Published 12/12/11, Philippine Daily Inquirer, HighBlood section, Opinion
After months of interviews, endless paperwork, and interminable wait, my husband finally secured a position to manage a poultry farm in Sana’a, Yemen. This was after he lost his job selling veterinary products for a Manila-based company.
How well I remember those long rides in the Beetle with our infant son in my lap, crisscrossing Batangas, Laguna and Calamba in search of poultry and piggery farms. Map Quest and GPS had not yet been invented but we knew we were close to our target when the air started smelling foul.
His clients called him Dr. Willie. He had a degree in Veterinary Medicine from Araneta University. I was a Manila-raised colegiala with big dreams, yet I had fallen for a tough Batangueño with quaint probinsiyano ways. In fact his old-world gallant manner charmed my city-cynical heart. Certainly, having a cooler full of live crabs and dozens of fresh buko left at my doorstep were a refreshing change from the tiresome flowers and chocolates other suitors plied me with. Above all, I liked playing Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle, advising him on the latest cut of jeans, taking him to museums and plays, introducing him to my artsy, sophisticated friends. Si malakas at si maganda, I’d inscribed on the leaf of the photo album chronicling our days together: swimming in the beaches of Nasugbu, haggling with fruit vendors in Tagaytay, enjoying bowls of steaming bulalo in a little tienda on the road to Tanauan.
I married him on a crisp May morning in a dress so short his mother fell to her knees with a quick sign of the cross. But Willie gave me a look of such total indulgence I couldn’t help flashing a triumphant smile at the woman I would soon be addressing Inay.
Willie left for the job in Yemen when our son Dexter was nine and his sister Sharon was eight. Dexter was a dynamo in motion. He learned to walk when he was barely a year old, and then he was running all over the place—the quick staccato of his feet on the wooden floor of our home a constant rhythm that started in the morning when he jumped out of bed, eager to see what the new day brought in terms of excitement, and up until he slumped back in bed at the end of the day, finally exhausted, his latest toy clutched in his arms. That’s how I would always remember Dex—a boy perpetually in motion, always in a rush to get somewhere. My most distinct memory is his Acura overtaking my Ford effortlessly, the throb of his car like wild horses momentarily held in check, laughter trailing as he zoomed past me with a challenging cry, “Wanna race me, Mom?”
I conceived our youngest Carmela when I ran out of my contraceptive pills the month I visited Willie in Yemen. How could I have imagined I could get my prescription filled in that hauntingly beautiful but backward country? Sana’a is the world’s oldest populated city, stretching back to about 1000 BC. It is home to the Great Mosque, Jami’ al-Kabir, which is considered one of the oldest mosques in the Muslim world. The city is famous for its unique buildings towering several stories high, decorated with colorful geographical shapes, carvings and stained-glass windows. Yet for all that, I couldn’t find a decent drug store that carried my birth control pills.
That month in Sana’a was an almost perfect interlude that I cherished for the memories of dry, arid hills and strange, enigmatic people; and a husband I loved who was yet to grow into himself. I cleaned and cooked and played housewife. Willie came home most evenings exhausted from a full-day’s work culling sickly birds from the healthy and making sure his non-English speaking crew of Somali, Ethiopian and Yemeni workers were on the job and not crouched in hidden corners chewing khat and comparing jambiyas.
After Willie came back from Yemen we immigrated to the United States in search of the proverbial greener pasture. We found employment and built a fairly good life in the Pacific Northwest, and like any fool I thought it would last forever. But fate finally caught up with us and dealt my family a mortal blow.
On his way home from college one October afternoon, Dexter was carjacked and forced to drive to an isolated spot in the city of Tacoma in Washington State. He was shot in the head and left to die on the roadside while his attacker escaped in Dexter’s prized Acura.
I thought I would die, too, but work saved me. When the tragedy struck, I was working full-time and pursuing a graduate degree three evenings a week. But the weekends stretched before me like the sand dunes of Yemen: endless, dry and pitiless. Desperate, I applied for weekend work and soon found myself too busy and too tired to think about anything else but a quick meal and a soft bed at the end of each day, seven days a week. I learned to survive, one day at a time. Willie found something far more destructive.
Later I would ask myself how I could have been so oblivious to the extent of my husband’s unraveling; so blind to the despair that gripped him like a pit bull that had sunk its teeth into his throat and would not let go. Not unless he was in front of the slot machine gambling his pay away before he even earned it. He didn’t stop until he lost our life savings, his retirement fund, his job, his family and his self-respect. All that, and it didn’t even bring our son back.
I sometimes wonder if things would have been different for us if we had never left the Philippines for the promise of a better life in America.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Stranger in my mirror
(Published 5/18/11, Manila Standard Today)
There are two things human beings have in common that make all of us equal, no matter our gender, race, education, religion, political persuasion, or economic standing. We all age and we all die. When and how we die is largely beyond our control and not worth fretting about, but how we age—that’s about as personal and unique and interesting as each of us makes it.
While men generally associate aging with wisdom and experience, most women I know tend to focus on the inextricable link between aging and physical appearance. We lose our looks as we age, or in the vernacular: “Tumanda na, pumangit pa.” It doesn’t matter if we’re smart, successful, talented, accomplished, and highly cherished partners, wives and mothers. The finale’s the same, no matter the journey to get there.
When I was in my twenties, my friends and I would walk from the Arts & Science (AS) building to the Main Library of the UP campus in Diliman, fully enjoying the stir our micro-minis created among the law and engineering students loitering on the front steps. One boy would sing the opening lines from “The Girl from Ipanema”: “…tall and tan and young and lovely…” and I would give him a side look and a faint smile, toss my long hair back, and sashay away with my friends. Every day, it was the same. The girls flirted and the boys lapped it up. We were on the verge of…something, and not knowing what or where or when only added to the excitement.
