[Oe List ...] Fwd: [NAFAUM] Short takes, news - February 1
Isobel and Jim Bishop
isobeljimbish at optusnet.com.au
Thu Feb 2 04:11:31 EST 2012
Dear Jaime,
Thank you for the lovely photo, it really reminded me of some of the
elderly saintly women I met in Sudtonggan.
A wonderful memory, too.
Peace be yours,
Isobel Bishop.
On 02/02/2012, at 12:42 PM, Jaime R Vergara wrote:
> A version without the photo was in today's Saipan Tribune. The
> following made the rounds on the Methodist listserv of Filipino-
> Americans as well as the Realistic Living folks of which I am a
> part. Someone suggested that I should share it with OE colleagues.
>
> Mom was in ITI '74 with the Cramers and Harry W; Dad was with ITI
> '73 with the Marshalls and a bevy of SEAPAC colleagues.
>
> The usual caveat: if curious, welcome; not, see you at the next bend.
>
> Mama mia, Cara mia
>
> More than a year ago, we wrote of our encounter along the Amur
> River in Heihe, Heilongjiang, with a statue simply identified as Mu
> Qin (mother), signifying the source and sustainer of life, in this
> case, the Heilongjiang.
>
> In China, the mother of all mothers, and also dubbed as the
> “cradle of civilization”, is the mighty Huanghe, the Yellow
> River, weaving a route that is usually drawn like a dragon with its
> tail up the foothills of Qinghai through 9 provinces widening past
> Henan into its head at Bohai Sea, a 5,500 km journey.
>
> We are briefly in Honolulu to visit 91-yr old Mom in between
> teaching semester in Huanghe’s Dong Bei, but the image of mother
> struck us this past year as we herd China referred to as
> ‘motherland’, compared to European and patriarchal countries’
> Fatherland. Singular bold images of contrast has father proud to
> send his offsprings to war and uphold his name’s reputation, while
> mother keeps her roost at home in safety and health.
>

>
> Mama Lucrecia Vergara has five children, girls on bookends, me at
> the head of the middle male section, with one brother a military
> and police chaplain, and the other in a State law enforcement
> office. Eldest sister is a retired teacher in the Philippines, and
> youngest a nurse in one of Oahu’s hospitals. Eldest and third are
> retired; second, has a new set of tires. Fourth and fifth
> ploughing along.
>
> None in our family went chasing after the limelight, but mother
> stumbled her way into it. Not unlike many (wife of the 19th US
> President was the first to attend College, with current Michelle
> Obama as the most academically inclined slightly ahead of Hillary
> Clinton), mother never finished High School. She stayed home to
> care for her brood.
>
> Migrating to the United States with her Philippine retired
> Methodist pastor husband, she cooked for residents of Hale Kipa, a
> discrete halfway house for juvenile delinquents, where she was
> consistently voted as the ‘Counselor of the Year’. It appears
> that she did as much counseling to her wards as she did feeding
> them nutritious meals.
>
> It was while being a part-time cook that she attended a meeting to
> construct a Filipino Community Center in Waipahu. Impatient with
> the wealth of gab but, in her view, paucity of deeds, she finally
> got up in the meeting, waved a $100 check and said in effect that
> the group can go on talking but the deed might get moving faster if
> everyone around the table put their money where their mouths were.
>
> The FilCom (its Pinoy endearing name) is now the largest Filipino
> community center outside of the Philippines with distinguished
> Filipino-Hawaiian members on its staff and Board. Mother’s name
> was interred with the century time capsule buried on the
> groundbreaking ceremony as the first donor towards the building.
>
> Mother is now physically frail, confined to her apartment in Aala
> downtown Oahu. Father who made it to 95 lays since 2005 in tranquil
> Mililani, served Governor Ariyoshi’s Commission on Aging, and
> worked part-time with the senior companion program. One would think
> mother could easily avail of all the senior citizen public services
> available.
>
> Not mi Mama mia. “When I came to this country, I told the
> immigration officer that I will never be a ward of the State,” she
> intones in her polished Ilocandia pride, “and I intend to be
> faithful to my promise.” To the quiet dismay of her children, she
> told social services that she did not need the company of a senior
> companion nor meals from communal kitchens. In her characteristic
> Filipina taray (untranslatable), she says: “With three children on
> island, if I am not cared for, that’s my problem, and no one
> else’s.”
>
> One of the three children has assumed the primary caregiver role; a
> granddaughter joins Uncles and Auntie to look after her quiet but
> dignified fading into the sunset of her years.
>
> Popular myths tag immigrants as opportunistic burden to public
> coffers. Not this mother. She’s poor, nay, indigent without being
> destitute, but she is rich in memories. Lying in her bed where she
> now spends most of her time, she occasionally looks into a couple
> of her albums, with her standing beside towering Mayor Jeremy
> Harris in her Filipina fineries, or beaming with Joyce Fasi who
> occasionally drove her to work even when husband Frank Fasi was no
> longer city mayor.
>
> Our lowly cook from up the hill on Punahou have photos with the
> likes of Governors Cayetano and Lingle, Rep. Hirono and Congressman
> now Governor Abercrombie, to name easily recognizable figures.
>
> One of the houses used in the Golden Globe awarded movie
> “Descendants” with George Clooney is an old Hawaiian plantation
> dwelling on Honolulu’s Makiki, its first upscale neighborhood. My
> sister and I looked at each other when it first flashed on the
> screen. Mom and Dad took care of the building before it became the
> meditation center it is today.
>
> China is a long way from Sa Wei Yi (Hawaii) and love from a
> distance is more sentiment than real, so this son who now relates
> to Huanghe’s multitudinous offsprings in a learning center at its
> northeast corner, carries the heartbeat of a woman in bed at Aala.
> Creating a new role of being a Story Warrior, we chronicle the
> graceful ordinariness of humans like my mother, to say again that
> mere existence itself is already a gift, a winsome option and a
> treasure to be celebrated. What we do with it, and the story we
> relate, is what makes us human.
>
> Jaime, text; Alex, photo, sons
>
>
>
>
> Pong Javier
> www.nfaaum.org/filipino.html

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