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1971 Erika's long hot summer

11/30/2014

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1971
PictureMom organizing slides as Erika takes shape.
After the 1971 New Year, Manila bursts into flame —six big fires in one week, the worst in the city's history. In a demonstration over increasing oil prices, students and jeepney drivers blockade Sampaloc’s streets. They called it the “Battle of Mendiola.” Students press against a military blockade, capture a fire truck and ram it against the gates of the Malacanang Palace. Through the night they battle police and non-striking drivers. Six students are killed and students use TNT pillboxes which explode on impact. When a few backfire, three student dormitories burn to the ground.
This triggers a wave of student protests I've already told you about: the “first Quarter Storm."


Mom, weary and depressed, calls us to the sala.It’s not about the demonstrations, strikes, or fires.    
Even dad joins us. This is serious. So we act wenky.

“Could you settle down for a minute, I have something to say.” 

Oh, too bigat.
“You’re pregnant” I quip. She shoots me a dark look. My stomach churns. This is my 40-year- old mother.
“How did you know?”  

Oh.my.god. Mom is pregnant. 

We are already embarrassed by our budding and nubile bodies, with our pheromones in fruitless bloom. With a mother so thoroughly modest, let's call it an annunciation.  

“Wow, how many months?” Johanna. Someone had to ask. 

“Five.” 
In unison,
“Five?!” 
Scott calculates,
“Another Poethig by….May.”
She looks heavy-lidded and withdrawn. Jo and I relapse to silly Manila Girlness.
We can finally adjourn.

We get silly: "How about Raven Coal Black, or Edgar Allan Poe(thing)?"  Mom and dad settle on a long middle name. Sentimental: a Poethig scrap book for posterity in which we feature prominently. Then return to teen solipsism. I embark on my anthropological journey southward right after she arrives. 

It's so hot by April that the bomba (Rated X) film, "Erika’s Long Hot Summer" conquers our imagination. 
 
Erika Christy Peter Poethig arrives on May 3rd at St. Luke's Hospital. She's born before dad can get there.
The only Poethig born in the Philippines. 
Spunky Erika. 

This hot-hot-hot summer, Eleanor Palm, Johanna and I turn to swimming pools. There’s a pool at PhilAm, but it’s crammed with kids. We discover Sulu Hotel, an easy jeepney ride up Quezon Blvd. It's small, often deserted, and the staff are easy going, so we don modest bikinis and swathe ourselves in coconut oil. Johanna’s JASMS barkada joins us – Marilee, Nene, Marilyn, Valerie, wild happy burgis girls. Sometimes we bring Margaret, Margie Palm and their friends to convince our mothers we're generous. 

Hot-hot-hot politics are brewing a block from Sulu Hotel. At the "Concon,"  the Constitutional Convention, three hundred twenty delegates rewrite the Philippine 1935 constitution modeled after the American constitution. The cynics (almost everyone) say this is a Marcos ploy to extend presidential term limits to eight years. A bribing scandal to extend term limits proves it true. 

We think this hot convergence presages Erika's political acumen. 

Since it's an election year, the campaigns are equally hot and controversial. In August, at Plaza Miranda by the Quiapo Church, someone lobs a grenade onto the platform where Liberal party candidates are speaking. Our very own Protestant Sen Jovito Salonga is swept into the maelstrom. Marcos suspends the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. He blames the bombing on the communists, although the Liberal party is the opposition. In popular retaliation, three months later, the Liberals win a majority of the Senate seats, and only two Marcos candidates are elected.

It only promises to get hotter. 


Picture
Halter gals
Meanwhile, in Makati with the burgis
My latest depressive composition begins, "everyone's on downers I don't need a pill to get me there."  
In June, at the start of the new school year, I glumly comply with parental demands, sentenced to American purgatory.
"OK, I'll go to International School." 
So, no bus-jeepney-through-Quiapo to UP Prep, instead I board the JUSMAG bus with military brats or take a taxi  from the Quezon Circle along Hiway 54 through Cubao, over the Guadalupe Bridge into gleaming, suburban Makati to the imperialist, burgis International School. 

At least I discover the existentialists. Camus lives with me on the dark side of my moon. I read The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, then Kafka's Metamorphosis.  But the Camus I love is, Lyrical Essays, drunk on the Mediterranean sun. 

