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Manila Girls and the First Qtr Storm, 1970

8/20/2013

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The 70's burst upon us as the “Congress of the Streets” when 50,000 students, peasants, and urban poor encamp in front of Congress to protest President Marcos's policies during his inaugural address. The brutal police response prompts rallies across Metro Manila. Five days later, tens of thousands of college and high school students march to Malacanang over Mendiola bridge. As students mill at the gates of the presidential palace, all lights are extinguished. In the dark, the Metrocom riot police are stealthily replaced by AFP troops with armalites. What follows is the "Battle of Mendiola" that leaves four students dead and hundreds wounded.

My father interprets the context for the “Battle of Mendiola” in an Easter letter to his network and extended family.

In front of Malacanang is a section of old two-story frame Spanish-style houses. The wide street, Mendiola, in front of Malacanang, leads to the university district of Manila. A few blocks from the palace over 200,000 students live and study in about a half-dozen universities…a crowded, sordid district of decaying boarded houses, and high-rise classroom buildings divided from each other by narrow sidewalks…Cement, smoke-belching buses, overloaded jeepneys, neon-lighted clothing stores, cubby-hole second-hand bookstores, and endless young people who attend school in shifts—these are the features of Sampaloc. Sampaloc—the student district—faces Malacanang with all the questions about why things are the way they are in the Philippines today.

The students fight police at Mendiola all night long. Lacaba recounts in Days of Quiet, Nights of Rage,
About seven times the cops attacked; about seven times they retreated, often on the run, an army routed by a band of children. Each time they attacked, the cops grew more frenzied, maddened and bewildered by a defiance they had not expected and could not understand.


Demonstrators also surge on the American Embassy on Roxas Boulevard across from Luneta Park, shouting “Yankee go home!” They rip off the US seal from the wall and toss Molotov cocktails over the fence. When the US Marines arrive, the crowd retreats, burning cars and smashing windows. One newspaper notes ironically that students destroy a restaurant called The Front, with posters of Marx and Mao, but don’t touch The American restaurant.

In the next three months, jeepney drivers stage a series of wildcat strikes when Marcos devalues the peso and the gasoline prices rise. Cycles of rallies-to-riots spice up our commute to Padre Faura since Quiapo is a hub of action.  At UP Prep, Scott's radical classmates accuse our father of CIA affiliation. It's the “First Quarter Storm.” Mirroring student uprisings globally, we are caught up in a protracted rage of things as they are: American militarism in the Pacific and its stranglehold on Philippine politics, peaking oil prices, Marcos's staged comeback and the increasing militarism of everything.

Johanna's Marxist history teacher at JASMS invites the class to a "mass action." 

"No," says mom firmly and shakes her head, "No, you can't." 
"But dad is working with those Maryknoll guys and they have demonstrations against housing demolitions!" 
"No. You're American girls. It's too dangerous."  
So, with school cancelled again, we take to the privacy of the roof, listening for updates. A few friends are at the rally. We are silly in a stupid way.
“What’s dis pers quarter storm, tawad sa isang piso storm?”
“Bakit kaya wala kaming notification? Not even “we regret to inform you that due to di fak dat you are a running dog imperialista and your fadder is a CIA, you are not invited to di mass aksyion.” 
“CIA kaya ang fadder namin?”
Tanga! Ip so, why no PX? Bakit walang Seventeen Magazine? Belib in me mare, our fadder is BIA – Balding in Action, pero no CIA.”
"Stupida!"”
I turn up the radio for more news.

Manila is roiling. We roil with it. 


