Castle of Memory
I’ve lived in the United States country for 40 of my 55 years. I was born here, and left when I was four. We moved back to the US in 1966, boomeranged back to the Philippines in 1968. I stayed for ten years and left in 1978. There’s a funny thing about a place where one grows up. It never leaves you. Images daily come into my mind while I am engaged in 21st century pursuits. I will hear the rooster’s crow at Cresta Ola, the resort my grandparents built in Bauang, La Union. I will return to the task at hand. While I open up the fridge to get a piece of cheese, something will change the pictures in my head. I will remember walking into my house in Baguio, on a sunny day.
I remember Casa Blanca, the house my grandparents built before World War II. I remember the smell of floor wax and adobo, a heady concoction, and how my leather shoes clicked on the mahogany floor into the red tiled dining room.
While cooking dinner in 2012, I will remember the sight of sunlight on the ocean at Cresta Ola, the way it sparkled on the waves. A band would be playing “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” or “Yellow Bird”. Around the pool guests sat at tables and Efren and Luis, the intrepid waiters, would hustle the trays of food. I never thought it would end.
Coming back to the U.S. was always an option, but I didn’t think of it back in the 1970’s. Life was new every day and what better thing was there than to be young and in this unknown corner of the world, anchored by two outposts of the American Empire, Camp John Hay and Wallace Air Station?
When I was a little girl perhaps eight years old, we lived at Clark Air Base. There were buses than ran up to Camp John Hay every day. My grandmother was sick. One day my mother asked me to go with her up to Baguio. I gladly went. I remember looking out of the blue bus going past neat rice fields and villages. How was life in those homes? I wondered about everything I saw.
Up Kennon Road we went and the magic started. A little while later, the atmosphere had changed completely. We were in the pine forests. The ground turned to red clay. Then we took a turn at Military Cut-Off Road and the bus stopped just in front of the Main Gate of Camp John Hay. My mother and I stepped off the bus, and crossed the small street – all of five steps. Down a little moss covered set of stairs we went- I remember three. We were in front of the Pavia’s house. Then down the driveway of our house, Casa Blanca.
In the small front yard was the statue of the child with “Give Us This Day, Our Daily Bread” embossed and moss covered. Up the stairs we went – under the iron scroll work that bore my grandfather’s initials- FGJ. The door opened, “Ay Senora Pat! Nandito po si Senora Pat!”. My mother, shed her officer’s wife identity and stepped into her childhood home.
I stepped into my grandmother’s bedroom to greet her, and was surprised at how thin she was. She was still smiling. My grandfather asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go to the market and buy rings. He looked slightly amused and said we would go later.
But first, I ran through the house, opening doors and looking in drawers. I looked at the magazine rack in the living room, then went into my mother’s childhood bedroom, where we would sleep in twin beds that night. There was a mural across the top of the wall, Mickey Mouse on one side, the Three Little Pigs on the other. It had survived World War II
That afternoon I went with my grandfather to the market and we walked to the part that had all the jewelry in the world. For me, I may as well have been in the souks of the Middle East. I chose a silver ring with a blue glass stone. It made me very happy.
We went to mass at the cathedral that afternoon, to pray for Lola’s health, and I was bothered by the intensity of the praying – it was then that I knew things were seriously wrong.
That evening, Lolo and I stood on the steps of Casa Blanca and Igorots (members of the indigenous mountain tribes) came into the yard next door. There was a small bonfire, and the dancing began. With arms outstretched, they danced with graceful steps and swayed to the music of the gongs.The firelight casts shadows on the ground and turned the dancers bronze.I Although I was small, I knew I had to remember that moment. It was going to be over very soon. My grandmother would die, my grandfather would become interminably sad, everything would be lost.
But in my heart, the images, sounds, and impressions seem to grow stronger every year. What I loved does not exist, yet I cannot escape it. It shaped me and sends me chasing sunsets and fogs, old houses full of books and trees.
When I was very sick in 2005, I had something like a vision. It was a very clear dream. I was coming off of sedation drugs. I’ve never had a dream like that. In the dream I was with all my children and Bud at Casa Blanca. I remember walking up the stairs and going into the old house. Everyone was there, all the aunties and uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters and grandparents and my parents. We were all there. There was a feeling of delight and beauty and it was so real I was surprised when my mind corrected itself. Many of the people are dead, and the house is long gone, finally felled by a terrible earthquake. Ruins sit overlooking the mountains, still full of memories .
Perhaps in heaven, we can be given the glorified version of things we loved most. Perhaps.
