her legal in a couple of ways. But she missed her comfortable life in Batangas. “It was brutal to come home after a long day at the office knowing you still had to do the laundry or the dishes. Appliances are great but someone still has to push the vacuum cleaner and unload the dishwasher. It was a one-man show. You made your own coffee; you fetched your own water. No maids. No yaya.”
CeeCee remembers waiting for the bus in the rain and the snow, dreaming of the easy life she had back home. We all suffered through the same withdrawal symptoms. It was debilitating at first, then we got past the hump and it was all behind us.
We call the US and Canada home now. The Philippines is like a parent we left behind – viewed with much affection and amused tolerance, and thankfully, from a great distance.
Published 6/25/10, Manila Standard Today
Years ago, my friends and I left the Philippines for America and Canada. We graduated the same year from the University of the Philippines with a baccalaureate degree in English. Three of us went on to graduate school, one earned her doctorate degree, and two took additional courses in other fields. All of us held good jobs and responsible positions. We crossed the Pacific, not as supplicants, but as victors carrying our spoils to the new country.
This is our story.
As newbies, finding a place to live initially meant staying with family or friends. “My sister Jo and I lived with an aunt and her twelve children. We babysat our younger cousins, and I was also the designated dishwasher. The second year found me sharing a one-bedroom apartment with four other people. We slept in sleeping bags, and had make-shift furniture. We pooled our meager salaries. (Daisy Ann)
Letty and her husband first lived with his mother’s friend in California. “We paid a minimal fee for what used to be a storage room, so small it was difficult to move about. On the plus side, there was a computer I could use and our landlord cooked Filipino food.”
God bless the Filipino extended family plan! My sister and her husband welcomed me to their home, along with my three children, our mom and youngest sister. Fortunately, it was a three-story house. My children and I made the basement our temporary home. We were, literally, “the people under the stairs.”
CeeCee lived with her sister and husband and took care of her six-month old niece. She continued living with them until she was able to buy her own condo unit. Celia had similar living arrangements. “I lived with Ate Rusty, her husband and 2 kids, ages two and four. It was quite a change from having my own room in the Philippines to sleeping on the couch for almost a year, and on the floor when we had guests.”
Greta and her husband rented their own, but she faced other challenges. “I came to Washington as a GI wife. We had a one-bedroom apartment close to Fort Lewis; no telephone and no car. For months I was a stay-at-home mom and wife. The highlight of my day was checking the mail, walking to the corner store with my three-year old daughter Shen, and welcoming my husband at the end of the workday.”
The next hurdle was securing a job but we didn’t think that would be too big a problem. But there were unpleasant surprises along the way, and a few scary moments.
Letty applied for secretarial and clerical positions but “nobody would hire me even if my typing speed was 85 wpm and I scored high on tests.” She finally secured a part-time teaching job at the local college. When the full-time position opened, her application was turned down because “my degrees were from a non-regionally accredited, US-based institution.” Ironically, Letty is the one person in our group with a doctorate degree and a university-level teaching experience.
So yes, there was discrimination. Daisy Ann said her dead-end work experiences made her realize that “having a B.A. in English from a foreign country shut down, rather than opened doors.” But she plowed on and kept her sense of humor. She quit her first job as an Avon lady when a customer sicced her 6- foot, 200-plus pound husband on her. She acquired a series of seasonal jobs, then started student teaching at a neighboring high school. She quickly opted for elementary level after “…having to look up at six-foot students who called me ‘Babe’ and commented loudly, ‘Ain't she cute?’”
Greta got the first job she applied for, but she had no car and there were no buses where she lived. She ended up staying with friends during the week and riding with them to and from work. She wrote, “My immediate supervisor was a kind-hearted Korean lady who made me rest at the back of the records room during breaks. She even gave me driving lessons. She used to say, ‘In America, you don't need a husband. You just need a telephone and a car.’ "
Celia needed an invisibility cloak; she was a bona fide TNT working illegally in New York. “Sometimes there were rumors that Immigration officers were checking the subway. I would leave home at 6 even if my work didn't start until 9, thinking I could avoid them (they didn’t start work until 8:30). In the afternoon I would walk 20 blocks to a bigger subway station hoping for safety in numbers. One time I was with my family buying tickets when I spotted a US Immigration officer. I bolted for my brother-in-law’s car and cowered in the back seat. It was a July afternoon and the car was baking hot but I was too petrified to move.”
All through those first few months, Celia was so sure she would get caught and sent back so she kept her maleta ready, but in true Filipino fashion, stuffed it with pasalubong. Happily, she met Francis, and he made her legal in a couple of ways. But she missed her comfortable life in Batangas. “It was brutal to come home after a long day at the office knowing you still had to do the laundry or the dishes. Appliances are great but someone still has to push the vacuum cleaner and unload the dishwasher. It was a one-man show. You made your own coffee; you fetched your own water. No maids. No yaya.”
CeeCee remembers waiting for the bus in the rain and the snow, dreaming of the easy life she had back home. We all suffered through the same withdrawal symptoms. It was debilitating at first, then we got past the hump and it was all behind us.
We call the US and Canada home now. The Philippines is like a parent we left behind – viewed with much affection and amused tolerance, and thankfully, from a great distance.
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