We loved the University of the Philippines and the extra cachet it gave us. UP students were not only known as the smartest of the bunch (we liked to say we were la creme de la creme), but also as free and independent thinkers, unafraid to push boundaries and to challenge those who questioned our convictions. We gloried in being identified as subversives, activists, instigators. We joined rallies and were proud to see our faces among hundreds of others on the covers of magazines, like it was a badge of honor. We raised our fists and eagerly marched in support of the Marcos opposition. And we wept bitter tears for those who were captured, imprisoned, raped, tortured and killed. Yet for all that, life was somehow sweeter, more poignant, more real.
Life calmed down considerably after college and the ouster of the dictator. I left the young, rebellious girl behind and entered the next phase of my life. I found employment, returned to UP for graduate studies, got married, raised my children, lived a normal life.
I liked the older, wiser me. And at 35 I was still slender and young-looking. My legs looked good in a short skirt, and I was still turning men’s heads occasionally. My husband was both proud and worried. I liked it.
But child number three made an appearance when I was thirty-nine and my body sneakily hoarded some of the pounds I gained while I was carrying the baby. If I had been paying attention, perhaps I could have done something to stave off the effects of the late pregnancy. But I was distracted, and worrying about my looks was the last thing on my mind. I was a mom again after an interlude of 13 years. It was like starting over; I felt clumsy and ineffectual. Did I still know how to take care of a baby? What about my job? How would I balance the demands of an infant, the needs of my teenage children, my husband, and my work?
To compound it all, we relocated to the United States at about that time. I was a 40-year old immigrant with a full-time job, two displaced teenagers, and a kid at home. I missed the friends I left behind, but to be honest, I missed my housemaids most of all that first year in America.
The years rolled by. Tragedy struck my family three times. I lost my son to a carjacker and my mom to a weak heart, and my 30-year marriage fell apart. On the plus side, my older daughter gave me a great son-in-law and an amazingly talented grandson. My younger daughter graduated from college and found a job, and finally, finally….I could breathe again.
That’s when I realized to my utter dismay that in the hustle and bustle of daily living, I had succumbed to the dreaded A-word. I had aged. The model-thin girl in a mini skirt had been replaced by an old woman with graying hair, droopy face, and a sagging body. Oh. My. God!
My thoughts flew to the college friends of my youth. I wondered if a strange old woman now inhabited their mirrors, too. After a flurry of e-mails and phone calls that bounced back and forth from the US to the Philippines, to Australia and Canada, we got together in Manila to get re-acquainted with our older selves.
We laughed and cried as we reminisced about the past and our youthful escapades in UP 40 years ago. We toured our old haunts in Diliman and were saddened to know that the lagoon where we had spent many pleasant afternoons was long gone. The AS basement, that smoke-filled bastion for intellectuals and bohemians where we used to hang out, had been converted into a dusty storeroom. All that was left was a small plaque by the door and the fading memories of its past denizens.
And my friends and I? If you closed your eyes and simply listened to our voices and shrieks of laughter that day, you wouldn’t have known we were baby boomers well into our 60s.
Robert Heinlein once wrote: “…there was never a girl born who ever grew older than 18 in her heart no matter what the merciless hours have done.” Indeed. Time to play “The Heartbreak Hotel.”
There are two things human beings have in common that make all of us equal, no matter our gender, race, education, religion, political persuasion, or economic standing. We all age and we all die. When and how we die is largely beyond our control and not worth fretting about, but how we age—that’s about as personal and unique and interesting as each of us makes it.
While men generally associate aging with wisdom and experience, most women I know tend to focus on the inextricable link between aging and physical appearance. We lose our looks as we age, or in the vernacular: “Tumanda na, pumangit pa.” It doesn’t matter if we’re smart, successful, talented, accomplished, and highly cherished partners, wives and mothers. The finale’s the same, no matter the journey to get there.
When I was in my twenties, my friends and I would walk from the Arts & Science (AS) building to the Main Library of the UP campus in Diliman, fully enjoying the stir our micro-minis created among the law and engineering students loitering on the front steps. One boy would sing the opening lines from “The Girl from Ipanema”: “…tall and tan and young and lovely…” and I would give him a side look and a faint smile, toss my long hair back, and sashay away with my friends. Every day, it was the same. The girls flirted and the boys lapped it up. We were on the verge of…something, and not knowing what or where or when only added to the excitement.
We loved the University of the Philippines and the extra cachet it gave us. UP students were not only known as the smartest of the bunch (we liked to say we were la creme de la creme), but also as free and independent thinkers, unafraid to push boundaries and to challenge those who questioned our convictions. We gloried in being identified as subversives, activists, instigators. We joined rallies and were proud to see our faces among hundreds of others on the covers of magazines, like it was a badge of honor. We raised our fists and eagerly marched in support of the Marcos opposition. And we wept bitter tears for those who were captured, imprisoned, raped, tortured and killed. Yet for all that, life was somehow sweeter, more poignant, more real.
Life calmed down considerably after college and the ouster of the dictator. I left the young, rebellious girl behind and entered the next phase of my life. I found employment, returned to UP for graduate studies, got married, raised my children, lived a normal life.
I liked the older, wiser me. And at 35 I was still slender and young-looking. My legs looked good in a short skirt, and I was still turning men’s heads occasionally. My husband was both proud and worried. I liked it.
But child number three made an appearance when I was thirty-nine and my body sneakily hoarded some of the pounds I gained while I was carrying the baby. If I had been paying attention, perhaps I could have done something to stave off the effects of the late pregnancy. But I was distracted, and worrying about my looks was the last thing on my mind. I was a mom again after an interlude of 13 years. It was like starting over; I felt clumsy and ineffectual. Did I still know how to take care of a baby? What about my job? How would I balance the demands of an infant, the needs of my teenage children, my husband, and my work?
To compound it all, we relocated to the United States at about that time. I was a 40-year old immigrant with a full-time job, two displaced teenagers, and a kid at home. I missed the friends I left behind, but to be honest, I missed my housemaids most of all that first year in America.
The years rolled by. Tragedy struck my family three times. I lost my son to a carjacker and my mom to a weak heart, and my 30-year marriage fell apart. On the plus side, my older daughter gave me a great son-in-law and an amazingly talented grandson. My younger daughter graduated from college and found a job, and finally, finally….I could breathe again.
