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.

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