To graduate early, I take additional correspondence courses so that by the end of December 1972. The plan is to go to college in the U.S.  So, I sign up for all the writing options at IS: the newspaper,  Kudyapi, the high school poetry journal for the second year in a row, the yearbook.  Mrs. Silverman, a New Yorker who has also introduced me to John Ciardi and Robinson Jeffers, suggests Rutgers, her alma mater. 

"It has a good major for Creative Writing." 
But Anthropology is my only love and there is no place in the world for Anthropology but the University of Chicago.
​I don’t say that back to her.

1970Scott leaves UP for College of Wooster,

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http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2011/2011-02Feb01-DilimanCommune/dcfeb
If 1970 was the Congress of the Streets, this year inaugurates the Battle of University of the Philippines, Diliman. When Sampaloc ignites, the Manila campuses catch fire.

Our "Brother Love" becomes a college freshman at University of the Philippines at Dilliman.  He takes a bus past Monumento to Quezon Blvd to the acacia-lined campus. He attends Hair as an induction. It may be the Age of Aquarius in America, but in his UP English class, they're comparing Vietnam to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. His classes are like sputtering spark plugs - bright, out, hot, dead. 


The Diliman tempest arrives in January. Radical students, led by 
Ericson Boculinao president of the UP Student Council, set up barricades along University Avenue to protest oil prices. When police remove the blockades, someone shoots. It breaks into all-out war returning bullets with pillboxes and Molotov cocktails. We hear that tear gas cleared out the ladies’ dorms.

Scott walks to Basilan Road, shaken. A UP professor, rebuffed at the barricades, had returned with three guns, a helmet and vest and began shooting at the students, killing one. UP students retaliate by burning the professor’s car,  bombing the UP guard house, and breaking windows in the Administration Building.  

At first UP President Lopez takes a permissive stand. He removes police from the campus on Wednesday to prevent violence, and negotiating with students and faculty.  Many of the faculty who live on campus were practically incommunicado since no phones worked, but they and other students are afraid to leave because of looting.  In the meantime, pressure groups call for a return to law and order in the university, the resignation of President Lopez and a police take-over. 

Gradually, the students take full control of the campus, and set up the “Diliman Commune”.  The Diliman Commune set up checkpoints in and out of campus. They prevented all traffic in and out, except for some who wanted to walk. They renamed the buildings, flew red flags from the roofs, manned the radio station, broadcasting revolutionary music and analysis all day.  We heard that they commandeered the Chemistry department for molotov cocktails and the Home Economics kitchens for baon for their kasamas at the barricades.

Diliman Commune posts this statement on Feb 13, 1971:
  • "WHEREAS, the UP Student Council has expressed solidarity with the Filipino people in their valiant struggle against the American imperialist oil cartel and its local bureaucrat-capitalist allies; 

  • WHEREAS, the UPSC has endorsed the barricade as a form of protest against such evils;

  • WHEREAS, the UPSC vehemently condemns the fascist-puppet State and its campus agents for employing brutally sadistic methods in suppressing legitimate dissent;

  • WHEREAS, the UPSC salutes the militant resistance put up by the broad United Front of progressive students, faculty members, non-academic workers, and campus residents who resolutely struggled to defend and liberate the University;

  • BE IT RESOLVED AS IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED, that the UPSC commend the revolutionary courage of the heroic defenders of the Diliman Commune against the fascist State and its campus collaborators.

An alumnus of UP Prep, Scott, no radical, is sympathetic. When the mayor of Quezon City and others negotiate with students to remove the barricades, he joins a “fire brigade” line to disentangle the barricade and return the chairs to their classrooms. 

The College of Wooster now seemed like his best option.  So my oldest brother applies to Wooster in February and is gone by July. 

When he turns 18 on July 13, dad takes him to the US Embassy to register for the draft. We hadn't thought about that, so St. Margaret prays for a high number. Mom tells grandmother, “I don’t think Scott has thought about leaving nearly as much as he has thought about getting his two papers in anthropology done.”   


He writes papers, continues to deny. Then finally, days before  the flight, he packs all his important objects: jeepney signs for Espana Taft Paco, his collection of bus tickets, 12th and 13th century porcelain bowls found at grave sites in Tala caves.  Forget the clothes.  “Here, take this,” he passes his record player to a surprised Johanna.  

