She arrived with her mother Amparo, her sister Enriqueta and her best friend Nieves. It was around 1938 and pre-war Manila was a charming, beautiful city. They had left the horrors of civil war ravaged Barcelona to join her brother Carlos, sister Sara, nephew Fernando and other extended family who lived in the gracious, lively, cosmopolitan city that was called the Pearl of the Orient. She was petite, with a perfect oval face, lovely dark hair which she curled herself, and with flashing black eyes and a ready smile, she soon became popular among the Spanish/American/Filipino community that made this city the envy of other Asian capitals around it. My mother loved to dance and until the rheumatoid arthritis restricted her to a wheelchair decades later, she could dance anything any orchestra threw at her. She told me she loved Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers and when little, she adored Shirly Temple who tapped danced into many a little girl's heart.
She met my dad on a sort of blind date concocted by her brother Carlos. My uncle was then married to a lady (her name was Alma) who worked at the KZRH (later, MBC, owned by the Elizalde family), where my dad was one of the main newscasters. They all decided to go bowling at the YWCA and the moment my dad took one look at her, he fell in love and told everyone and anyone who would listen that he was going to marry Paquita Rodriguez Fernandez. My uncle told him that would be next to impossible. Stacked against him was the fact that my grandmother was a strict Spanish lady who didn't believe young unmarried ladies should go out with a man without a chaperone; secondly, my mother did not speak any English and he not a world of Spanish; thirdly, my mother like her mother and sisters, was a devout Catholic and dad was Lutheran. My dad's response? In today's vernacular, "no problem!" He set out to woo and win the hand of this lady - whatever it took. First, he got both himself and my mother corresponding Spanish/English dictionaries. Then, he came around to visit my mother's home, endearing himself to my grandmother and uncles and aunts. (And, did! Until she died, my grandmother and dad were kindered spirits and in some ways, were more in tune than my mother and father.) He became a fixture at the Rodriguez home and slowly and surely won my mother's heart. He proposed to her on top of those double decker tour buses that used to go down Dewey Blvd. with my her sister (my Aunt Sara) sitting 3 seats behind them. He converted to Catholicism before he married her and on December 7, 1941, my mother walked down the aisle of the Malate Church (she swore it was the longest aisle of any church anywhere!) to meet the love of her life, Hal Bowie. Of course Fate had more serious events going on - at the moment my parents were saying their vows, the Japanese were bombing Pear Harbor. My parents' honeymoon in Tagaytay was cut short and a month later, the Japanese came and "escorted" by dad to Bilibid prison before incarcerating him in Santo Tomas (the Japanese concentration camp for all Allied countries' prisoners). Since my mom was a Spanish citizen (and the war broke out before she could get her American passport), the Japanese did not require her to go into the camp but my mother had centuries of her Spanish Catholic faith woven into her very bones and she made a vow and by golly, she was going to keep it! So, she marched up to Bilibid and insisted that she be joined with her husband and the incredulous Japanese - shaking their heads and telling her that if she went in she couldn't come out - let her in. After a year and a half in Santo Tomas, the Japanese decided to take about 2,000 able-bodied men out of Manila into the foothills of Mount Mackiling (Sp.?) to the little town of Los Banos, Laguna. The women followed a bit later. And therein that camp, in the middle of a typhoon at 1:35 AM of July 16, 1944 my mother was delivered by cesearian section of a 2 pound 2 ounce baby girl - me! That she, and I survived that is surely a miracle on many levels but my mother attributes it all to Our Lady of Lourdes to whom she was devoutely faithful. In fact, after I was delivered and my mother was under heavy sedative and the doctors and my dad weren't sure this little thing was going to survive, so he went looking for a priest and asked his good friend Johnny Oppenheimer what name he could give me, and Uncle Johnny said, why not Lea, so in front of Fr. Reuter who witnessed my baptism, and another priest who actually performed the ritual, I was christened into the Catholic faith. When my mother came out of the fog of sedation, she asked my dad what he named me and he said Lea and she was not happy as she had never heard of the name before and had promised Our Lady of Lourdes that if all went well and she had a girl she would name her Lourdes. But since I had already been baptized, they placed Lourdes as my middle name though I rarely use it.
Aftter the war was over and surviving a harrowing rescue by the 11th Airborn Division of the Los Banos Internment Camp, my parents came to the United States for a while but after 3 years decided to return to the Philippines and make their life there.
