THE PHILIPPINES: JUST THE TWO OF US

 

Mom and I with friends in front of a Jeepney, the Philippines, 1981

After our tour in Israel, my parents divorced. My mother joined the Foreign Service, and in 1981, Mom and I flew over the Pacific Ocean and headed towards Southeast Asia to Manila, Philippines. This time it would just be the two of us. Ironically the song "Just the Two of Us" by Grover Washington was released that same year. 

The sun was shining when we landed in Manila. We exited the plane with a Filipino who'd tried to get a visa from my mother as soon as he'd heard she was with the US Embassy, and a man from Mobil Oil who said he'd been an aide to the American Ambassador to Manila during the fall of Saigon. The American oilman carried our cat's cage and offered us a ride into town but we were greeted by two men from the embassy before we had even entered the terminal building. They whisked us away in a car, leaving our passports with a Filipino assistant who did all the necessary things for immigration. Our suitcases were delivered to us an hour later. 

I was excited to live in Manila. I knew from experience that overseas living was transforming, it granted us interesting and privileged existences, above the ordinary. Mom wrote in her letters that she knew, as soon as we arrived, that we would be very happy there. We lived in an upper-class neighborhood in a fairly large house in the suburbs with a live-in maid named Gel (who I loved). I enrolled in the International School in Manila. I was in the fifth grade. 

Mom and I had some memorable trips around the Philippines, and once to Hong Kong. Our favorite places to go were Baguio, the cooler, summer capital in Northern Luzon, Cebu, and Corregidor Island. One day a group of us went to Corregidor by boat. After we toured the island, we went to a beach in Bataan, and then headed back to Manila. However, the ocean was so rough that we had to turn back and ride home in a Jeepney that took hours. But we had a blast. The adults drank beer and we all sang songs. The photograph at the top is from that day. 

Mom and I with friends in Baguio. (I still have those hats)

At the time, Ferdinand Marcos was in power. He had been democratically elected in 1965, but then declared martial law and changed the constitution, which allowed him to continue in power until the People Power mobilization of 1986. By the time we arrived in Manila, Marcos's authoritarian hold on the country was weakening. 

Mom was working at the US Embassy, and though it was tough grueling work to be a junior officer, she said that it was better to be a Foreign Service Officer than the wife of one. 

Now that my mother was single, she was dating. Men entered in and out of our lives. A few that I remember, and Mom wrote about in her letters, were: Hank the American FSO who looked like a movie star, Joe the free-spirit freelance photographer, and Mac the older American Counsel General. Each one of these men offered my mother a different perspective of the country we were living in. 

Mom and Hank at a party

Hank introduced my mother to interesting people in Manila, filled her in on Filipino history, traveled together to such places as Papua, New Guinea, and would play backgammon in his garden while listening to Glenn Miller. Mom described Hank as a wonderful friend and rock, and oh so attractive. 

Joe, the freelance photographer, who did a lot of work for Newsweek, took my mother through Tondo, Manila's worst slums, and to Mother Teresa's clinic and nursery for abandoned and orphaned babies who had thin limbs and distended bellies. After walking around the slums one day, Joe informed my mother that they were being followed by plainclothesmen with 45s stuck under their t-shirts. 

Our dog's name was Joe, and so while Mom was seeing the photographer Joe, she had a difficult time calling our dog's name. After Mom's dates with Joe, she would never know if she would see him again since he was such a free spirit. 

Mac, the American Counsel General, loved the high life. It was with him that we met the extremely wealthy in Manila. The kind who picked us up in their private planes and took us to their private islands. I remember going to homes with ten car garages, pools, polo horse stables, and helicopter pads. One of their friends was Benigno Toda who used to own Philippine Airlines until Marcos nationalized it. Once, when we were on his island, I got a very bad upset stomach, and that same night, Benigno (or Beni as we called him) had chest pains and had to be medevac out of there. Before they put him on the helicopter, as he was stretched out on the gurney, he asked his wife: "How's Jennifer feeling?" 

It was also on Beni's island where I almost drowned. Mac's twenty-year-old son took me sailing and we got caught in a sudden storm and our boat capsized and we had to be rescued. 

But I have fond memories of Mac, someone who always gave me attention and treated me with kindness. He lived life large but had a big heart. One day, during one of Manila's fierce typhoons, Mom and I retreated to Mac's house and he let me bring all my many animals: my dog, cat, two parakeets, two turtles, a rabbit, and a litter of kittens I had found.  

Mom and Mac 

It was thought that Mom and Mac would get married, but it was not to be. After the Philippines, Mom got an assignment to Israel where she would meet her soulmate. And by some strange coincidence, I would meet mine. 

Me at age twelve, Baguio, 1982