Dad is going with Scott.  I wear my new copper-colored peasant blouse hipster pants and macrame belt. We chug happy Erika, pass her around from hip to hip. Scott’s the first to go and gets a real despedida send-off.  UP Prep friend Alex,  George Padolina, our SS Wright stalwarts. It’s crazy and hot at the airport terminal since the aircon is broken. We gather, mingle and talk about nothing, just to linger. 

We hear Philippine Airlines’ last call for Hong Kong and they haven’t gone through immigration!! “Go, go now!”  Dad trails Scott down through the closed doors.  We think they’r going to come back, but in the confusion, they don’t return.  So we dash to the departure deck and wave to the plane as it taxis, takes off, up into the smoggy air.  Like that, Scott’s gone.  We stand there watching a little longer, then go home. 

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Fraternal ranking

8/22/2013

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If we were kana Manila Girls to our pinoy friends, we were mks to each other, the children of long-staying fraternal workers. We joked, cajoled, counseled, and competed. Our tight clan had its own pecking order, depending on who was the rooster. In our chicken coop, we rated fellow mks by their depth of exposure without losing American identity. Given our parents' political inclinations, we also classified by political astuteness (anti-American, pro-left). This intensified with the post-Qtr Storm ethos.

We had our favorites like the Millenburg boys, but of our generation, the A/B+ families lived in Cebu, Davao, Diliman, and Dumaguete. They were mostly blond for some reason. I adored the wave of American "Frontier Interns" --- church-related college grads who arrived to work in community centers, housing, assignments similar to the Peace Corps. Aunty Soli called the Peace Corps, "mga paa ng Americano" (American feet, but not in a nice way), so maybe they were the kamay (hands).

Johanna and I were closest to the M. girls though they lived far south in Mindanao and were more evangelical on the face of it. It was K (she told me I couldn't use her name) who updated us on the revolutionary shift from sanitary pads to tampons. 
“Something you stick Up There!” 
“Aray!”
“How do they look?” 
“White sticks, here, kita mo," She digs in her bag for show and tell. "And you can go swimming.”
We were nowhere near a pool. 

I admired their nonchalance about their bodies, which we attributed to their Norwegian mother raised in China. She was holy, a hedonist, and an unabashed socialist. Their father was lanky with a wry sense of humor.  I envied them their parents since ours were so modest. The fusion granted them high marks, and though Jo and I were hip Manila girls, K. got extra points for sending us into sheer silliness. 

We dealt the lowest ranking to those who attended Faith Academy, Brent, or American school. There were so many private parochial schools in the Philippines and medium of instruction was English. Why go to schools where American kids could cluster? The American school in Makati was geared to business kids and some military brats; few mks attended.  I was eventually one of the casualties, but ignored this contradiction. We never visited Faith Academy, and based our evidence on the mk girl who lived across from us on Basilan who was an emotional wreck. As far as we were concerned, this was a school for pious parents who didn't trust the country they’d come to convert. F. 

But you had to succeed in both places, the Philippines and the U.S. It was a trip wire.  
It went like this:
“Hey, Jo, remember the R. boys?”
“The guys who were Ifugao?” (raised in the Cordilleras mountains)
“Kinda, bakit?”
“I heard from dad that they got back to the U.S. and bottomed out.”
“Wow, angel angel down you go.” 

A for Ifugao, D for American disaster. We figured that Scott, now "Brother Love", was due for a C in the America face-off. Johanna would get an A because she was tall, leggy and matapang, fearless. Me maybe a B, bahala na. Margaret was in 4th grade, so maybe the US would be more kind. We weren't sure about that. 

That trip wire; would we make it?  Can you avoid the question, "why did you grow up there?" 
"Missionary kid" produced such an awkward silence.

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Margaret meets Easter

8/18/2013

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Holy Week 1970, Margaret and the resurrection

PictureMargaret, skirt lifted
On Basilan Road, 8-year-old Margaret and 14-year-old me share a bunk in our hippy paisley room. She has the top,  I take the bottom and drape a blanket over the opening to make a cave. 

Despite the Black Nazarene’s intervention in Quiapo, I’m more interested in levitation and monads at this point in my spiritual journey.  We’ve had enough of the Life of Jesus. God tries Margaret on Holy Week, who suffers our teenage whims like a saint.  

But Margaret is not a pious kind of saint. She calls the Sunday drive to Ellinwood “the day to be endured” because she gets carsick. This chaotic year, mom hatches an Easter plan that involves a simple breakfast at our house, an Easter “sing-in” and the 10:00 service at Ellinwood. Margaret, much to our surprise, receives parental permission to stay home. 

“Aba, pa-bor-a-tism!” wails Johanna who now hates organized religion. 
But mom, who is not by nature dictatorial, is General Franco when it comes to Easter and Christmas. Concerned that we hadn’t really absorbed the Easter Story after ten years of Life of Jesus vignettes, she subjects us to a two hour read-aloud from the Bible, from the raising of Lazarus in John through the resurrection. Johanna and I roll our eyes at each other, but we listen obediently. 

Eight-year-old Margaret, on the other hand, can’t get her fill of the Passion. On Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, she sits alone through four hours of hokey Passion Week TV movies sponsored by Family Rosary. She watches the whole series again on Saturday. 

On Holy Saturday afternoon, a tearful, solemn Margaret comes to mom on the lanai.
“I just saw Jesus going to heaven. Wake me up in the dark so that I don’t miss the Sunrise Service, OK, mom?”
Since our Sunrise Service begins at 6am Mom comes into our room at 5:30 and rustles her.
“Margaret, Margaret, wake up honey. It’s Easter!”
I groan from the bottom bunk, “is it Easter already?”
Margaret leans on one elbow and peers out the window at the light.  

“Mom,” she says reproachfully, “It's morning already. I’ve been waiting all night for the morning.”
Margaret’s reproach is hard to bear.


We leave for Ellinwood without her. The rest of the day’s quiet and so is Margaret. At bedtime, I hear mom quietly ask Margaret in the top bunk, “So, Margaret, did you have a nice Easter?”
“Well, to tell the truth, no.”
“Why?”
“It was so simple.” Then she looks away as if ashamed. 

“I thought the world would end today.”

Picture

Margaret and the Communion of Saints

Maybe because the world didn’t end, Margaret begins to commune with the dead. I understand; it’s a predictable path, but Margaret isn’t divulging this to me, even though we’re bunkmates. Teen-dom is such a self-obsessed condition and I am contemplating my own death, so there's no space for anyone else's.
 
Margaret commits mom to secrecy (which obviously mom betrays because I’m writing about it).
"Can the dead can see and hear us?"  
Of course, we know the answer is yes, but mom hedges.

"Why, do you think so?"
Margaret confides, “After I say my prayers with you at night I talk to dead people.” 
A chill runs down mom’s spine. “Who?”
“Grandmother Henrietta, and your daddy, and Auntie Eva (she met her in Hawaii last June). Other people too.”  
She hesitates; here’s the question she’s wanted to ask.  
“Do dead people hear only us or do they hear everyone at the same time, like God?”
“I don’t know, Margaret.”
Later, mom asks Rev. Dario Alampay, the pastor of Ellinwood and a good friend.   
He muses, “Lots of people today don’t like to talk about ‘unseen’ life. It’s supposed to be superstitious. But what does the ‘Communion of the Saints’ mean and what does it mean when we say Christ is Lord of the living and the dead, if we don’t mean what Margaret is talking about.” 

My little sister talks with the spirits in the bunk above, and I am consoled by them in the bunk below.

"We should be free"

In July, Margaret has a vision. 
She steals quietly into the sala and declares in an 8-year-old shy, matter of fact voice,
“I just saw Jesus in white lines.” 
Mom tries to hide her surprise (of the mind that God doesn’t actually visit).

“Where were you?”
“On the lanai.”
“What were you doing?”
“Playing Barbie dolls. I saw Jesus in white lines.”  She draws the outline of a figure in the air.
“How do you know it was Jesus?”

Margaret eyes mom with incredulity.
“Who else would come down from heaven?”
“Were the white lines like a drawing or a photograph?” 

“Like a photograph. Does it mean the world is coming to an end?”
“No... I don’t think so.”
“It would be better if it did. Then I wouldn’t have to die.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I would be with God right away. I wouldn’t have to suffer and all that." 

She hesitates. "I would be free. We’d all be free.” 

Some time later, mom wakes from a siesta with a picture laid neatly on her stomach.  Margaret’s rendition of a family: dad fishing, mom carrying a basket (of laundry?), children playing under the trees. It might have been a log cabin in the woods. She'd written, “Why can’t we live the way we want to live, like this.” 

The next day, mom asks her about the picture. 
“I wish we didn’t have rules. We should be free.” 

I wonder what Margaret in the middle of her life as a creative, trouble-shooter, rule-abiding agnostic makes of this now, her religious year burdened by God and longing to be "free."  
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U.S. Furlough, 1961-1962

2/19/2013

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Haiku of our tour of Japan

Point to plastic food in the Tokyo glass case,  
Noodles but no spaghetti
So Scott won’t eat.

Bob Fukada talks as he takes us to the red Zen temple
A friendly American sound
from a brown Presbyterian.

Mom buys a silk kimono in Kyoto
In the back, a tea house and pool
Where we feed golden carp our fingers.


Picture
Stony Point, New York
After five years in Manila, we have a Furlough, which means we live in America for a year. Scott will go to third grade, I’ll be in first grade and Johanna in kindergarten.  Little baby Margaret joins the family.

That year we live at the Presbyterian Church’s Stony Point conference center in New York on the second floor of a stone house with the window seats. An Indian family with two teenage girls lives downstairs. Their house is dark, dark, dark. It emits misery. Dad will stay an hour away in New York City. He’ll be getting a MA at Union seminary (he already has an M.Div from Union, where he met mom), and has job with the Urban Africa Project. “Why isn’t he living with us?” we want to know. “It’s too far,” says dad. We know far. Manila is far. 

We meet our relatives. We have one grandmother (mom's mother), one grandfather (dad's father), one aunt (dad) and uncle (mom), six cousins and various in-law relations, first cousins twice removed and so on. Grandmother Juliet Blanchard lives on Adirondack Trail, Dayton, Ohio in a beautiful stone house. The ghost in grandmother's house is our grandfather Pete Blanchard who died in an airplane crash when mom was in college. It's a long story and we don't learn about it til we're much older.

On the Poethig side, we visit Aunt Erna, Uncle Tim, our six boy cousins and grandfather Poethig in New Jersey. Uncle Tim is Catholic, so Aunt Erna is a Catholic. Our grandfather Ernest Poethig sits on a couch with dad. He doesn’t say much. When Aunt Erna brings out old b&w pictures, we laugh at grandmother Henrietta in a grass skirt, she's crossed her long legs and is playing a ukulele. She died of TB when dad was nineteen. Grandfather rustles around for the picture of him and Henrietta on their tenement rooftop. Dad’s smile eases and grandfather pats him on the leg. They don’t look at each other, but they’re both smiling so we can relax. Then we have a real American picnic with hamburgers, potato chips, and lemonade with our cousins and their New Jersey accents.

In America, schools start in September instead of June. We buy school supplies but something's missing.
“Mommy, mommy, what about uniforms!” 
“No uniforms, Kerry.” 
No uniforms?  How will they know what school we belong to? If we get lost, how can they find us? My fear is a premonition.
We will ride a yellow bus. On the first day of school mom drives us to the big elementary school. But the next day, she escorts us to the yellow bus spot near Gilmore Sloan house. 
“Remember to tell the driver, Gilmore Sloan,” she reminds us.  

"Yeah, yeah," says Scott, who is a little scared, but he doesn't want to show it.
Then, it’s 3pm and corridors are packed with kids scampering out to the parking lot. I can't find Scott, but see Johanna running from her kindergarten room near mine. We stand together, holding hands as all the buses leave. When the lot is almost empty, I burst into tears. It’s like Ping, the last yellow duck on the Yangsee River.
A lone bus drives up to us. “Where to, kids?” asks the driver kindly. I sob while Johanna says loudly,
“Geelmore Slon, Geelmore Slon!”  He nods and takes us to the place where little kids have accents.

In First Grade, we each have a chair and a desk. You pull up the top and hide things, like extra ba-on, pencils, and school books. We have worksheets to fill out, but mostly I like to collect them: rich thick white paper with purple mimeo ink. I sniff secretly. America smells like mimeo and Baguio pine. It smells chemical and in the Spring cold wet green grass. 

“See Spot run.” Spot is a dog, and Sally has yellow hair. I steal a glance at the colorful hair of my classmates. They remind me of home: mahogany like our floor, bright yellow like ducklings, light brown like cuchinta. Phyllis has shiny black hair like everyone else: black hair, brown skin, dark shiny eyes. I want to go home.