All through my childhood, girlhood, and teenhood, my mother was the center of our little family. Daddy was the one who 'brought home the bacon' but my mother made sure it got to the pan. Both she and my father were marvelous cooks and though by today's standards we lived very normal middle class lives - my parents gave me a wonderful childhood. We never wanted for anything....and I know that sometimes times were hard. Dad changed jobs from radio to newspaper to television and these ups and downs rocked the family economy now and then but I never wanted for a pretty dress for a party nor stopped me from enjoying the privilidges of being a member of the Army Navy Club which was a mecca for us teenagers who lived in Ermita and Malate. I should've been more sensitive to those times but teenagers are an uncouciously selfish lot and I just went on my merry way not appreciating then how comfortable my parents made my life. There were times when my mother's rheumatoid arthritis was so painful she could hardly move, but you never heard her complain. Dr. Fores prescribed cortisone for her and at that time it was the miracle cure-all but after a while, the cortisone made her appear bloated and the pain returned, so he cut of the cortisone completely and then her pain was so bad, tears would run down her cheeks but she still didin't complain. There was a time the cook and the housegirl either quit or had to go to the province for something or other so I cooked lunch and supper for my parents. But the good times were good - Christmas was especially wonderful. No matter what, good times or bad, there was always a hefty pile of presents under the Christmas tree on Christmas mornings. Once when younger, I wanted a "Tiny Tears" doll soooo much. And I got it. But the extras for the doll were expensive since it included a whole layette, so my mother made a whole layette of baby clothes herself for the doll. Just as she made all the baby clothes for me in the Japanese concentration camp from silk and linen slips and thread and needles she managed to find around the camp. I may have had what I needed ,but not always what I wanted - that I was taught to earn, like roller skates - I worked hours in the yard picking up calachuchi leaves from the ground, mowing the lawn, painting my mother's flower pots and other chores to earn the money for those skates. When I finally got the money to buy them, (it was near my birthday), my parents surprised me by presenting the skates to me. But they taught me the lesson. When I was young, I adored my dad and loved my mother. You know the difference. Daddy always made me feel good about myself, but my mother was the moral compass I had to follow and hers the roots that kept me grounded to the earth. Then, I resented my mother for being the killjoy I thought she was, but my dad balanced it off by waving away the cobwebs and expecting that pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow (what else could an Celtic/Irish man believe in?). My mother, however, knew that there was no pot of gold anywhere unless you saved for it and all those doom and gloom predictions she gave me were just about always right. And thank goodness I listened to her too. Now, many, many years later, through many trials and tribulations and watching my mother fight and finally give in to the arthritis that crippled her limbs (but not her heart and soul), I know that if my father was the wind beneath my wings, my mother was the strong thread that kept me (and, continues to keep me), grounded to earth.
My mother died 15 years ago on a March afternoon in Barcelona, 21 years after my dad passed away during a typhoon in Manila in 1974. I was not at either of their sides when they left the bounds of earth and I don't think I have ever really come to terms with that, but it's just as well. I was lucky enough to see them before they died (my dad a year earlier and my mother 3 months before), so I remember them whole and happy. I've often wondered why God or circumstance deprived me of being by the side of my parents before they passed away but maybe He knows better. Being their only child, I don't know and I don't think I could've have the strength to watch them leave this earth, and me. But, I have a lasting memories from both of them. From my dad - the last long, long letter he wrote to me for my birthday in July 1974, telling me of his plans and that the place he was staying for a while during the week, had a great brick oven that he could bake the best bread in! And my mother - I was visiting her in Barcelona Christmas/New Years of 1994 and the night before I left I had a splitting headache and she told me to put my head on her lap and she stroked my hair and my head, just as she did when I was little, calling me "corazon" which she did very rarely and she hadn't called me that in years, and told me that everything would be alright. I will never forget thinking that though her hands were crippled badly with the arthritis, they were not stiff, but soft and gentle...........
And so, here I am, 15 years after she died and almost 66 years since she gave birth to me, and I still miss her today as heart-wrenchingly as I did the day I found out she passed away, minutes before I was going to board a plane to fly to see her in Barcelona.
I know she's up there in good company with her mother, my dad and all her family and I know she watches over me, and my daughter, who is now a great mother herself, and I hope she knows that I may be her "corazon" but she will mine forever..
Feliz Dia de la Madre, Mami. Te quiero como siempre.........
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