That’s when I realized to my utter dismay that in the hustle and bustle of daily living, I had succumbed to the dreaded A-word. I had aged. The model-thin girl in a mini skirt had been replaced by an old woman with graying hair, droopy face, and a sagging body. Oh. My. God!
My thoughts flew to the college friends of my youth. I wondered if a strange old woman now inhabited their mirrors, too. After a flurry of e-mails and phone calls that bounced back and forth from the US to the Philippines, to Australia and Canada, we got together in Manila to get re-acquainted with our older selves.
We laughed and cried as we reminisced about the past and our youthful escapades in UP 40 years ago. We toured our old haunts in Diliman and were saddened to know that the lagoon where we had spent many pleasant afternoons was long gone. The AS basement, that smoke-filled bastion for intellectuals and bohemians where we used to hang out, had been converted into a dusty storeroom. All that was left was a small plaque by the door and the fading memories of its past denizens.
And my friends and I? If you closed your eyes and simply listened to our voices and shrieks of laughter that day, you wouldn’t have known we were baby boomers well into our 60s.
Robert Heinlein once wrote: “…there was never a girl born who ever grew older than 18 in her heart no matter what the merciless hours have done.” Indeed. Time to play “The Heartbreak Hotel.”
Monday, May 2, 2011
(Note: This is an amended version of the essay published 4/30/11, Manila Standard Today. It's a true story. If I had met this guy during his prime I would have married him in a heartbeat. The title is meant to provoke thought -- this could easily be every man's story. We are born, we live, we die. If we're lucky, we find true love and friendship in our lifetime. I like to think there is another, much happier life after this where we can live out our fantasies and be with our loved ones again.)
Just one man’s story
He used to be a fighter pilot during WWII. In the faded photograph, he wore dark aviator glasses and a battered brown leather bomber jacket with interesting patches. A scarf wound around his neck trailed behind him, lifted by a mild breeze. He was standing by the cockpit door of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, eyes narrowed against the lowering sun. He was grinning cockily, his arm slung casually around the shoulders of another man.
Of the six pilots in his squadron, Lucas was the only one who made it safely back home. He married his childhood sweetheart but lost her and the baby during childbirth. He never remarried. Instead he went back to school on the GI bill. He later became a professor of botany at an Ivy League school on the East Coast. Glowing articles were written about his war exploits and the botanical books and academic journals he published. Much to his embarrassment, he became quite a local celebrity when all he ever wanted to do during his time away from the classroom was to watch his prized orchids grow.
Lucas was well into his 80s when he came to us. His tall, big-boned frame was shaky, his hair pure white. The capable hands that had expertly flown fighter planes and grew astonishing varieties of exotic orchids were palsied and arthritic. But he was still handsome in the way strong, confident men get to be in their old age.
He checked into our facility wearing scuffed cowboy boots, white shirt tucked into faded jeans, and an aw-shucks killer smile on his craggy face. He was an instant hit with the ladies. It hardly mattered that his mind and formidable intellect had started to fail him. In our community, he was just one of many similarly-afflicted senior citizens.
For a number of years now, I have spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons helping out at a continuing-care retirement community for the elderly and the infirm. What had started out for me as a desperate attempt to cope with my son’s untimely death has become a true labor of love for the residents of this facility. Lucas easily became one of my favorites.
Like most retirement homes of its kind, this campus provides a graduated level of care for its residents. Incoming freshmen (youthful individuals or couples from their mid to late 60s) live in self-sustained cottages. At age 90 or thereabouts, when they no longer have the strength or interest or good health to maintain their own homes and yards and cook their own meals, residents move into one of the condo-style apartments in a multi-storied building where the choices range from studios to single- and 2-room combinations with toilet and bath and a mini kitchen.
Each floor has its own communal kitchen and laundry room and on the ground floor there is a spacious dining room for residents and their guests. There is also a spa, exercise room, hobby room, gift shop, computer /business center, and a library. The waiting area is furnished with comfortable couches, fresh flower arrangements, a grand piano, and a fireplace. The six-story building has the look and feel of a boutique hotel.
Lucas moved into a choice corner room on the fifth floor overlooking the lush gardens and resident flower plots. From his veranda, he had breathtaking views of Puget Sound and Vashon Island. Mount Rainier peeked on the east horizon and on the west, the Olympic Mountain range. It was not a bad place to be for a man who loved open spaces and the wide expanse of the sky.
He was content. He tended to his plants, volunteered at the library, and spent many happy hours recalling earlier times. He would take out the faded photograph from his wallet and regale me with stories about the war. Not the sad, terrible things he experienced but the excitement and wonder of meeting people and making friends with strangers who didn’t even speak his language. He spoke of the joy and thrill of flying and how it almost made up for the horrors of World War II.
I showed him the photographs I kept in my own wallet and told him about the boy who dreamed of being a pilot, but never became one. How death came for him so suddenly, without warning and without mercy. Lucas said if he ever made it to heaven he would teach Dexter how to fly. The thought of my son in the cockpit of a vintage fighter plane doing loop the loops with angels in the sky was immensely entertaining.
Then one day Lucas had a particularly bad fall and when he came out of the hospital he was on a wheel chair. He still wore his cowboy boots but he never walked again. All too soon he had to give up his apartment and move to our assisted-living facility where he received help with daily living: keeping track of his medication and doctor’s appointments, getting dressed, bathing and eating. I think losing his independence finally broke his spirit.
Spending time with Lucas taught me one thing. Nothing ever prepares you for death. Even when you know it’s coming; even when it’s imminent. I knew Lucas was failing rapidly, yet I was unprepared for the sorrow that gripped me when he passed away.
I wonder if there really is life after death? It's comforting to think that Lucas lives again in that wondrous place where angels are rumored to be, and that all my loved ones, my son Dex and my mom, are waiting there for me.
