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PANATANG MAKABAYAN Reprised

7/24/2013

After six years of Panatang Makabayan, I had a run at my other allegiance in 8th grade.

It was 1968 in the land of my birth, the year Robert Kennedy was assassinated and President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. We lived in Ohio that furlough year in my grandmother’s beautiful stone mansion on Adirondack Trail. Dad, once again, lived far away in Boston at MIT on an Urban Studies fellowship. When he came for visits, he would regale us with stories of student sit-ins in Harvard yard, his eyes glinting with radical fervor. He appeared at Christmas with an Alan Ginsberg goatee and a maroon beret crooked French-like. Our father was bohemian and handsome, and we were just missionary kid dorks stuck in the middle of America.

My siblings and I were sick with misery. We were lonely and cold, afraid of American kids, and awkward around the internecine wars between our mother and her mother. So I hid in my room, composing 13 year old songs about the mystery of myself, lost paradise, dying trees. Who was I, the American? I pored through The Autobiography of Malcolm X and memorized all three stanzas of the American national anthem, rocket fire illuminating a tattered flag. Race hatred. Vietnam war. Teen anguish. No stars, no pearls of the Orient or a salty warm sea; no glorious land that held us to her bosom. Each day in homeroom we pledged allegiance to the flag and the country for which it stands. I did not have to promise to love America, or say “faithfulness” and “obey.” But I secretly wanted America to love me, with its "beautiful for spacious skies and amber waves of grain," its streets of clean unfenced lawns, its celebrity nationhood, and even in the worst of times, no want for rest of us.

The next June, we drove past the squatter shacks from Manila International Airport to Malate. Scott brought me with him to UP Prep high school, which rented the dilapidated third floor of the old Supreme Court building on Padre Faura Avenue. As the “first quarter storm” gathered thunder and student demonstrations ripped Manila apart, I pledged with relief, “Iniibig ko ng Pilipinas.”

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Christmas 1967 – the last in Malate

7/24/2013

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Christmas 1967, our the last in Malate, Mom’s letter to grandmother…

Christmas Eve Scott and Johanna were in a play, “Nino the Tongueless one”. Scott was a king and in charge of the lights and Johanna an ox. All week I sewed costumes – up to the end. It was written, directed, and narrated by Dick Solis and it was lovely! It was followed by the chorus of Ellinwood and Union Church singing Benjamin Britton’s "Ceremony of Carols”.

We came home, hung stockings on our real tree (rapidly browning) and went to bed to sleep a little before midnight when we planned to get up again. We were tired, not having had much sleep that week. They (“the construction”) were pouring cement all night several nights and on Saturday night, the watchmen who sleep outside our kitchen window (second floor of their construction) left their radio blaring all night.

At midnight Johanna woke us up, the church bells rang gaily and the watchmen suddenly turned their radio on again – rock and roll. I thought, “I can’t stand that music all during my Christmas Eve! I’ll have a nervous breakdown!” But they turned it off soon. I then felt sorry for them there all alone. So Johanna and I fixed up cocoa and stollen for them (a “Noche Buena” snack). One man walked across the scaffolding to our back wall. We handed him the basket from the back steps and back he crept. The man ate on the worktable where they do carpentry work by day and sleep by night.

We had fun opening presents. Johanna got a doll and materials for sewing from Mrs. Carpenter, her SS teacher at Westminster church. Dick gave me a brass pitcher from Korea and gorgeous silk for a robe. Kerry got a guitar. Johanna gave all her Barbie dolls and furniture to Margaret. Scott got a record and Johanna other small items. We finally went to bed at 4am after eating.

At 6:30am the children were up again! We went to church at 10, then to the Niguidulas for lunch. It was quiet, cool and relaxing in Antipolo. Then we stopped in at the Abraham’s and ended up at the Grosvenor Blair’s (A lawyer at Esso, wife directed “Nino”) for supper. It was such a Christmassy meal – smoked turkey, stuffing, apples, Sunkist oranges, scrambled eggs and cranberry sauce. Mince pie for those who could.

And after dinner the Ellinwood choir came and caroled! About 35 of them sang, came in and ate sandwiches, chocolate cake, and punch and sang again. They ended with the Hallelujah chorus. And I tell you that it is some way to end Christmas, with the Hallelujah Chorus being sung in your livingroom!