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Sosyal: The burden of a Kana Manila Girl

8/19/2013

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Showing off our new halter tops on Basilan Road. Erika loves it.
Party at the Palms - Kenny Villanueva with a nose flute, George Padolina looking at the camera, Nene and others.
Marilee B and me making lakwatcha at her house.
Erlyn and Nene Bernardez with a former boyfriend, then Butch and Luna Grino and me
Johanna's barkada and extras
Our room, a photo moment
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After year-long purgatory as gawky American pre-teens, Johanna and I are ready to be sosyal. It's a short shelf life. We indulge: long phone calls, birthday blow outs, movies in Cubao. We make pasyal to the new Greenhills shopping center on Ortegas Ave, or take a bus to Divisoria for ethnic clothing adaptations. Like a Marawi malong knotted over a bare shoulder at the posh new Cultural Center of the Philippines, or a gown from cotton rice sacks at PhilAm Auditiorium.

When you are a Taglish-speaking missionary kid Manila girl, you are not tisoy or kana. You are not diplomat kid Americans, not Faith Academy evangelical mks who don’t get out much, nor American business kids confined to country club Makati. You are definitely not the part-timer Vietnam-surge military brats who live in the JUSMAG compound. You’re not a Fil-Am from the U.S. who can't tismis in Tagalog, or an unavailable gorgeous 
mestiza with an authoritarian father. Which means you can stay out longer at the dance parties, since everyone knows where you are anyway. You can say ‘yes’ when a boy ask you to slow dance, even if he’s high on qualudes. And everyone knows you won't take them.

Our sosyality is an exception to the rule. We don't have a storied past, or any extended family, or a clear class location. We're church girls with an attitude. We don't have syotas, any of us, which is both a concern and relief. But barkadas have syota-friends. I join Johanna's JASMS barkada which includes guys from la Salle. When Luna sails into town from Silliman U in D'guete, I make sabit. Or we get together with our SS Wright clan whose boys, Butch, Clyde, Leslie, Lyncir, Glenn, George, dismiss us as the uncoordinated kanas they've known since kindergarten.

So we're not real Manila girls, either. 


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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.”

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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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Part III:  Days of Rage   1969-1972

8/18/2013

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Balik (bayan?) 

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We didn't return to our beloved Malate house, six blocks from Manila Bay. Our Poethig family encamped on Basilan Road in the PhilAm Subdivision. In Quezon City off Hiway 54, it was close to the UCCP offices so dad could walk to work. JASMS had moved nearby. Johanna and Margaret strolled to class. Hiway 54 met Quezon Boulevard at the rotunda. You go left to UP Diliman or turn right to Quiapo. Since Scott and I attended UP Prep, we took the dusty red Philippine Rabbit bus down to Quiapo and a jeepney to Padre Faura back in Malate.

These are our last years in the Philippines. We recombine (Erika Christy Peter Poethig arrives in 1971), then dissolve as a family unit. We smile into despedita cameras, terrified and relieved to finally make the last journey "Stateside."  Not balik, not bayan.  

In clusters, we disappear into the American fog. Scott's the first. He wants to go. It’s agony here, it’s agony there. But he wants to go. He leaves with dad in July 1971 to attend the College of Wooster. Dad returns and takes Margaret back with him early in 1972, then in the summer Johanna, mom, and Erika sell or pack up everything left in the house. I stay to finish high school and leave in December. It will be years before we gather as a family without distress.  

So, let's return to Cosmic 1969: 
We arrive in Manila in time for the Moon Walk. Neil Armstrong plants the Stars and Stripes in grainy b&w on our TV. More thrilling for the Philippines, Gloria Diaz is crowned Miss Universe. Tisoy (short for mestizo) comics summed it up, “The US has captured the moon, but the Philippines has captured the Universe!”

And lest we forget, Ferdinand Marcos won a second term as president. Two weeks after this, mom writes her mother about the "Exposé of US subsidy of Philcag troops in Vietnam" 

The man on the street favored sending the troops to 'help a neighbor whose house is on fire' but the exposé of Fulbright shames the Philippines in the eyes of the world and attributes base motives to what the average Filipino did in good faith. This hurt is so deep I’m not sure it will really be able to be expressed in words. Instead I predict there will now be a hard coldness where once there was always a warm friendliness even when Filipinos had differences of opinion with the US. There is no fight more vicious in the Philippines than that between brothers. The sad part is that Americans will never know what goodwill and love they have lost because few ever loved the Philippines in the first place. As I have said before, Americans despise the meek.

Love, Eunice



UP Beloved...

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“Hoy, Katoy, WAIT!”  I yell as the Rabbit bus careens on Highway 54 towards the PhilAm Subdivision gate, a tail of diesel fuel wags behind, ready for the race. 
“Hur-ry!”  

At 5:30am, my hair is limp from the shower. I kick a loose shoelace and shift the bag of books. For once, Scott and I are going to school together: UP Prepatory High School. Scott's a senior and I’m starting first year.  Since I had 8th grade in the States, I’m a year behind my UES classmates who transferred to UP Prep and are now sophomores. It’s awkward.
The bus slows down but doesn't stop so we catch the rail and swing up. Two white kids in uniforms. People look. We find an empty wood plank and settle in. The ticketer shakes her tin canister full of coins. “Quiapo, dalawa.” Scott hands her a peso to make up for me. She blandly whisks out two tickets, rips them and hands them with the change, with quick disapproval at my wet head. 

Here's a Flickr link for those Rabbit buses.

“This is TANG-GA - racing Ephren to school,” I grumble. Ephren, Scott's funniest buddy, always gets to school first and Scott is determined to beat him. 
Scott ignores me. 
I don’t really mind going so early. The thick diesel-fumy congestion of jeepneys, buses, and cars hasn’t yet congealed on Quezon Avenue. In Quiapo, near Plaza Miranda, the bus disgorges us into a river of oncoming jeepneys with signs in their windshields: Taft, Espana, Mabini, then Padre Faura, that’s us. Scott flips his hand, and since we’re so visible (white kids in uniforms), several jeepneys swerve to us. We swing up and bend into the low cavern. I swipe my pleated blue skirt to keep the folds neat. The Padre Faura jeepney cruises over the Quiapo bridge, past the US faux Greek Post Office, the town hall, down Taft, past UN Avenue, swinging right onto Padre Faura. “Ssst, para.”  The driver stops as our coins travel up to him hand by hand.

This is my brother's kingdom, University of the Philippines Preparatory High School, the kalaban of UP High in Diliman. We trudge up three flights of drab marble that used to be the Philippine Supreme Court.  Our high school is on the decrepit third floor where night classes have left their dunked cigarette butts and coffee cups scattered around the rooms. No matter, I pull out a notebook, find an old chair and write out the homework for Philippine History. I love this place with a proleptic nostalgia.


Quiapo convergence

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Liberated to travel by jeepney and bus, the city is a great bazaar. When Scott doesn’t accompany me though the smoky diesel-clouded downtown, I move through the traffic like the White Lady. Quiapo church at Plaza Miranda the big transfer point is a favorite sanctuary. 

This is the "Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene" and known for its overwhelming processions.

But I am there for the anting antings cluttering Evangelista street behind the church. Albularyo stalls are piled with mysterious potions in small bottles, mandrake root, tawis, other herbal remedies. Sometimes I squat beside a lola who tells my fortune with her cards on a small table on the back patio of the church. Before you enter the old cathedral, you buy red, black, or white candles in human shapes for different intentions. I choose a white one for purity of thought. Over the church threshold, in the quivering light of votive candles, wizened women shuffle towards the altar on their knees. Others mumble through the stations of the cross. 


The Orange Jesus’ famous brother, the Black Nazarene, lies enshrined in glass at the back of the church, as if snoozing between processions. I don’t begrudge him the rest. He looks old and worn with the loving, needful touch of so many followers. You could imagine those two, their backs to me, making tsismis about their churches. Actually, I wasn't conversing much with Orange Jesus per se. Or, let's say, I was conversing with more versions: Mary, acacia trees, the bulol rice gods of the Ifugao. 

But when it come to interventions, you take whoever’s available.

My UP Prep barkada go to Ideal (I-dee-al) Theater, the old art deco building on Avenida Rizal, once the Broadway of Manila. At the credits, the screen goes dark. Another brownout.
We cram to the exit. Someone jams their elbow into my back.“
Hoy! Ano ba?" Swept up in the panicking crowd, we edge our way out the Exit, and gasp.
“Susmarijoseph!”  The entire block is ablaze! Wild flames lick the blackened sky. Fire engines can’t find enough water to dampen the inferno. It’s pandemonium as the fire leaps buildings. 
We have to get out of here!
Someone tells us public transport has detoured due to the fire.
“Sige, Kerry, ayos na, OK?”
“OK lang, ingat, ha.”  We separate. I wend through the confusion back to the Quiapo intersection. But when I get to Quiapo, it is crammed with people. Thousands of devotees are gathering for the largest procession of the season – the feast of the Black Nazarene. How did I miss this?

“Nasaan po ang mga bus ng pagpunta sa Diliman?” The man at the edge of the procession turns to me, startled. He didn’t expect a skinny white girl. 

“Ay nakareroute nila, hanapin mo yon sa Quezon Bld.” He points vaguely towards Sampaloc. Smoke wafts into Quiapo as the Avenida fire travels deeper into the city. The Black Nazarene procession moves forward undeterred, his image jostling in the thick crowd. Black Nazarene devotees are unfazed by bombscares, demonstrations, or fire. The pandemoniums converge, and I am swept into them.  
“Do you nid help?” I glance back to see a young man coming up behind me.I pick up my pace. 
“Excuse me, mum, do you nid help?”  
He’s running a little behind me. I don’t know why, since he probably is only trying to help the one American girl in Quiapo, but I panic and duck down a crowded street. Oh Jesus, where am I? Disoriented, walking, walking. 

Then the ribbon of Quezon Boulevard appears ahead. I arrive across from the rambling campus of University of Santo Tomas about the same time as the UST students across the boulevard.  They're pouring out of the campus gate, fists pumping upwards, in call and response,
“Ma-ki-baka!!" 
"Hwag ma-takot!”  
"Ma-ki-baka!" 
"Hwag ma-takot!”
Their gathering is spiky with jubilation and tension. 

Our side of Quezon Boulevard is pooling with commuters who have hiked from Quiapo. Jeepneys and busses are crammed so full that men hang by one arm out the doorways. The UST student crowd builds and someone starts shouting into a bullhorn. Wailing sirens indicate the arrival of the police. Our group of commuters is skittish. 
Since First Quarter Storm, we know the regimen: Molotov cocktails, police gunfire, general melee, pickpockets. Should I begin walking home at twilight? It will take hours. Nobody knows where I am.

I send out a desperate prayer to the Black Nazarene since His procession is on the prowl. A hand reaches out and pulls me onto the only crowded bus that slows down. 

PhilAm subdivision is dark and ghostly after the maelstrom. In a dazed calm, I find everyone at the dinner table. Mom and dad jump up when I arrive.
 “Where WERE you!” Scott calls out, angry and anxious, “The radio says crazy UST students are throwing rocks and molotovs at the police!”  

Police battled the students up and down Quezon Blvd across from UST all night. The fire, procession, and battle caused the worst traffic jam in Manila’s history until that point.  

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PANATANG MAKABAYAN Reprised

7/24/2013

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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 

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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. 

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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

Picturehttps://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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"It's my wall..."

5/13/2013

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Diego Rivera's mural was destroyed because of the head of Lenin on the mid right.
Dad, read this one!”  We deliver his beloved Modern American Poetry opened to “I Paint What I See.”  Dad’s book is a gold mine for our annual Declamation Contests at school.  We all have to recite a poem in front of the class and the best person competes with a full school. This year, Scott chooses “O Captain my Captain!” about Abraham Lincoln. I turn to Vanzetti’s last speech in the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, shoe salesman, fish peddler, tried because they were anarchists says dad, and though he shakes his head, sadly, he doesn’t explain what an anarchist is. When they are sentenced to the electric chair, Venzetti says, “I can live by my two hands and live well.”  It would be good for declamation, but my voice chokes when I try to read it aloud.

We’ve heard of class struggle, church and labor,  squatters out in Sapang Palay and Carmona. But we've only visited factories as a fieldtrip. I've memorized most of his Songs of Labor album:  “we shall not, we shall not be moved!” We sing the lyrics like a dance song. I want to be a radical, I really do.

I’m careful not to lose the two yellowing inserts tucked into the binding as I hand the book to him.  The short poem is my favorite. I slip it out and carefully unfold the yellowing slip of paper to read the faded type, even though I have it memorized:
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

Dad sees me, “Kerry, put it back now.”  
“Ok, Ok.” Cupping the rust colored hardback in his splayed left hand, he sticks the refolded poem between two thick pages, clears his throat, lifts his right arm to pause the air, and looks up to ask, 

"'What do you paint, when you paint on a wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson,

Dad's cadence rises and falls with the verses,
Do you paint just anything there at all?
'
Will there be any doves, or a tree in fall?

'Or a hunting scene, like an English hall?'

and  calls us to the chorus - 
'I paint what I see,' said Rivera.

He laughs.  Johanna gives a happy giggle.  He takes us along with elocutionary élan, 
….Whose is that head that I see on the wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?
'A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
'Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?

“Or is it the head of a Russian!” Johanna shouts, she can’t wait.

Mom comes out from the Airconditioned Room to listen, smiling with her arms folded. Dad delivers Rivera as one born to the tenements of the upper East Side.
'And the thing that is dearest in life to me
'In a bourgeois hall is Integrity;
'However . . .
'I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'
'And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln;
'I could even give you McCormick's reaper
'And still not make my art much cheaper.

The New Yorker pauses, eyes wide with meaning, voice rising, pointing to the sky…
'But the head of Lenin has got to stay..
'Or my friends will give the boid today,
'The boid, the boid, fohevah.'

And we chortle along through John D.’s feeble resistance…
'And after all,
'It's my wall . . .'

Ending in unison:
'We'll see if it is,' said Rivera.

**
In 1964, Dad’s father, the only true blue collar laborer in our family, dies. Dad learns this from a telegram. Aunt Erna sends an airform letter, typed entirely in CAPS as though she's shouting.  His eyes redden, his throat gets caught. But he doesn't cry in front of us. Somewhere he cries, maybe. We're very far away from everything that matters, sometimes.

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Sundays

5/13/2013

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During vacation, from the thick heat of April to May, your Sunday clothes stick to your body with sweat. Your handkerchief, which you fold to mop your brow, is streaked with dirt. In the Elliinwood sanctuary, the small electric fans fastened to the pillars whir ineffectually over our heads. Pews are a-flutter with Sunday bulletins, handkerchiefs and sandlewood fans, all gently flapping. It looks like many species of butterflies mating. Maya birds dive in and out of the high eves chirping through the 10 am service.

Johanna’s a scamp. When she's little, she’s already suspicious of the Sacraments. We're kicking our feet aimlessly into the air, skewered one-two-three between mom and dad on the hard wooden pews. Dad hands mom the Communion bread over us. Johanna's hand shoots out for a little white square of Wonder Bread. Mom catches her wrist. Jo pulls at squirms, “I’m hangry!’
Mom whispers, “Not this bread Johanna, you can have a popsicle after church.”
Then the big silver tray with little glasses of grape juice is passed over us and continues down the pew.
Mom and dad each take one, swig them, and set them in little holes in back of the front pew.
I like those little holes.
Mom leans over with her head in her hands.
This alarms Johanna. "Whattsa matter?”
When mom still doesn’t answer, Johanna tries again, “Whattsa matter mommy, koolaid feel you bad?”  A fit of giggles ripples down the pew.
When she’s older, Johanna doesn’t even sit with us. She slips up to the balcony to draw.

But Sunday tops the charts. First, there’s Sunday School, which we  love, no lie. If we have to go to church too, then after the choir sings “Amen, Amen, AAaaaaa-men,” we tumble out with a crowd that congeal on the outside of the church to greet each other.  The popsicle men position their carts at the gutter beside the sidewalk.  “Chocolate!”  Our popsicle man lifts up the metal cover and dry ice smoke billows into the muggy Sunday heat. Chocolate is best, then orange, last pineapple. If we wheedle, he might break off a bit of dry ice so we can pretend smoke or play Brigadoon, the ghost island.

Mom and dad invite foreigners visiting Ellinwood, so we never know who is coming to Sunday Dinner. Mom sets out her Irish lace tablecloth. Once a week, we get frozen fruit salad dissolving in 7up,  and scoop out the cold fruit with Thai brass spoons that grandmother brought us. Our favorite aromas waft from the kitchen - breaded pork, steak Dianne or crisp fried chicken. Always, always white rice and green beans.

The grand feast of Sunday dinner is followed by the sacred lull of an afternoon of Rest Time, which mostly means mom can take time off until  Sunday pizza, which she smothers with thick tomato paste, Vienna sausages, and Velveeta. We eat the pizza to drink Coke, our weekly ration.  And the ultimate reward. We don't sing or pray, and we eat in front of the TV in the Airconditioned Room, watching Bonanza where we travel through the burning map to the Ponderosa.  We munch, swig, and live Out West with the Cartwrights and Hop Sing. Then dad pats us out of The Airconditioned Room so he can watch The Fugitive, which we figure is x-rated since we never get to see it.

When we are teenagers, mom and Auntie Eva publish the thin red Filipino Family Cookbook with recipes from the SS Wright maternal mafia. By then, we've tested them against American versions, but none can compare to Sunday pizza on 1667 B Wright Street.

Quick pizza dough
1/4 cup warm water                                       1/2 cup cold water
21/2 tsp dry yeast                                          3 cups sifted flour      
1 tsp sugar                                                    1 tsp salt
1/4 cup boiling water                                     1 tbsp sugar                
2 tbsp shortening                                        

Dissolve 1 tsp sugar in 1/4 cup warm water.  Sprinkle the yeast in slowly. Stir gently to dissolve.  Set aside. Dissolve shortening in 1/4 cup of boiling water. Add cold water and cool to lukewarm.  Add yeast mixture.  Beat in sifted flour, salt, and 1 tbsp sugar. When blended let stand for 15 minutes. Divide into two parts.  Flatten into pancakes and press to form 12” circles. Use pizza pans or cookie sheets. Brush with olive oil and add filling given below.  Bake 12-20 minutes at 450 F.

Filling
4 tbsp cooking oil                   chopped onions
green pepper                          2 cups Vienna sausage
garlic                                     1 can tomato sauce
salt                                        black or green olives
shredded cheese                    anchovy fillets
bay leaf                                 pepper to taste


Vignettes of Christmas, 1965
Eunice Poethig to Juliet Blanchard

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It rained the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The rain came as a surprise, for the rainy season is over, but when I closed my eyes the rain became snow. Though snow has no sound, the wind has, and the sound of wet branches creaking, and the feeling of something in the air can be taken for snow if  you want it badly enough.

Snow on Christmas Eve is a glorious event.  This hard rain would have been a real snow blizzard, making streets slippery, sending the children to the closets for snow suits, turning even ordinary shrubs into Christmas trees.

But rain on Christmas Eve wets the poinsettias blooming high by the fence. After the rain stops, children’s gowns must be carried to the church and the elaborate preparations for the crèche in the chancel viewed.  Tonight is the Carol Service.

It’s 7:00pm.  The children are gowned and seated in their risers behind the crèche. The lighting is lovely. Lilies Kapili hasn’t arrived yet!  The adult choir is straggling in. I can’t get choir gowns for the candlebearers because she has the key to the cabinet.

The Carol Service is not going as well as dress rehearsal.  But my “angels!”  Scott, Kerry and Johanna are singing their hearts out. They look wonderful. Scott still has a choir-boy look. It’s his last year with it, probably. Kerry looks so pure, and Johanna’s long blond hair shines in the light. Johanna has a solo and she did it very well. The three of them, joined by Loius Panlilio are singing a two-part song. Margaret is supposed to sing the first verse alone. Slight mix up and she didn’t start off on the right note so all join her, then on the second verse (which she doesn’t know), Louie handed her a book so she could “read the words.”  She’s 3.

10:00 pm. Christmas Eve. Present giving has never been more of a family affair. We have laughed over Johanna’s cleverly wrapped presents – a belt for school wrapped like a wreath, a charm for Kerry baked in a roll. Kerry’s red rubber gloves for me were this year’s example of her tradition of surprising gifts. Cresing and Annie thought the electric toothbrush for her was hilarious. There weren’t so many presents that theirs were insignificant. Only Margaret was deluged. She also gave presents to everyone – of her own choosing: toothbrushes and toothpaste for Scott, daddy and Johanna. Paints for Kerry, pencil sharpeners for Annie and Cresing, Scotch tape for me. They added to the merriment.  I gave Dick paper mache wise men, and he gave me a box of special cookies that he loves. It was an Eve in which the mood was not magic but pleasure.

10:30pm  Christmas Eve  David Baradas and Dorothy Cleveland, a PCV friend arrive. The children sing for them. We all east stolen, ham sandwiches and Coke. Coke because it is hot tonight.  It is good to hear about the adventures of a beginning anthropologist. We remember the Christmas together in Dayton. The outer trimmings are different, but their very differentness is the thread that holds our lives together.

CHRISTMAS DAY

We’re on our way to Baguio. I’m glad we chose to drive today. Without family to visit, there is not much to do on Christmas Day. Traffic is light. Families are out to visit.  The children are so pretty in their colorful new clothes.  That fairyland of dresses in Central Market has reached the streets.

Baguio has its own Christmas magic. In one day we have combined the gaiety, fun and sociability of a Philippine Christmas with the cosyness and intimacy of an American Christmas Dinner at Camp John Hay, which was turkey, mince pie, and apples.  A rug on the floor, a formal white cloth on the table.  There are stories and carols and prayers together in our snug cottages surrounded by silent pines.

THE DAY AFTER

I am tired. I’ve celebrated more fully than usual because it has been a shared celebration with many people. For the fist time it has not been a Christmas I’ve received or one I have given to others. It has been shared with the children in their own Christmas activities, shared with the church in its preparations, shared with friends in carols, parties, gifts, shared with our family in a host of preparations. I’m ready now to just be alone.

LATER

This year we’ve had two styles of Christmas. Other years, since I more or less controlled the celebrations, we tried to duplicate the mood of Christmases we knew.

The problem seemed to be how to capture the mood of magic, surprise, and silence that are essential to an American Christmas. There’s no hope of having those things in Manila! And we didn’t. We had a Philippine Christmas with its mood of fun, friendly gift exchange throughout the season, song and sociability. I don’t know what it has to do with the birth of Christ, but it’s good for the heart. 

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Spirit of the Glass

4/2/2013

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We pray at school, in church, at all our meals, at bedtime and in between. And then we play spirit of the glass.

First, I train on the Magic 8-Ball. It begins with girls' menstrual blood. By seventh grade, most of my comares join the inner circle of “dismenoria” which appear in dark brown splotches on blue pleated UES skirts. I’m 12 and there is no sign of red on my panties. 
“Kerry, maaari kong pumunta sa iyong bahay, to wash my skirt?” She whispers, surrounded by her gaggle of gf’s. A barkada in another galaxy. I note the blotch on her skirt, which she covers with her left hand.  
This girl, she never talks to me, ever.
They cling and chat together on their way to my house and huddle together as her skirt is pressed.
So, I bring out the Magic 8 Ball.  It's a small black bowling ball with fortune cookie answers on the underside.
"Like this,” I hold it right-side up, with two hands on it, and ask a question aloud. 
“Then...” .” I turn it over to the answer window.  "YES" jiggles in the liquid. 
“Wow!” they murmur.
“Sige,” I hand the ball magnanimously to the mense queen.
“Does J... like me?” She whispers the name into the black orb, and turns it upside-down to gingerly.  
“ASK AGAIN LATER.” We groan in unison. The air relaxes and we pass the 8-Ball around for a while until lunch break is over.  News of the 8-Ball travels, and there are several excursions to consult the 8-Ball at the house. Forty years later, at our Union Elementary School/High School reunion, that’s what they remember. 
“Hey Kerry, I remember going to your house and playing with the 8-ball.” 

My facility with the 8-Ball prepares me for real spirits. 
“You don’t know spiritoftheglass? Hay! Sige,makakuha kayo ng jario,” instructs our new neighbor from 1667 A. We are developmentally delayed. 
"OK," I run upstairs to get a sheet of newspaper.
Neneng (not her real name) smooths out the Manila Times with the flat of her hand on the chipped concrete of our first floor and scribbles the alphabet on top and bottom of the paper, “YES” on the right, “NO” opposite. Her soft black hair falls like a curtain.
"Can I join?" Johanna notices our covert action.
“Johanna, get a glass, not too thick, not too tall.” Like Nescafe. 
“Why me?”
“Because iha... youwant to stay?" Sometimes it works, being older.
She delivers a small glass at arm's length, as though it were a crab. 

Neneng takes the glass gently.  She is initiating missionary kid innocents into a first encounter of the multo kind.
Smiling slightly, she sets the mouth of the glass on the center of the newspaper. Johanna and I watch admiringly.  
“Sometimes a centavo is OK.” 
“OK,” I steal a look at the tight face of my sister.

Annie and Cresing's room is in the basement, and shake their heads when they see what we’re doing. They have to live with the spirits we call up. "We’re just playing," I say lightly. "Multo," clucks Annie in her Boholano accent, "play wit you."
Johanna shoots a worried glance at Annie. Afraid to leave, wanting to stay. 
“Sige, Put your right hand on the glass. No Jo, just two fingers.”
“You don’t know who will come.”
Neneng closes her eyes, drops back her head slightly and drones, “Spiritofthe glass, spiritofthe glass….”
I hold my breath.  A gecho grumbles.
“You don’t know who comes,” she says again. 
“Spiritofthe glass, spiritofthe glass….”
Maybe the glass needs help. "Spiritofthe glass….”
“Kerry r'you pushing?” Johanna sqeeks.
“No!” (just a little) The glass wobbles.
Neneng leans in and speaks to the glass, “Nandito ka ba?”
Slow, ponderous, the glass takes our fingers to YES. 
“Ay!” Johanna whisks her fingers off the glass. It wobbles again.
“Jo-HannA!”
The glass doesn’t care, lightly swimming across the paper without our help. 
Emboldened, Johanna’s fingers lightly join us. I smile encouragingly.

We ask silly useless questions to the glass, like does George like Lisa, as it moves one way or the other. Yes, No, and sometimes it stands still. "Don't know." When we don’t have any more questions, we set it free. 
“Alis ka na,” says Neneng, mindful that the helpers don’t want spirits making mischief in their part of the house
Ganoon pala ang mga spirits. 

This is the thing, once you are attracted to spirits, it's hard to be discriminating, duende, multo, tree spirits, birds, anitos, the invisible world's chaos intersects with our own.
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    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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