Just one man’s story
He used to be a fighter pilot during WWII. In the faded photograph, he wore dark aviator glasses and a battered brown leather bomber jacket with interesting patches. A scarf wound around his neck trailed behind him, lifted by a mild breeze. He was standing by the cockpit door of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, eyes narrowed against the lowering sun. He was grinning cockily, his arm slung casually around the shoulders of another man.
Of the six pilots in his squadron, Lucas was the only one who made it safely back home. He married his childhood sweetheart but lost her and the baby during childbirth. He never remarried. Instead he went back to school on the GI bill. He later became a professor of botany at an Ivy League school on the East Coast. Glowing articles were written about his war exploits and the botanical books and academic journals he published. Much to his embarrassment, he became quite a local celebrity when all he ever wanted to do during his time away from the classroom was to watch his prized orchids grow.
Lucas was well into his 80s when he came to us. His tall, big-boned frame was shaky, his hair pure white. The capable hands that had expertly flown fighter planes and grew astonishing varieties of exotic orchids were palsied and arthritic. But he was still handsome in the way strong, confident men get to be in their old age.
He checked into our facility wearing scuffed cowboy boots, white shirt tucked into faded jeans, and an aw-shucks killer smile on his craggy face. He was an instant hit with the ladies. It hardly mattered that his mind and formidable intellect had started to fail him. In our community, he was just one of many similarly-afflicted senior citizens.
For a number of years now, I have spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons helping out at a continuing-care retirement community for the elderly and the infirm. What had started out for me as a desperate attempt to cope with my son’s untimely death has become a true labor of love for the residents of this facility. Lucas easily became one of my favorites.
Like most retirement homes of its kind, this campus provides a graduated level of care for its residents. Incoming freshmen (youthful individuals or couples from their mid to late 60s) live in self-sustained cottages. At age 90 or thereabouts, when they no longer have the strength or interest or good health to maintain their own homes and yards and cook their own meals, residents move into one of the condo-style apartments in a multi-storied building where the choices range from studios to single- and 2-room combinations with toilet and bath and a mini kitchen.
Each floor has its own communal kitchen and laundry room and on the ground floor there is a spacious dining room for residents and their guests. There is also a spa, exercise room, hobby room, gift shop, computer /business center, and a library. The waiting area is furnished with comfortable couches, fresh flower arrangements, a grand piano, and a fireplace. The six-story building has the look and feel of a boutique hotel.
Lucas moved into a choice corner room on the fifth floor overlooking the lush gardens and resident flower plots. From his veranda, he had breathtaking views of Puget Sound and Vashon Island. Mount Rainier peeked on the east horizon and on the west, the Olympic Mountain range. It was not a bad place to be for a man who loved open spaces and the wide expanse of the sky.
He was content. He tended to his plants, volunteered at the library, and spent many happy hours recalling earlier times. He would take out the faded photograph from his wallet and regale me with stories about the war. Not the sad, terrible things he experienced but the excitement and wonder of meeting people and making friends with strangers who didn’t even speak his language. He spoke of the joy and thrill of flying and how it almost made up for the horrors of World War II.
I showed him the photographs I kept in my own wallet and told him about the boy who dreamed of being a pilot, but never became one. How death came for him so suddenly, without warning and without mercy. Lucas said if he ever made it to heaven he would teach Dexter how to fly. The thought of my son in the cockpit of a vintage fighter plane doing loop the loops with angels in the sky was immensely entertaining.
Then one day Lucas had a particularly bad fall and when he came out of the hospital he was on a wheel chair. He still wore his cowboy boots but he never walked again. All too soon he had to give up his apartment and move to our assisted-living facility where he received help with daily living: keeping track of his medication and doctor’s appointments, getting dressed, bathing and eating. I think losing his independence finally broke his spirit.
Spending time with Lucas taught me one thing. Nothing ever prepares you for death. Even when you know it’s coming; even when it’s imminent. I knew Lucas was failing rapidly, yet I was unprepared for the sorrow that gripped me when he passed away.
I wonder if there really is life after death? It's comforting to think that Lucas lives again in that wondrous place where angels are rumored to be, and that all my loved ones, my son Dex and my mom, are waiting there for me.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Confessions of a mall walker
(Amended version of essay published 3/17/11, Manila Standard Today)
The Tacoma Mall in the state of Washington, USA, is my favorite place this time of the year. The holiday rush is long over. The mall is quiet and the throngs of shoppers are gone; so are the huge sales and discounted items. But that’s all good because I don’t come to the mall to shop. I come here to walk. In the winter when it’s freezing cold out, I become part of a growing constituency in America, the “mall walkers.”
You can tell us apart from other mall habitués by our tennis shoes and our brisk and purposeful walk. Judging by the silver streaks in our hair and the lines on our faces, majority of us are closing in on 60 or beyond.
One does get to be a bit more cautious as the years add up. I walk the mall because it is safer and far less strenuous than braving the elements outdoors. Plus, there are no bicyclists and skateboarders to dodge from and no power walkers with their quick dismissive side glances leaving me in their wake. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” I would mumble under my breath, envying their youth and their lithe, supple bodies.
The mall walkers do not belong to a formal association with bylaws and monthly dues. We do not keep a list of members with contact information and other affiliations. We are not on Facebook as a group; we don’t tweet, we don’t blog, we don’t meet. We are simply a loose group of individuals who acknowledge one another with a short, friendly nod or a soft “Hi,” as we cross paths.
From my office in Olympia -- provided the usual traffic by the military Joint Base Lewis-McChord is flowing smoothly -- I can get to Tacoma Mall within a half-hour drive. I contort my body in the driver’s seat of my SUV to trade my winter boots for tennis shoes; then off to the warmth of the mall I go.
Tacoma Mall is fairly small, about one third of a mile in length. I normally do two laps around, which is about a half-hour’s worth of cardio workout. I walk briskly, though I don’t swing my arms like I would normally do when I walk outside. Health experts say that to maximize the exercise, walkers need to swing their arms in an exaggerated manner as they briskly move their legs.
