A few days later Ted wrote a letter to his mom and dad in Texas. It was short, to the point, and practically contained no news; a detailed account of their activities would have to wait until Ted and Susan had time for it or had settled into some sort of routine. Dear Mom and Dad, Thank you for the care package. Mom’s chocolate chip cookies sure brought back fond memories. Guess what we just found? A complete supermarket. Yes, here in Manila. Now we can stock up on Dr. Pepper and potato chips in case of a junk food fit. Love from both of us, Ted. And the shaky attack he had as he signed his name had nothing to do with junk food and had everything to do with why he wrote the letter.
Ted thought, “Dad would never approve of Nick. Choices were easier for him and his generation because they had a war they could believe in. But I’ve never been shot at.”
Ted was still walking around in shock. Too much was happening all at once. The new things he was being exposed to were too new for him to digest, even partially. His belief system was challenged. And just as he didn’t have strong feelings about capitalism, he couldn’t conjure up feelings for communism either. He was caught somewhere in between, with no idea where he would end up. There was no way he could’ve known the seriousness of the situation he found himself in at UP. He still could say it wasn’t his fight. When he heard Nick talk about the peasant stock he came from (in central Luzon close to Angles City), he could sympathize, and see why they were so unhappy, and he wanted to see for himself, as he put it, the lay of the land.
At the university he plunged into an ambitious academic load. He hadn’t learned how to say no. Before he learned that, and how, having agreed to also help create a theater at Fort Santiago, to take into consideration travel time, he found himself in the predicament of not having enough time for anything. He had to learn to set priorities. Not having enough time kept him from being more involved with Nick.
The teachers where Susan taught were concerned for her and, of course, Ted, for not having a “complete family.” That was what they often said. And because Ted and Susan were childless it was assumed they couldn’t have children, and many of Susan’s teacher friends openly prayed for them. Many of the teachers lit candles for Susan when they went to Mass. And the nuns that came around blessed her with “may you have many children.” This was the expectation, of course, based on religion. There were also quaint, native rituals that supposedly helped when the blessings didn’t work. When Susan was asked whether she preferred a boy or a girl, she didn’t have the nerve to tell them that she didn’t really care, and that she was taking birth control pills. The teachers, unmindful of American ways, periodically brought the subject up, and often when Susan felt it was totally inappropriate. She could expect it, but still it surprised her, even irritated her because she never knew when it would come up. The sadness they expressed each time probably was genuine and, for some of them, stemmed from a personal loss. So it was something Susan had to put up with.
Yet something extraordinary was happening at the school. Almost over night all thirty-nine classrooms had been repainted, with parents pitching in and doing most of the work. Mr. Araya began to see in a new way…and it surprised him, at first…the draw of Marcos and how it motivated both the students and the parents. On the other hand, he also saw the broken promises of other administrations, literally in the untold number of buildings and projects left unfinished around the country.
He had been around long enough to be realistic and knew to set his expectations low. Mr. Araya had always been cautiously optimistic. Now he saw what unbridled optimism could do. He hadn’t seen anything like it before, as a principal or in his private life, and Mr. Araya began to feel as if anything were possible. He could, as it were, write his own ticket. His enthusiasm soared. After this, he could see himself, within reason, asking for many more improvements. He already had plans for a new, concrete, earthquake-proof wing, that would cost an estimated three million pesos. And then, yes then, he would get to proudly officiate and have Father O’Grady bless the new school.
Randy Ford