It so inspired Dick and Grove, they started talking about initiating litigation to secure legal rights for the urban poor – and they were ready to go on for another all nighter.

But we did manage to go home, pack suitcases for Baguio, sleep, leave before noon on Tuesday: Dick, Scott, Margaret, and me by car. Kerry, Johanna and Annie by bus with Alex and Fern Grant. By Tuesday night all 9 of us were tucked away in House B.The next day the Acculturation Conference began. Dick was on the Planning Committee and gave one of the best papers in the 3-day conference. We were proud of him. He held his own among the social scientists and anthropologists, 325 were registered, including 50 sisters from St. Louis School. Very friendly group.

On Friday noon, Jan Kinnier and four children arrived, so we were fifteen! But it worked out well. Jan bought at the PX and took the children horseback riding. We had expected Alex and Fern to leave, but they were having so much fun they stayed the whole weekend.

Sunday night we had a bang-up new year’s party. Irene Davidson joined us (She’s here for a month or two). The children stayed up until midnight. I was really impressed with the teenageness of K and S. There was a real gang of teenagers who had fun together – Kerry, Wendy Kinnier, Marcia Jordan, Beverly White, Scott, Steve, Chris Jordan, and Bob White. Monday we had the Jordans over for a luscious ham dinner. Tuesday we all left by car and bus, leaving the Kinnier family to stay on.

Going up to Baguio, we left a muffler, so it was with fear and trembling we started down – but made it all the way to Manila without mishap.

This almost turned out to be the first Christmas we didn’t have “tourist” guests to entertain. However, Saturday before Christmas, a family bound for Australia to study his work arrived. And he wanted to know about urban situations! So all day Sat went to them, though we also had a nice Christmas party at the church for the children.

I almost forgot, on Sunday (Christmas Eve) we took all SS children caroling at Philippine General Hospital Pediatric Ward. We also distributed gifts. At noon I suddenly felt I had to do some Christmas baking, so I made five stollen, two mince pies, two salads, a plate of eggs and meat. The Palms came over to visit and went to “Nino” and that's where the account began!

Horned Bill, Reprise

After my 7th grade baccalaureate, after Kagalakan, we learn we aren’t returning to our Malate home at 1667 B Vasquez. I know what I need to do. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, I slip down on the dark wood floor and pull out a dusty old box from under the bed. It bears a beard of dust webbing, and spiders have fashioned their own homes among the box's contents: leaves, a bullet shell, the gold rock, other moments. I finger the Horned Bill's relics most carefully. The leaves once encrusted with blood crumble at my touch, but the gold rock’s vein still vibrates.

The Horned Bill memory is distant and sad but still vengeful. She won't let me forget, appears unexpectedly in my dreams with bloodied feathers, beak half gasped—and a streak of fear that no one stayed her execution. I empty the box's contents tenderly under the gnarled roots of our acacia tree.

Mom and the Contest at Mt Carmel

Mom got very involved with the Prophets in the months before our furlough in the States.

I'm still attached to the Early Church Father marionettes. She manages us as her personal elves when a project idea erupts - so many theater productions, events, parties, household traditions. But the result is always magic. So, I see her dark hair bent over wet paper mache as she molds the aquiline noses and strong Byzantine features of those old men. While she sews their costumes and Scott strings their arms onto the cross-sticks, Jo, Marg and I work on a stage and scroll for scene changes. Then we work marionettes, endlessly reenacting gory tales of Christian martyrs consumed by wild beasts in the Roman coliseum. Paul falls of his horse on his way to Damascus. Jerome has a long adventure regarding his Latin bible. John Chrysostom offers a recap of one of his sermons. Augustine explains (I would say apologizes for) the theology of original sin. We tell some stories of our own after hours.

Then their 15 days of fame are over and the Early Church Fathers hang around the bodega looking morose, their cloaks molding in the humidity, their strings tangled. Jerome’s handsome head lasts the longest and is finally detached from his corrupted body. It reminds me of John the Baptist.