Now I don’t know about you, but the first time I saw a jogger swinging her arms out in an exaggerated manner, I almost fell to my knees laughing. She looked ridiculous, like a chicken flapping her wings chest high while she trotted her stuff along the water front. So I’m sure others got a good laugh, too, when I started doing it myself, having found out that sticking my elbows out and pumping my arms as I walked, propelled me forward faster. This is not to say I am willing to make a spectacle of myself at the mall, however.
So I walk briskly, trying not to get into eye contact with young people skilled in trapping the often gullible older generation into listening to their impassioned sales spiel. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not easy to disengage politely once contact has been made. (Persistence is a virtue but not when you’re on the other end of an aggressive sales pitch.) Thankfully, this is not normally a problem as most mall workers can tell the serious shoppers from the “look-sees,” the idlers, the high school kids playing hooky, and regular mall walkers like me.
Having walked the mall for a couple of years now, I’m wise to the traps and pitfalls lurking there. I learned early on not to look too closely at window displays or be tempted by the wonderful scents wafting out of Victoria’s Secret or Bath and Body Works. I made the mistake of going in one time -- just to look, mind you -- and came out an hour later with three bags of deliciously-hued under things, various creams and lotions and body butter, and cinnamon/vanilla-scented candles that I am apparently unable to resist, even in my 60s. I am happy to report that my friends and family are still enjoying the largesse of that unplanned shopping spree.
When I visited Manila last month, I was amazed at the number and size of the shopping malls there; easily three to four times what we have here in Washington State. Most are clean, well lit, and artfully stocked with merchandise. (I’m going to digress here to advise fellow balikbayans not to bother lugging those heavy suitcases when you come to visit the Philippines. You don’t need to pack your bags with US canned goods and chocolates, Taster’s Choice and coffee creamer, blackberry jam and orange marmalade, Pepperidge Farm cookies and apples and oranges and grapes, because those are all available in Manila now. I kid you not. Remember when you could get US goods only if you had access to JUSMAG (Joint United States Military Advisory Group) or Subic Base? Ancient history.)
I cannot, however, imagine walking any of the malls I visited in Manila as I do here in Tacoma. Manila malls are generally packed with people and some have overly loud sound systems that practically blow your head off. (Aging ears are particularly sensitive to the loud, screechy, discordant sounds that pass for music nowadays.)
You don’t want to walk the malls in Manila anyway. If you can tolerate the loud sound and the press of people, you can get yourself some of the yummiest food available on the planet. You can sit at one of the tables and eavesdrop on OFW conversations that include such foreign places as Dahar and Doha, Hongkong, Sydney, Vancouver, Rome, and Bahrain. You’ll leave for home feeling like you’ve traveled all over the world, and you didn’t even have to walk the mall to do it.
(Amended version of essay published 3/17/11, Manila Standard Today)
The Tacoma Mall in the state of Washington, USA, is my favorite place this time of the year. The holiday rush is long over. The mall is quiet and the throngs of shoppers are gone; so are the huge sales and discounted items. But that’s all good because I don’t come to the mall to shop. I come here to walk. In the winter when it’s freezing cold out, I become part of a growing constituency in America, the “mall walkers.”
You can tell us apart from other mall habitués by our tennis shoes and our brisk and purposeful walk. Judging by the silver streaks in our hair and the lines on our faces, majority of us are closing in on 60 or beyond.
One does get to be a bit more cautious as the years add up. I walk the mall because it is safer and far less strenuous than braving the elements outdoors. Plus, there are no bicyclists and skateboarders to dodge from and no power walkers with their quick dismissive side glances leaving me in their wake. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” I would mumble under my breath, envying their youth and their lithe, supple bodies.
The mall walkers do not belong to a formal association with bylaws and monthly dues. We do not keep a list of members with contact information and other affiliations. We are not on Facebook as a group; we don’t tweet, we don’t blog, we don’t meet. We are simply a loose group of individuals who acknowledge one another with a short, friendly nod or a soft “Hi,” as we cross paths.
From my office in Olympia -- provided the usual traffic by the military Joint Base Lewis-McChord is flowing smoothly -- I can get to Tacoma Mall within a half-hour drive. I contort my body in the driver’s seat of my SUV to trade my winter boots for tennis shoes; then off to the warmth of the mall I go.
Tacoma Mall is fairly small, about one third of a mile in length. I normally do two laps around, which is about a half-hour’s worth of cardio workout. I walk briskly, though I don’t swing my arms like I would normally do when I walk outside. Health experts say that to maximize the exercise, walkers need to swing their arms in an exaggerated manner as they briskly move their legs.
Now I don’t know about you, but the first time I saw a jogger swinging her arms out in an exaggerated manner, I almost fell to my knees laughing. She looked ridiculous, like a chicken flapping her wings chest high while she trotted her stuff along the water front. So I’m sure others got a good laugh, too, when I started doing it myself, having found out that sticking my elbows out and pumping my arms as I walked, propelled me forward faster. This is not to say I am willing to make a spectacle of myself at the mall, however.
So I walk briskly, trying not to get into eye contact with young people skilled in trapping the often gullible older generation into listening to their impassioned sales spiel. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not easy to disengage politely once contact has been made. (Persistence is a virtue but not when you’re on the other end of an aggressive sales pitch.) Thankfully, this is not normally a problem as most mall workers can tell the serious shoppers from the “look-sees,” the idlers, the high school kids playing hooky, and regular mall walkers like me.
Having walked the mall for a couple of years now, I’m wise to the traps and pitfalls lurking there. I learned early on not to look too closely at window displays or be tempted by the wonderful scents wafting out of Victoria’s Secret or Bath and Body Works. I made the mistake of going in one time -- just to look, mind you -- and came out an hour later with three bags of deliciously-hued under things, various creams and lotions and body butter, and cinnamon/vanilla-scented candles that I am apparently unable to resist, even in my 60s. I am happy to report that my friends and family are still enjoying the largesse of that unplanned shopping spree.
