After Hong Kong and Singapore, the Philippines was our third choice. In the first week, Susan and I went back and forth over whether we had made the right decision. To be fair, we couldn’t fairly assess it at that point. We had landed, for sure; but we weren’t sure, sure of anything. Above all else, we thought we should give it a chance. Our lack of confidence came from feeling overwhelmed. What were we going to do? We didn’t know.
Despite having been in huge cities before, it didn’t feel the same this time. Manila felt differently. It was foreign, yet familiar, possibly a throw back to the Old Wild Wild West. Now this impression came from distorted imagines. Instead of tranquil open prairies, with sagebrush and mesquite, everywhere I saw fortresses or forts armed with riflemen, and rifle-totting security guards standing in front buildings. I pictured in my mind robbers running out of banks with moneybags in their hands racing past security guards who manage to get off shots but miss the bad guys. And very little pity for those got caught in the crossfire.
The day after we arrived, Susan was silent most of the day; but the peace was broken when we got back to our hotel and she started bawling (I would’ve preferred cursing), and right then the reasons for thinking we had made the wrong decision increased. At that point, Susan’s loyalty was unquestionable, or else she wouldn’t have agreed to traipse half way around the world with me. I didn’t know whether it was right to take her away from the security she had known; I just didn’t know. I thought she would grow from the experience. Mamma’s letter carried the suggestion that we were idiots to give up all we had accumulated back home. That suggestion I believed was biased. Such a letter could hardly have helped. But the next day…a work day…I got mamma’s comments out of my system by tackling the city, especially the traffic nightmare and our first encounter with a traffic circle, where you could experience the lawlessness of the old wild west first hand. It’s every man for himself, and the showdown, though dramatic, was nothing like a quick draw: with human nature the way it is, imagine a traffic jam caused by everyone grabbing the right away. You have to learn assertiveness and patience or have a crash. But I couldn’t totally let go of my mother’s swipe at me without swiping back.
Who was it who taught forgiveness was a virtue? His teachings were hard to follow, especially for me, since they came from a man who also taught us to turn the other cheek. I don’t know about mamma. I have to describe her as caring, but a subtler form of caring would’ve been appreciated. She totally ignored the fact that Susan and I hadn’t accumulated anything in the States, so her total disregard of the truth, though consistent with her, bugged the hell out of me. Thus you could safely say that I didn’t exhibit what you’d call level headedness. If you could rationalize what I did, what I wrote, you’d reply: “typical behavior!” And I don’t know why we didn’t disown each other, except we loved each other. If you were charged with buying into consumption, when the opposite was true, if you were me how would you respond? “Mom, didn’t I turn down your television-reject this past year?” In my letter…I lambasted my parents’ spending. The following are some of the words and phrases I used in my letter that seemed totally appropriate given the situation: “stuff,” “enough,” “more than enough,” “plenty,” “starving,” “starving people in India,” “God Bless America,” “banana split,” “milkshake,” “booze,” and “butt out, as in butt out of my life.” But I didn’t send the letter; I tore it up instead.
Weeks later, after I’d been thinking about the letter I tried to write, I tried to reconstitute it, but I didn’t get very far. By then, Manila had grabbed hold of us, and I filled the letter I final sent with as many impressions of the city as I could. Under the heading of survival, for example, I wrote, “Susan plans to earn a little bread by teaching English.” After thirty-nine years this seems kind of silly because the majority of people living in Manila speak pretty good English. Three years later Susan and I both taught English as a second language in Bangkok. To put my parents at ease, I deliberately lied about Susan seeking employment in Manila (how we planned to survive was a question I knew they would ask), as a rule I don’t like to lie. In spite of my lying, we did have a plan. I went to the English newspapers, the Manila Times and the Free Press, thinking that was good place to start, though I wasn’t worried because we had money. You might even say in terms of the peso and it’s relationship with the dollar that we had a small fortune. For me survival wasn’t a battle…and victory, as I saw it, was relatively easy. It wouldn’t take much for us to live on. As with anything else, there were a few rules; and rule number one was, don’t run out of money.
Randy Ford