The school nurse calls mom. 
"Mrs. Poethig, could you visit me at the clinic."
She stands in her white starched uniform at the door and greets mom nervously.
“I have a few concerns about one your children’s medication,” she taps the form gently with a pencil.
“What seems to be the problem?" mom's alarmed. We're sick all the time in the States - measles, mumps, tonsels out, bad sniffling colds. What else can we get?
“That’s what you give dogs for worms” she points to a medication form, embarrassed for mom.
“Oh, it’s only about worms!” my mother drops back her head and laughs. 

This is what we learn about America. It smells chemical but you still get sick. Since American kids don’t have yayas, they can run wild. No one thinks we’re rich, so Johanna and I can sell lemonade. We are kind of American, kind of not.


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Margaret is born 
Snow! “It’s like being inside the refrigerator!”  We make a snowman, and mom makes us wear jumpsuits. We take the train to grandmother’s house for a real Christmas. "Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go...." Grandmother’s house has a old house smell you can't ever explain, but it's my favorite smell of America. Our hearts are sweet with the magic of being together in the cold. Mom is especially keen to celebrate Jesus' birth in the winter. She and grandmother are mistresses of high tradition. We play in the snow drifts and then stomp off the snow to deck a piney Christmas tree with olden ornaments. Grandmother builds a log fire that crackles while we sip hot cidery wassail. On Christmas morning, the adults go room to room singing "Merry merry Christmas everywhere, cheerily it rings out in the air, Christmas bells, Christmas trees, Christmas odors on the breeze." We run downstairs in our flannel pjs.
Breakfast is fresh baked stollen and scrambled eggs. We open presents one by one. So it doesn't really matter that during Christmas we first get mumps and then measles.

I don't remember when mom tells us we are getting another brother or sister. She gets bigger and bigger. In March, as the ground starts balding and yellow daffodils poke courageously up from the snow, Margaret Juliet arrives. Dad drives grandmother’s Oldsmobile with mom holding a soft white bundle like baby Jesus. We clank pots and pans around the car. “Sssh,” says dad happily, “your new sister’s sleeping.”  She curls in a big white bassinette covered with a white veil. Mom brings back flowers in a pretty blue jay vase. 
“Can I hold her?” 
“Only if you’re sitting on the couch,”  mom passes her to me. Johanna and I sniff our new sister. She smells like baby powder, Gerber and poop. Margaret is making gurgling sounds, and we gurgle at each other. Then I say, “here” and give her back to mommy and run out to play.

Easter in April is flush with flowers. White dogwood blooms shower the yellow bus stop near Gilmore Sloan, and  pussywillows delight bare branches nearby.Mom clusters red, yellow and pink tulips all over the house as though there are never enough of them. She is soft and happy with spring and Margaret. American Easters are pretty pink, lavender and green Easter clothes, with jackets and bonnets. We go to church and sing “Crown Him with Many Crowns!” 
 

Grandmother takes charge of our Mayflower heritage. 

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Post office at colonial Williamsburg and a tradesman.
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Our elegant grandmother doesn't find out Filipino accents charming. "Say "ellll" at the back of your throat, like this. ELLL. It's not a short 'el'." We're also short on colonial history, so Scott and I take a roadtrip in her Oldsmobile  to Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown Settlement. It's more work for Scott since he's already in third grade. He is in charge of the AAA triptiks and calculates how many miles the car is getting to the gallon. We play perdiddle on American highways.

It's spring and a soft cold rain welcomes us to Williamsburg. After breakfast, we set out in the drizzle down Williamsburg’s cobblestone streets into the bookmaker’s white cottage, smelling of thick red sealing wax and a smoky wood fire. Women and men in colonial costume show us their wares.  At the bakery, a hot bread scent wafts through the door of gingerbread and cinnamon.  The next day is shining with the softest spring sunlight. We visit a blacksmith, apothecary, and the Governor’s house. This is like stepping into a movie set. 
"I want to be American when I grow up!" I glow with colonial fervor as we buy red sealing wax which I plan to affix to all my letters to Phyllis and mail from the colonial post office.
"You are American," says grandmother primly. 

We visit the Jamestown settlement, which is not as fun as Williamsburg. It looks more run down, and they have to grow things themselves.

Grandmother lectures on our early family history. 
“Jamestown was here before our ancestors came to America. You're descendents of John Alden and Priscilla Mullens who arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower.”
“What's a Mayflower?”


Shepoints to one ofthe old ships with heavy sails in the harbor, “a boat like that, they took one of those over the ocean. They were pilgrims.” 
“Thanksgiving pilgrims?” Scott perks up. We dressed up as pilgrims and indians for Thanksgiving with our Ellinwood friends last year. Scott was assigned a pilgrim, of course. 
He's studiously unimpressed with Jamestown, but registers interest in the Powhatan Indian village next to the settlement.
Best of all is the glassworks. In the dark room, man pulls out a glowing molten glob of glass and blows into a long pole – like plastic balloons. Grandmother buys six small green glasses. We drink orange juice from them still.


Mr Montes meets Jesus 
When we get back from our fairy tale journey through Williamsburg and Jamestown, something is wrong. Our parents talk in the kitchen when they think we’re asleep, but their mood has troubled the air around us. “What’s wrong?” we ask Scotty because he knows lots more than we do, but he’s not sure either. The next morning, daddy tells us. “Remember Mr. Montes?” “Sure,” we say casually because we don’t really. Dad clears his throat, and then he clears it again. His eyelids are red and brimming. Mom says quietly. “Mr. Montes, daddy’s work friend was in an airplane crash in India a few days ago.” “Is he in heaven, daddy?” Daddy looks so sad. “Yes,” my father says quietly. Mr. Montes is meeting Orange Jesus. 

They talk and talk, my parents. Maybe we’re not going back to Manila, they say to each other. We pretend to watch TV so we can listen. “We need a different strategy,” dad is telling mom as though he’s rehearsing for someone else, “a project not relying on one person by with more structure to it.” Mom notices us half-listening. “We’re going home.” That’s all she says.


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Fraternal children

9/15/2012

 
It happens anywhere, more often when I'm younger, but let’s say I’m flying to Chicago for Christmas and chatting with a middle aged man beside me.

“You got a funny accent. Where'd you grow up?”
“Overseas”
“Really?”
Silence.
“Where?”
“Manila.”
“Really. We have a Filipino gal as a caregiver for my mother. Sweet, talkative.”
"Uh huh."
“Your dad military?”
“No.”
“Business?”
“No.”
I sigh. “My parents were fraternal workers, that's how they say it, worked with the church. Dad on church and labor, squatters, ngo stuff now.”
“Oh...a missionary?”

Imagine the fugue– a brown woman stoops to change the diaper of his 89 year old mother, about the time I'm climbing acacias, driver ants crawl through the Poisonwood Bible in the Congo, some dark whorl of a place for white people,  and women always in long dresses, while in Hawaii a white man (my father, presumably) waves a bible above dark heads while he makes cash like a bandit.

I didn't ask to come but we came, and so we grew up in post war Manila, grimy ugly teeming cheerful Manila. We called it the “Pearl of the Orient.”  “When was it a pearl?” I ask Aunti Soli, one of my many SS Wright mothers. “Oh, it was, but before the war, you should have seen it then.” Her gentle husband, my Uncle Hank, was a guerilla fighter against the Japanese. 

Gen. MacArthur said, “I shall return,” when he high-tailed out of Manila. He splashed dramatically back through low tide at the Gulf of Leyte.  But the Battle for Manila was gruesome.  Americans and Japanese slashed and burned it to a wasteland of charred buildings, bomb rubble and corpses decomposing in the tropical heat.

We lived south of the Pasig River in Malate, a formerly gracious American and upper class Spanish mestizo neighborhood devastated by mortar shelling and pitched battles. Malate was still bedraggled when we Poethigs settled in there.  Families encamped in the ruins of the burned out houses and shanties along Wright Street.

When our family stepped onto the tarmac at the Manila International Airport, there were twenty-three American military installations dotting the Philippines.[1] Manila was 7,000 miles across the Pacific ocean. But America was everywhere.
When we left, there were five.

Eunice's first letter home, March 1956

Manila, P.I. March 1956

Dear Mother,

I am sitting here with a fan on my right and a glass (my 40th today) of calamansi juice on my left (a calamansi is like a ping pong size lime). 

We arrived at the airport a little after Garcia (the new president) arrived from Australia. People lined the streets to see him, so we got our chance to see them. Mania is quite a contrast to Tokyo! Life is so much more sophisticated there and so much less so here. Rice paddies adjoin the airport and we saw our first nipa-thatched house on stilts with a farmer plowing (?) with his carabao as we landed.

I don’t know quite how to describe the effect of stepping out of our air-conditioned constellation into the warmth that is Manila.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite so blanketed by the weather.  However, there is almost always a breeze to dry out in. 

Sunday in Tokyo—to retrace our steps—was full. We went to Chapel Center for Church at 11. It is an Army installation, choir is Japanese, Chaplain preaches, Americans make up the congregation. It is on a hill that runs above one of Tokyo’s main streets. What an amazing intersection. Standing in front of the Chapel, to the left, is the Diet Building, symbol of the “New Japan.” On the right, across a moat and behind great stone walls is the Imperial Palace, center of the old ceremonious, Shintoistic, cultural Japan.  And across the street is a large band of men camped in tents, surrounded by great red and white banners, white kerchiefs tied around their foreheads—striking workers (some say Communist inspired). And there on the hill are the Occupation forces and Christianity.  While their owners are in worshipping, the big American cars lined up outside are being further polished and dusted with feather dusters by the drivers. I am sure if I were on the other side of the street, instead of on the hill, I would believe everything I was told by the Communists. However, the truth is that I will always be “on the hill” no matter how idealistically I might wish otherwise.It seems perfectly obvious that no missionary is going to crack the tough nut of Japan.  The most we can do is to lay what groundwork we can for the growth of Christianity and let God in His own time bring it to bear fruit, no doubt without any westerner’s direction.

Our dinner was at the Winn’s and afterwards we had been invited by Mary Ballantyne to take a trip to Kamakura.  However it got too late and involved an hour’s train ride with the children who were so tired and meant getting home late, in addition to the fact that I didn’t know what to do about feeding Johanna, so we very respectfully had to give it up.

We did go to Meiji Shrine where the Imperial Family worships.  I was mortified when, right in the courtyard before the shrine, Kerry could wait no longer…

The plane trip was wonderful. So easy with children. It was not crowded and we spread ourselves out over 1/3 of the plane. The kids could run but not too far. Food was brought to them and they were penned in their seats by the trays which fastened on the arms.  Many nice stewardesses. Close to the bathroom and Kerry slept 3 hours in the buggy while Johanna rocked in the little hammock.  I intend to avoid ships from now on until the children are older (maybe forever, I just don’t care for people who are idle for so long.)

When we landed in Manila a “welcoming committee” was there. The Palms (Jim and Louise), Henry Little, Ernest Frei, and Marg and Bob Crawford who have since been a great help to us.

We are living in the apartment used for those “in transition” in Manila. We have a large bedroom and share a sala (that’s the word we PI’ers use) and a kitchen with other people here—who don’t use them at all.

Through Marge Crawford we have Linore who is going to help take care of the children, etc. here or over at the Crawfords’ where they can play in the yard.  Marge and I are sharing on hiring Linore’s mother to do the laundry (at Marge’s). It seems like more help than I know what to do with but we will have to do shopping and some house hunting. Also I think we will find the heat something to contend with for a while. We spend a lot of time taking cold showers (no hot running water in the apartment) and changing clothes. Those cold showers feel good!

 Today we went to City Hall to register as residents. City Hall is a large, shot-up building.  This office was in a huge long Quonset hut building on one side of the courtyard. We got tied up in the traffic which was mixed up due to the arrival of the cars bringing Magsaysay and the others killed in the plane crash on Sunday. Thousands lined the streets. What a time to arrive here! The next few months are very crucial ones, to say the least. We don’t know what the people’s real feelings are about the loss of Magsaysay. The papers write of little else but others don’t say much.

We have enjoyed mangos for the first time, and Chinese snow peas. All the fruits will soon be in season. Acme grocery store is around the corner. It is complete with Dinty Moore’s stew and Corn Flakes written in Spanish. However, Dinty Moore’s looks out of place in Manila. Acme has everything but when you look at the prices, you feel like going on a fast. There just aren’t any bargains. Milk is 90 cents a litre, Corn Flakes 60 cents and soup 30 cents a can.

 I haven’t seen enough of the city yet to say much. We are right next to a furniture store that has gorgeous wrought iron and rattan furniture.

Got your letter. Dick subscribed to Foreign Affairs for you and I don’t know about the other magazines of his. We’ll find out later (He’s a Union seminary commencement tonight). My Good Housekeeping I think I will stop since I did see American magazines at Acme. We’ll write more later.

Love, Eunice

    Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

    We were "fraternal kids", Americans in the Philippines from Magsaysay to Marcos. I thought our story needed elaboration.

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