When I visited Manila last month, I was amazed at the number and size of the shopping malls there; easily three to four times what we have here in Washington State. Most are clean, well lit, and artfully stocked with merchandise. (I’m going to digress here to advise fellow balikbayans not to bother lugging those heavy suitcases when you come to visit the Philippines. You don’t need to pack your bags with US canned goods and chocolates, Taster’s Choice and coffee creamer, blackberry jam and orange marmalade, Pepperidge Farm cookies and apples and oranges and grapes, because those are all available in Manila now. I kid you not. Remember when you could get US goods only if you had access to JUSMAG (Joint United States Military Advisory Group) or Subic Base? Ancient history.)
I cannot, however, imagine walking any of the malls I visited in Manila as I do here in Tacoma. Manila malls are generally packed with people and some have overly loud sound systems that practically blow your head off. (Aging ears are particularly sensitive to the loud, screechy, discordant sounds that pass for music nowadays.)
You don’t want to walk the malls in Manila anyway. If you can tolerate the loud sound and the press of people, you can get yourself some of the yummiest food available on the planet. You can sit at one of the tables and eavesdrop on OFW conversations that include such foreign places as Dahar and Doha, Hongkong, Sydney, Vancouver, Rome, and Bahrain. You’ll leave for home feeling like you’ve traveled all over the world, and you didn’t even have to walk the mall to do it.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Inquirer Opinion / Columns
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20110313-325094/Coming-home
HIGH BLOOD
Highblood : Coming home
By Belma Villa
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 13, 2011
THE FIRST thing that greeted me was a blast of hot air. I breathed in deeply, trying to take in as much of the warmth as possible. Home, I thought blissfully. How could I have ever left it? Twenty hours earlier, I was shivering in the freezing rain and snowy landscape of wintry Seattle in Washington State where I have resided these many years. I was back in Manila for a short reunion with my group mates from the University of the Philippines, English Majors’ Class ’69.
My visit turned out to be not just a reunion with my college friends (and a precious, stolen moment with my high school classmates) but also a much-needed reunion with my home country. Seeing Metro Manila again, up close and personal after many years of absence, was alternately invigorating and exciting, frustrating and annoying, but also inspiring and uplifting. So much had changed in the intervening years since I left; some good, some really bad, and a few were downright comical.
Condos. I don’t know when this new trend in housing began, but it was certainly not during the time I lived in Manila. The present-day Metro Manila skyline is dotted with condo high-rises, and in the short time my friends and I were there, we were able to enjoy the comforts of three condo units that had all the modern amenities of Western living. It seemed that each person I met during my trip either owned a condo or was related to/knew someone who did.
I dare speculate that condos are the new status symbol in the Philippines. A condo can be the perfect summer vacation home for balikbayans, a handy bachelor’s pad, a rental property, a convenient pied-à-terre for the rich, and a good nest egg for the smart investor. Whatever the reason, I found the boom in condos initially perplexing, as I have always believed the Filipino people to be industrious and hard-working but essentially poor. “Who has money to buy all these condos?” I mused.
Shopping malls. The question of who has money to spend takes me right to my daughters’ favorite past time—shopping. There were only three department stores worth mentioning when I left: Rustan’s for the more exclusive shoppers with money to burn; Shoemart and Robinson’s for average folks like me. The Manila I came back to had evolved the concept of department stores into huge shopping complexes and malls: Glorietta, Rockwell, Shangri-La, Greenbelt, The Podium, Landmark. There were SM malls (Shoemart’s progeny) everywhere we went including the nearby towns of Laguna, Batangas and Cavite, and doubtless all across the country. And there was the biggest of them all (fourth largest in the world and third in Asia), the SM Mall of Asia. “MOA,” as the natives call it, combines the finest in Philippine shopping and entertainment and boasts average daily foot traffic of 200,000. Two hundred thousand!!!
Again the question: “Who has money to spend in all these malls?”
OFWs. The answer, once I got it, was pretty obvious. OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) and their hard-earned dollars are changing not only the landscape of our home country, but also our shopping habits, our language and the hopes and dreams of our children. Many of our countrymen toil at menial jobs abroad so their families in the Philippines can build new and better homes and their children can go to good schools that in the past, only the rich could afford. OFWs come home with heads held high, money in their pockets to buy SUVs and condos and iPads and other tech toys. They throng the malls and restaurants and movie theaters—God bless them—but alas, they also clog our streets even more.
Traffic. This one is under the category of “really bad.” My friends and I discovered to our chagrin that it is no longer possible to spend the day hopping from place to place in Manila and Makati as we used to do in our youth. Traffic has gotten so bad that you have to factor in hours of frustrating time spent on the road waiting for the vehicles around you to move. Filipino drivers do not let lanes, or traffic rules, or common courtesy deter them from reaching their destination as quickly as possible. As a result, driving in Manila has become a test of courage, cunning, resourcefulness and ruthlessness. On the other hand, I’ve never seen such skillful driving in all my life, as our drivers Jing and Sonny exhibited. I guess you need to, if you are to go anywhere in Manila.
Our people’s propensity for disregarding rules was most apparent in some of the signs I read along the road. “Accident-prone area,” one such sign read. To emphasize the point, the next line warned, “May namatay na dito.” Coming up the toll area from Cavite was a large sign, “Exact Toll,” and under it in equally large letters: “ABSOLUTELY NO CHANGE.” I had to smile in spite of myself. Only in the Philippines!
Still, even with all the changes that I found coming home, getting together with my college friends was joyous and memorable. We quickly made a pledge to meet again in two years. Australia, or Oz, as the Aussies call it, or Spain, to trace whatever of our roots can still be traced, then on to Provence in France. It didn’t matter. The plan would come together just as this first one did and we would be there to share impressions, trade stories of heartaches and triumphs, and try not to think of our waning years coming quickly upon us.