But Christian Education does not linger. Now, Elijah is on the run after the Contest on Mt Carmel. Earlier, we finished a play about Ahab, Jezebel and the priests. In Margaret’s kindergarten class, they are whipping up fingerpaint renditions of Elijah’s encounter with God. Mom is especially proud of her music. She reports to grandmother, “I used Bloch’s “Schlemo” to tell the story since it gets loud and soft in the right places.” So the kindergarteners are guided through three fingerpainting sessions, a treatment in yellow when Elijah flees to the desert, then a move to multicolor when the earthquake, wind and fire shake up Mt Horeb (though God isn't in these). And finally, during the last movement of Schlemo they whip up God's still small voice is bright blue.

Scott seems to have a contest at Mt Carmel every day. When he tries to ask a question at UP Prep High School, where he is a sophomore, his classmates shout him down. They say it's because they're anti-American. Mom thinks Scott is too eager to do all the talking and he argues with his teachers. “Try a different approach,” she tells him in her still small voice. (I don't know this at the time. I read her letters about our 'wars at home' much later.) She tells grandmother,

He has an eye virus, which caused blinking, which still continued. I noticed it stopped last Sunday (Oct 68) after he was in the drama, “Contest on Mt Carmel” I think it took his mind off his other tensions. But when he accompanied me to the PTA meeting last Sunday and none of his friends were there, I saw him standing alone, blinking furiously. It reminded me of once when he was just three years old and we were training at Mt Freedom. I looked out our window and saw Scott standing on the edge of the Kindergarten group, with the same expression on his face. He wants to fiercely to be part of his group. But his very aggressiveness is what makes it hard for others to take him in.

Still, she's perplexed by our American “turn.”

...the older the children become, the less they are affected by Filipino ways. Or is it that as their friends becomes more Filipino in their ways the less our children seem Filipino. Scott is a real maverick. He reports upperclassmen that are seen smoking, while others won't do it since they are afraid of being beat up by the boys after they graduate. He complains loudly that he does most of the work in his committees. He is fiercely competitive. The 8 years of cooperative JASMS seem to have given him an unquenched thirst to be first. And he is fighting tooth and nail with Alexander Syson for first place in First Year.

Kerry also complains that others on her committees leave the work up to her. She has a thick accent when she speaks to her friends, but she is so aggressive and bossy! More than she is at home. The politeness toward adults doesn’t seem to carry over to the home either! And they are not quiet-spoken, or graceful, or shy. I took them to the doctor’s last Saturday morning. It was a small office and my four were like the half-grown cubs in Born Free!

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Section Light, 6th grade

7/24/2013

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Section “Light" in 6th grade is owned by Miss Roque's bubble haircut and sailor dress. She's strict, fair, and irritable in a smart way.

As Protestants, we're caught up in a Hollywood craze about irrepressible nuns. In “Trouble with Angels”, Haley Mills is an orphan who attends a convent school. Rosalind Russell is Mother Superior who can't discipline her. Debbie Reynolds scoots cheerfully around in a wimple with a guitar slung over her back in “The Singing Nun".

Miss Roque is tired of teaching religion, so she dedicates one quarter to The Singing Nun. "Class, who will learn the songs for us?" Phyllis and I win the lotto. It's a labor of love. Phyllis patiently lifts and resets the needle on the vinyl disc as I scribble lyrics to “I have found the Lord,” and “Among the Stars” and so forth.

What they didn't tell us: The real singing nun, Belgian Soeur Sourire started singing to raise money for her order. Her Reverend Mother wouldn’t allow her tape to be aired on the Ed Sullivan show, so Sr. Sourir left the order, changed her name to Luc Dominique, became world famous, was hounded by the Belgian government for back taxes on royalties that she’d donated to the order and eventually committed suicide.

In sixth grade, far beyond the stars, Phyllis decides to run for president of the student body.
"Will you be my campaign manager?"
"OK," I say, but I worry about her lack of judgement. My political skills are a slight improvement over home economics. She loses by a single vote against daughter of our third grade teacher. The next year, our UES president runs away from home with her beloved, so Phyllis should have guided our ship of state.

Then, "the hills are alive" Julie Andrews sweeps into town with her soundtrack.

