Mom and the charm of old Manila

My memories of the city are tied to memories of my mom. With her passing just last week, I, my dad, seven siblings, and 17 apos, have lost our safe harbour, our sanctuary, our psychic and physical center.

About 30 years ago, I started to pursue a peripatetic career as a design consultant, but each time I returned to Manila and each visit to my mom have always — literally and figuratively — meant coming home. Home is an important place to keep as a point of orientation. My mom was and is my compass. 

Mom was the first to take me physically beyond the confines of our house. With her I eventually learned to navigate the Manila of my childhood, as well as later, the ins and outs of adulthood (with the aid of her wisdom and inspirational stick-to-it-ive-ness).

Mom, Medicine and Markets

I was born in Cebu in 1955 before moving to Manila before I turned two. My only memory of Cebu is the warm cradle created by my mom’s embrace. In Manila we settled in its new suburban outskirts. Our district was called Project 4 and my folks, both doctors (UP PGH batch 1953), started a practice there. My siblings and I loved playing in the clinic. We turned the stirrup table into a spaceship and Mommy never discouraged us.

Then my dad decided to pursue further studies and left for the United States. My mother had to take care of her first two (of eventually eight) children, while also starting what would be a life-long career teaching medicine at the University of the East.

In those early years, my physical world grew to extend from Quezon City to its border with Manila, where the UE facility was. It also stretched on to old Manila, where my grandfather lived and where my mother grew up. Up till the late ’60s, Manila was where we would go to for all our needs — material, religious and recreational. My mom was always part of this world.

The UE College of Medicine was housed in a convent school that was built in the early '50s and somehow ended up with the university. Its hybrid art deco façade was an imposing sight, with its colonnaded lobby and tall concrete tower (with a sculpture that I was later to learn was the work of Francesco Monti) marking a chapel beneath.

I tagged along with Mom regularly and loved the UE visits because her faculty office was paradise to me. It was filled with mechanical wonders (typewriters) and drawers filled with delights (paper and rubber bands). I didn’t wander much around the labyrinth of adjoining spaces though, especially after being told what a cadaver room was. I did peek at my mom giving a class in physiology and remember her students dissecting frogs.

My mom would also take me to Manila for marketing and shopping jaunts. I remember riding those fire-engine red JD buses. The trips were often rickety because of Manila’s bad roads and the wooden backrests would sway with each bump while I sat on my mom’s lap. I also avoided sitting beside the aisles to evade the sandpaper-like texture of the kundoktora’s over-starched skirt.

The sights, sounds and smells of Central Market, Escolta and Divisoria are still with me because of Mom. It was a sensory urban experience that included rides in crowded jeepneys, jostling through Manila’s sidewalks with a million other people, all ending in shops or market stalls. These places reeked of produce or freshly un-packed products. These mixed with the pungent aroma of underarms, mixed with saliva, the by-product of frenzied negotiations requisite to a good purchase.

This riot of life in Manila’s streets was balanced by quieter places my mom took us to; churches in Manila, where I first experienced the majesty of ecclesiastical interior spaces. We went to parks like the Luneta and Manila Zoo, the Disneylands of my generation. By the time my dad had come back and we had the extended range afforded by a car, we enjoyed other spots like Dewey Boulevard (now Roxas), Intramuros and, back in Quezon City, the swimming pools of the Balara Filters.

Mom, Movies and Memories

My memories of Manila are also tied to where my mom grew up. This was on Avenida Rizal, across from San Lazaro Hospital. My grandfather based his pharmacy there — Gonzalez Laboratories — and the family lived upstairs. At least twice a year, my Lolo Pepe’s birthday on June 12 and Christmas, we would troop to the place to have a family reunion. It was Mom’s job to herd us up to the house and park us where we would be out of the way or within hailing distance while she helped relatives set up the party. She would feed all of us or see to it we stuffed ourselves with more than just cake and ice cream.

Those visits gave me a good taste of Manila’s urban life. The blistery bustle of the city contrasted with the isolation and relative quiet of early ’60s Quezon City (remember there were no noisy tricycles until later in the decade).

I also recall all the movies my mom took us to. In the days before VCRs and DVDs we had to go to those fascinating palaces of entertainment, which brandished names like Ideal, Lyric and Avenue. They had magnificent lobbies with grand staircases. I watched Disney features like Flubber and The Love Bug, aside from panoramic productions like How the West Was Won. Mom made sure we did not get lost in the dark and that we had something to munch on while watching the cinematic stories unfold.

The real life stories of my mom were more fascinating than Hollywood’s of course. A few years ago, she started writing her memoirs — giving us insight into her story and life in Manila before the war. Here’s an excerpt that shows her remarkable recollection of what it was like to be a teenage daughter of a widower:

When I was 12, going on 13, I became aware of, among other awakenings, relationships between men and women. My mother had passed away a year before and I observed that my father had no female adult company that we knew of. I decided to watch discreetly, not telling any of my sisters or my brother. The stories I am relating now were perceived by the eyes and mind of an adolescent girl who was perhaps afraid of the prospect of a stepmother.

The first possible one was a secretary he hired for the business. She was petite, with long hair, lips too red, and voice too artificial. I didn’t like her. I heard later that she did have an affair with my father but it did not last long. (Sigh of relief.)

The next lady was a pharmacist. She was the quiet type, in her late 20s, and modest in dress and manners. This time, my father was serious in courting her. He would bring my brother or me with them when they went out to dinner or the movies. The Great Eastern Hotel, which had a good restaurant, was where my father sometimes brought us and his date. He told my mother’s sister … that he would invite her to Gumaca (then in Tayabas province, which is now known as Quezon) to meet them and seek approval of a second marriage.

But it was not to be. The war broke out. Paternal concerns took priority. He attended to our evacuation, first to Gumaca, then to Santa Rosa. The family of the lady also had to flee Manila. Communication then was not as it is today. So, after a few months, she returned, but things were not the same. She also had met someone else—a bachelor with no encumbrances.

Mom, Mongols and Moving On

My mom took care of us almost singlehandedly while my dad was taking his post-grad at Kansas University (he was a Jayhawk). She, like her father, made sure we developed good study habits and an interest in books.

Mom took us to school supplies shops and bookstores. This activity and a series of places I associate with her. Vasquez Brothers, Goodwill, National and Alemars were my favorites. I developed a love for these types of stores that continues to this day. If I have to spend time in a mall, you would find me browsing through books or buying yet another notebook. Recently, I bought a few boxes of Mongol pencils and they too remind me of when Mom bought us those yellow-bodied writing implements.

We owe our love for knowledge and the arts to our mom (she sketched wonderfully) and the fact that she was an academic with high standards rubbed off on us kids. All of us pursued university education and professions in the arts, engineering or medicine. Our own children, mom’s apos, are all inclined towards the arts, science or engineering, too. She was proud of all of us.

My mother made the best of her 85 years on this earth. She led a full life, focusing on the needs of her husband and family, and asking little for herself. She is loved; and will be loved forever by all of us, her children, grand children, and her husband Johnny, that she left behind.

The wonderful places she took us to as kids (many of which I’ve shown and written about in my articles) are now gone. Their disappearance has reduced Manila’s heritage to mere remnants of a story-filled past. My mom’s passing leaves a large chunk of our hearts empty, too. Hopefully, in time, our fond memories of her will fill the void …and our life stories, which all started with her, will be as full and fulfilled as hers was.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.