God willing, we would look once more into each other’s eyes and see only the 18-year-olds that we once were.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20110313-325094/Coming-home
HIGH BLOOD
Highblood : Coming home
By Belma Villa
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 13, 2011
THE FIRST thing that greeted me was a blast of hot air. I breathed in deeply, trying to take in as much of the warmth as possible. Home, I thought blissfully. How could I have ever left it? Twenty hours earlier, I was shivering in the freezing rain and snowy landscape of wintry Seattle in Washington State where I have resided these many years. I was back in Manila for a short reunion with my group mates from the University of the Philippines, English Majors’ Class ’69.
My visit turned out to be not just a reunion with my college friends (and a precious, stolen moment with my high school classmates) but also a much-needed reunion with my home country. Seeing Metro Manila again, up close and personal after many years of absence, was alternately invigorating and exciting, frustrating and annoying, but also inspiring and uplifting. So much had changed in the intervening years since I left; some good, some really bad, and a few were downright comical.
Condos. I don’t know when this new trend in housing began, but it was certainly not during the time I lived in Manila. The present-day Metro Manila skyline is dotted with condo high-rises, and in the short time my friends and I were there, we were able to enjoy the comforts of three condo units that had all the modern amenities of Western living. It seemed that each person I met during my trip either owned a condo or was related to/knew someone who did.
I dare speculate that condos are the new status symbol in the Philippines. A condo can be the perfect summer vacation home for balikbayans, a handy bachelor’s pad, a rental property, a convenient pied-à-terre for the rich, and a good nest egg for the smart investor. Whatever the reason, I found the boom in condos initially perplexing, as I have always believed the Filipino people to be industrious and hard-working but essentially poor. “Who has money to buy all these condos?” I mused.
Shopping malls. The question of who has money to spend takes me right to my daughters’ favorite past time—shopping. There were only three department stores worth mentioning when I left: Rustan’s for the more exclusive shoppers with money to burn; Shoemart and Robinson’s for average folks like me. The Manila I came back to had evolved the concept of department stores into huge shopping complexes and malls: Glorietta, Rockwell, Shangri-La, Greenbelt, The Podium, Landmark. There were SM malls (Shoemart’s progeny) everywhere we went including the nearby towns of Laguna, Batangas and Cavite, and doubtless all across the country. And there was the biggest of them all (fourth largest in the world and third in Asia), the SM Mall of Asia. “MOA,” as the natives call it, combines the finest in Philippine shopping and entertainment and boasts average daily foot traffic of 200,000. Two hundred thousand!!!
Again the question: “Who has money to spend in all these malls?”
OFWs. The answer, once I got it, was pretty obvious. OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) and their hard-earned dollars are changing not only the landscape of our home country, but also our shopping habits, our language and the hopes and dreams of our children. Many of our countrymen toil at menial jobs abroad so their families in the Philippines can build new and better homes and their children can go to good schools that in the past, only the rich could afford. OFWs come home with heads held high, money in their pockets to buy SUVs and condos and iPads and other tech toys. They throng the malls and restaurants and movie theaters—God bless them—but alas, they also clog our streets even more.
Traffic. This one is under the category of “really bad.” My friends and I discovered to our chagrin that it is no longer possible to spend the day hopping from place to place in Manila and Makati as we used to do in our youth. Traffic has gotten so bad that you have to factor in hours of frustrating time spent on the road waiting for the vehicles around you to move. Filipino drivers do not let lanes, or traffic rules, or common courtesy deter them from reaching their destination as quickly as possible. As a result, driving in Manila has become a test of courage, cunning, resourcefulness and ruthlessness. On the other hand, I’ve never seen such skillful driving in all my life, as our drivers Jing and Sonny exhibited. I guess you need to, if you are to go anywhere in Manila.
Our people’s propensity for disregarding rules was most apparent in some of the signs I read along the road. “Accident-prone area,” one such sign read. To emphasize the point, the next line warned, “May namatay na dito.” Coming up the toll area from Cavite was a large sign, “Exact Toll,” and under it in equally large letters: “ABSOLUTELY NO CHANGE.” I had to smile in spite of myself. Only in the Philippines!
Still, even with all the changes that I found coming home, getting together with my college friends was joyous and memorable. We quickly made a pledge to meet again in two years. Australia, or Oz, as the Aussies call it, or Spain, to trace whatever of our roots can still be traced, then on to Provence in France. It didn’t matter. The plan would come together just as this first one did and we would be there to share impressions, trade stories of heartaches and triumphs, and try not to think of our waning years coming quickly upon us.
God willing, we would look once more into each other’s eyes and see only the 18-year-olds that we once were.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Cooking tips and life lessons
(Published in Manila Standard Today, 2/5/11)
My children love Filipino bistek (beefsteak). The combination of soy sauce and fresh lemon makes it a very tasty meal and every time I make it for my children I think of my mother, who taught me how to cook it the Toledo way.
Like any typical older-generation Filipina, my mother didn’t use measuring cups or spoons when she cooked. She added ingredients as she marinated and cooked the meat. “You’ll want the sour taste to complement the salty flavor of the soy sauce,” she would say, “but neither should overwhelm the other.” And she would simmer, taste, add a little bit more of this, simmer, taste, add a little bit more of that, until the meat was perfectly flavored.
Easy, I thought. If I put too much of one thing, I just needed to add a little bit more of the other. But it turned out to be a bit more complicated than that because it took me many failed attempts and countless batches of bistek look-alikes before I got the nod of approval from Mom.
I learned to make Mom’s adobo in the same cook-taste-and-adjust method. I taste the broth several times as the meat is cooking to see how each flavor complements the other ingredients. A pinch of oregano, a bay leaf or two, onions, garlic, pepper and salt, soy sauce and vinegar.
She always said there are three secrets to a good adobo: plenty of garlic, lots of patience, and properly cooked vinegar. “You should never ever stir the pot when you’ve just added vinegar in,” she warned. “You have to wait for that strong sour taste to slowly blend in with everything that’s already there. You can’t rush it because the vinegar will be uncooked and the flavor of the adobo will be off.”
When I first came to the States I worried that I would never again get the taste of bistek right because none of the groceries carried calamansi. Mom advised me to learn to use what was available, because in her words, “That won’t be the last thing you’ll find different here.” So I experimented first with lime, then with lemons, until my bistek came close to the taste I knew from back home. “All things come together in the end,” she said, “with a little bit of compromise, resourcefulness and creativity.”
