Quechee, Vermont 1995
My friend, Rose, “es un pedazo de pan . No… she is not a piece of bread…but a really nice person…a special lady.. Rose is full of wise sayings which she delivers in Castilian Spanish. “My mother used to say that,” she tells me. Rose is from Manila, Philippines but born in New York City the year her father taught at Columbia University as an exchange professor. She grew up in an upper class family descendant from Spaniards. (Spaniards ruled the Philippines for 350 years until 1898). Her father was a doctor and they lived in Forbes Park, an elite gated community in Manila. Her mother spoke Spanish as her first language. Rosa Maria, as she was named, is bilingual like me.
She visited me this week in Asheville and we picked up where we had left off ten years ago in Dubai…and fourteen years before that in Vermont. We’ve known each other since 1993 when Art and I moved to Manila to work at the International School Manila (ISM). We had connecting classrooms in the elementary school building and were Spanish teachers. The truth is she was the Spanish teacher. Because there was no job for me in the library I was offered the other elementary Spanish position. Yes, I spoke Spanish perfectly but had never taught it and least of all to elementary school children. I wasn’t sure I wanted to….but I needed something to do.
Reunion in Dubai in April 2009
Emirates Mall - Dubai 2009
Rose was my mentor for two years and by watching her teach her classes I learned, and then grew more confident on my own. She became a real friend and one I’ve kept all these years. She and I have much in common having lived as expats around the world. We both have a global perspective on the world than most ordinary Filipinos or Americans.
Rose met her husband in Madrid when Tony (Antonio) was a young Philippine Foreign Service officer and she was studying for a Master’s degree in Speech and Dramatic Arts. Her father wanted her to be a doctor like several of her siblings. She knew that wasn’t for her and rather than disappoint him she simply failed some of her science courses and went on to study what she wanted. She came to teaching with no experience and decided she liked it “plus it was something I could do wherever I was living in the world”.
She and Tony married in Manila and she became a diplomat’s wife as they moved from Madrid to Tokyo, Jeddah, Guam, Hong Kong, Washington D.C. and finally Riyadh where her husband was Philippine Ambassador. She taught in almost every post she lived because she needed more to do than just give dinner parties and go to teas. In Jeddah, she started a Philippine school for children who had no school to go to. It is still in existence today. Her only daughter is now a Foreign Service officer in the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C.
Rose and her husband moved back to their home in Manila when he retired and sadly he now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. But Rose, at 78, has continued teaching Spanish part- time and answers to “Sra. Rose”, as the students always have called her. “It’s my salvation,” she tells me…'especially now'.
A devout Catholic, her faith is what gives her courage and hope and has seen her through difficult times in her life as it does now.
Rose is loving, generous, fun, and adventuresome. I know this about her because she reached out to me as a friend from the very beginning despite our cultural differences. She knows how to be a friend and keep friends in faraway places as I do. This is a survival skill when you live a lifetime of moving from place to place. There has not been a birthday or a Christmas since I left Manila in 1995 that I haven’t had a loving card, letter, or email from Rose. She has never missed a year no matter where she or I were living.
Reuniting in Asheville this week was something we never imagined. Finally able to leave her husband with a responsible caregiver, she has been visiting her daughter in Washington D.C. I urged her to come for a few days and she was thrilled not only to see us but to see another part of the US she had not been to. She still has that sense of wanting to visit new places.
Chihuly Exhibit at Biltmore Estate, Asheville - June 2018
We spent the week in between sightseeing, looking at old photos, reminiscing about our lives at ISM and remembering people I haven’t thought about in decades. We shared our life stories all over again and spent time chatting in Spanish as we love to do because it is part of who we are. We talked of books and places we have lived and travelled and places we’d still like to go. We both concur that “solo se vive una vez”..you only live once . That said, we must do things now and not postpone life. That is just what she is doing…and so am I.
Grove Park Inn, Asheville, N.C. June 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment