[Oe List ...] Fwd: [NAFAUM] Short takes, news - February 1

Thu Feb 2 09:16:33 EST 2012

What a lovely thought for women and men who are growing in wisdom and age.

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of Ellie Stock
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 10:08 PM
To: oe at wedgeblade.net
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Fwd: [NAFAUM] Short takes, news - February 1

Jaime, thanks for sharing the story of your mother and the concrete
compassion she shared with many,

Ellie

-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime at aol.com>
To: oe <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 7:43 pm
Subject: [Oe List ...] Fwd: [NAFAUM] Short takes, news - February 1

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.

LucretiaVr.jpg

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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