There she goes again, I thought—another life lesson dispensed with her cooking tips.
But I learned to cook tinola with sayote and spinach instead of green papaya and sili leaves. I use mustard green instead of kangkong, and fine powdered table salt instead of the rock salt I was so familiar with.
One change my family welcomed with gusto is our breakfast menu. Here in America, we usually have cereal, toast or a bagel for breakfast, but on weekends and holidays, we like to cook a fairly heavy meal. Thick-sliced SPAM grilled on the pan until the edges are toasty and crunchy; corned beef sautéed in garlic, onions and tomatoes; and Vienna sausages with fried eggs and rice. Once a month we step up our family breakfast extravaganza into a brunch, adding into the mix tocino and longaniza and tinapang bangus. We all, including our American-born, Caucasian spouses and in-laws, love the variety and mix of our Filipino-American breakfast.
In Mom’s Life Lesson 101, this is proof positive that we have accepted and incorporated American ways into our lives and allowed some of ours to blend into the Western culture. Not that Mom ever said so. That wasn’t her way.
Mother had a subtle, indirect way of communicating. She hardly ever gave direct orders, for instance. If she needed something done she would frame it as a question, or a comment, a theory, a thinking-aloud kind of wish. That meant we had to read between the lines and we had to pay close attention to her words.
She was a gentle, soft-spoken woman who avoided harsh words and confrontations at all cost. Ironically, she was blessed with assertive, strong minded, and self-reliant off springs. I think she figured out early on how to get the best out of us without too much trouble. So she suggested rather than commanded, she hinted and temporized, and she sneakily laced her cooking lessons with bits of wisdom that were hard to spurn.
She taught me to be flexible, to be patient and subtle, not to rush to conclusions, and to build each relationship with a light touch— whether personal, social or professional—and always open to change and accommodation. Above all, I learned from Mom the wisdom of that old adage: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And that’s me in essence—I never ever give up.
I wonder if that was the lesson Mom wanted me to learn all along, and does she know, now that she’s sleeping with angels, that she succeeded?
(Published in Manila Standard Today, 2/5/11)
My children love Filipino bistek (beefsteak). The combination of soy sauce and fresh lemon makes it a very tasty meal and every time I make it for my children I think of my mother, who taught me how to cook it the Toledo way.
Like any typical older-generation Filipina, my mother didn’t use measuring cups or spoons when she cooked. She added ingredients as she marinated and cooked the meat. “You’ll want the sour taste to complement the salty flavor of the soy sauce,” she would say, “but neither should overwhelm the other.” And she would simmer, taste, add a little bit more of this, simmer, taste, add a little bit more of that, until the meat was perfectly flavored.
Easy, I thought. If I put too much of one thing, I just needed to add a little bit more of the other. But it turned out to be a bit more complicated than that because it took me many failed attempts and countless batches of bistek look-alikes before I got the nod of approval from Mom.
I learned to make Mom’s adobo in the same cook-taste-and-adjust method. I taste the broth several times as the meat is cooking to see how each flavor complements the other ingredients. A pinch of oregano, a bay leaf or two, onions, garlic, pepper and salt, soy sauce and vinegar.
She always said there are three secrets to a good adobo: plenty of garlic, lots of patience, and properly cooked vinegar. “You should never ever stir the pot when you’ve just added vinegar in,” she warned. “You have to wait for that strong sour taste to slowly blend in with everything that’s already there. You can’t rush it because the vinegar will be uncooked and the flavor of the adobo will be off.”
When I first came to the States I worried that I would never again get the taste of bistek right because none of the groceries carried calamansi. Mom advised me to learn to use what was available, because in her words, “That won’t be the last thing you’ll find different here.” So I experimented first with lime, then with lemons, until my bistek came close to the taste I knew from back home. “All things come together in the end,” she said, “with a little bit of compromise, resourcefulness and creativity.”
There she goes again, I thought—another life lesson dispensed with her cooking tips.
But I learned to cook tinola with sayote and spinach instead of green papaya and sili leaves. I use mustard green instead of kangkong, and fine powdered table salt instead of the rock salt I was so familiar with.
One change my family welcomed with gusto is our breakfast menu. Here in America, we usually have cereal, toast or a bagel for breakfast, but on weekends and holidays, we like to cook a fairly heavy meal. Thick-sliced SPAM grilled on the pan until the edges are toasty and crunchy; corned beef sautéed in garlic, onions and tomatoes; and Vienna sausages with fried eggs and rice. Once a month we step up our family breakfast extravaganza into a brunch, adding into the mix tocino and longaniza and tinapang bangus. We all, including our American-born, Caucasian spouses and in-laws, love the variety and mix of our Filipino-American breakfast.
In Mom’s Life Lesson 101, this is proof positive that we have accepted and incorporated American ways into our lives and allowed some of ours to blend into the Western culture. Not that Mom ever said so. That wasn’t her way.
Mother had a subtle, indirect way of communicating. She hardly ever gave direct orders, for instance. If she needed something done she would frame it as a question, or a comment, a theory, a thinking-aloud kind of wish. That meant we had to read between the lines and we had to pay close attention to her words.
She was a gentle, soft-spoken woman who avoided harsh words and confrontations at all cost. Ironically, she was blessed with assertive, strong minded, and self-reliant off springs. I think she figured out early on how to get the best out of us without too much trouble. So she suggested rather than commanded, she hinted and temporized, and she sneakily laced her cooking lessons with bits of wisdom that were hard to spurn.
She taught me to be flexible, to be patient and subtle, not to rush to conclusions, and to build each relationship with a light touch— whether personal, social or professional—and always open to change and accommodation. Above all, I learned from Mom the wisdom of that old adage: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And that’s me in essence—I never ever give up.
I wonder if that was the lesson Mom wanted me to learn all along, and does she know, now that she’s sleeping with angels, that she succeeded?
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