Oh, those years of the sound of music. We strum our new guitars during recess and after class and queue up for the new rondalla, the Filipino 5-string instrument orchestra. Girls play the 14-string banduria, which carries the melody and tenor, and the laud ( la-ud, to rhyme with wood). The boys take on octavinas, a small guitar, the gitara adapted from the Spanish guitar with five strings, and also plucked the bajo, the four string acoustic bass. I want to play the laud but am assigned the banduria. The easier to drown me out.

Mr. Silos was a kind old master conductor who taught all our parts without a score. The best girls and boys learn musical phrases from him and teach the rest of us. Our last year of elementary school ends with a splashy music and dance "Kagalakan" at the Phil-Am Auditorium. But you have to sell your own tickets to raise money for the extravaganza. Phyllis and I set out for the Batasan, Philippine congress. As we arrive at the congressional offices, the legislative staff turn to an invisible senator or representative and say “Sir, a kana and daughter of Monteclaro are here." We sold all our tickets, Feelees and I. Hair spray, make-up, stage lights, it's magic. I hate that shiny blue gown.

In a parallel universe, I am an American-in-training. My new real American friend Wendy Kinnier isn'r mk. Her dad is a consultant for the US military encamped in Makati. We sunbathe at the Seafront pool (you have to have US government privileges) and sleep over at her house in Magallanes subdivision. It's tough, this assignment. Americans are so walang hiya. Mr. Masangkay the lanky teacher of shop stops me in the hall one day as I am singing on my way to class.
"You are going to the US?"
"Yes, sir."
He gives a slight, sad shake of his head, and prophesies, "You will be changed." (in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet).
"Oh, no sir, I won't change!" Urgent, shy and exposed.
His sad words hound me all the way through our American year 1968.

Angel angel down we go

On the other hand, it is very hard to be mahinhin when you are luminous pink-white, knobby-kneed, and clumsy.

Elementary school is ending and the pretty girls are plunging ahead. I am too flat for a bra, all bones, elbows, hook nose. "Ang itangos ay ilong!" they whisper sotto voce in the jeepney. The nose is so big! Sometimes I wish I didn't know what they were saying. I also wish I had shiny black hair, not this curly brown that doesn’t obey. “Your hair doesn’t obey,” says Annie, whose short hair is very disciplined.

“Even though you are rough, I love you.” This is my only love note in elementary school. He means it as a complement.

There is one more trouble with angels movie I haven't mentioned: "Angel Angel down we go".

We drag out the Sound of Music so as to sneak into other forms of global teendom, which begins with the Beatles, Turtles, Herman's Hermits, and the Byrds' "Eve of Destruction". We have not yet smoked a joint or taken qualudes, so it is not yet the Eve of Destruction. Still, one can dream.
We sing without prescience:
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve...

In 7th grade one of my classmates, beautiful as Helen of Troy, runs off with her boyfriend. She tells me the sad story: they find them, her parents are furious out of their minds, they’re packing her off to Europe, she doesn’t want to go. She never even said ‘hi” to me and we’ve been in the same class since 4th grade. Same year, the daughter of my pious third grade teacher, also elopes with her boyfriend.

The next year, when we’re in the US, Mrs. Teves the dark, serious principle of UES is accused of lascivious behavior. Turns out she’s been living with a woman -- she’s a lesbian! The teacher pass around a petition to have her dismissed. So, it is hovering just outside out reach, the Eve of Destruction.

American Queen of Life

https://www.loc.gov/item/2011648309/

I'm in 5th grade with the April 23 edition of Life magazine splayed on the floor at the Interboard Guest House, and am sqatting, checking the pictures of the "Coronation of Sikkim's Queen Hope" and hoping nobody will come by yet to make me put it back. Hope Cook is the American queen of Sikkim. She married Buddhist Crown Prince Palden Thondup Namgyal in 1963.

Who is reading this Life magazine back in America, under hair dryers in salons, or at the kitchen table making cookies. (What do American mothers do?) They think she is unimaginably exotic.

You’re not so far from nowhere, I say to her big white teeth. We’re all out here together. We are out here.

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PANATANG MAKABAYAN Reprised

Christmas 1967 – the last in Malate

Horned Bill, Reprise

Mom and the Contest at Mt Carmel

Section Light, 6th grade

Angel angel down we go

American Queen of Life

Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

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