My Cousin Rosa

I, Ondes, on the left of the table, holding on to my cousin Rosa.  Other children in the picture, clockwise, are Rosa's sister, Nida, Bebeng, my older sister, Boyet and Mita, my Kaka Viring's children, Lorie, my Kakang David's only child and Anton, my late brother.  The priest on the left is Monsignor Agcaira.  Behind Rosa is Ely, a family friend, the adult with glasses at the table is my Kaka Edong and the guy at the back is Rosa's father, Kaka Ruben. The title Kaka is uncle or aunt in Tagalog. This was taken during the annual fiesta held on the feast of the Immaculate Concepcion in Malabon.

My cousin Rosa is one of the many children of my prolific Kaka, uncle in Tagalog, Ruben and his wife Kaka or aunt Iska. Rosa just died of a heart attack this past Sunday in Malabon Philippines at the age of seventy.

Rosa's family lived just a block from my grandmother's house where my own family stayed till I was 10 years old. She and her siblings were my playmates till I was ten.  One fond memory I had playing with her was pretending we were pregnant by stuffing our dress with newspaper.  At this time, both our mothers were getting pregnant almost every year in her mother's case and every two years in mine. This past Monday morning when I was in the bathroom my grandchild came in with her tummy stuffed with a blanket. It made me think was this a sign from Rosa? My sister and I were just talking on the phone just a few minutes before about her passing.

When I was seven and she nine years old, the company my grandmother owned had a huge party to celebrate the mechanisation of the bottling step in the making of the fish sauce or patis.  It was a big event since it was the first time that this condiment was being bottled untouched by human hands.  A photographer was hired to take pictures of the guests including government officials and also the American manufacturers of the bottling machine.  I convinced Rosa that we photobomb every picture that was taken and we indeed did. You could see us squeezing ourselves into every picture.

Rosa is on the extreme right in this picture.  The children featured in this picture are from the left, Connie, Rosa's sister, me, Edna, another of Rosa's sister.  Behind are my Kaka Uring, my grandmother, Nanang Pina, Kaka Viring and then Governor Rodriguez.  This was taken during the inauguration of the newly installed bottling facility at compound number 1 of Rufina Patis in Malabon.

Every year the Catholic school we attended had a Christmas pageant which included coming in different costumes and offering a gift to the Child Jesus at the stage. I still could picture in my mind the year Rosa came in an all white Indian sari with a diamond pasted in the middle of  her forehead like the princess in the Aladdin movie.  She was gloriously beautiful and regal.

Time flew and we got married, got pregnant, this time for real, and had children who eventually grew up.  A few years ago, we were together celebrating my late brother's birthday at a casino buffet in California.  We even shared a room after the buffet at my sister's house in Los Angeles.  My sister is a very clean person and when I visit her she always offers to launder my clothes.  One day as I was putting away my newly laundered clothes, Rosa saw me folding my underwear in a haphazard manner.  I remember her showing me how to fold with the crouch part over first and then the two sides folded over the middle to form a square.  I was really impressed.

This was taken during the joint celebration of my brother Anton, Vicky, Mama Sol and Bubut's birthdays.  From left seated are Mama Sol, Chet, Anton's wife, Anton, Chet's aunt, and Vicky, Rosa's sister.  Standing from left are Rosa and my sister Bebeng.

Rosa arriving at my sister's condo in Los Angeles.

Rosa was famous for her Pancit Malabon, a noodle dish named after the town we grew up in. This dish is characterised by its sauce but most importantly by the trimmings one puts on top including crushed pork rind, shrimp, boiled pork belly, smoked fish chopped and sometimes boiled oysters plus green onions and boiled eggs.  Rosa masterfully concocted this pancit in such a way it was rich but not overbearing.

She lived her life just as admirably.  I seldom heard her say a bad thing about anybody.  Neither did she complain about the trials and tribulations she had to go through in life.  She was a wonderful example on how to carry them with dignity. This was what she and her life taught me.  Thank you Rosa for all the things I have learned from you and for the warm memories. Rest in peace.

Summer Family Picnics on this Spring Day

We look forward to.
But for now let's enjoy the
birds sing, flowers bloom.

Note: Painting by Ed Diaz.

Tales from the Stairs

When I recall my childhood spent at my fraternal grandmother's house the imposing stairs that greeted anyone that entered the house looms over my memory. It was shiny with banisters on both sides almost a foot wide and it was made of narra with a rich patina. Its steps were not steep and numbering about twenty of them with one serving as a landing in the middle. I would estimate the width of the staircase to be about an adult arms length which frustrated me as a child since I could not reach both banisters as I walked down this stairs. In this post I am recalling childhood tales related to my mother I could not forget that have this stairs as the backdrop.

We lived upstairs of my grandmother's house and my mother stayed practically all day up there.  She was a full time housewife raising a family that grew to a total of six children in the twelve years my family lived there. When I asked my mother why she decided to have many children her answer was "I enjoyed having and raising you all".  I found this hard to believe then since I viewed her life to be boring at this house with her in her duster swaying her latest baby to sleep in her arms as the highlight of her day. She must have indeed relished her role as a mother since she could have instead continued to teach biology in high school which she did unto her first year of marriage but gave up when the first of her six children, my sister, was born.

When I was in high school, a classmate of mine quoted to me something my mother said during the talk she gave to a group of young teenagers attending a cursillo, a popular religious group in the sixties. My classmate said, "Ondes, your mother mentioned that she would not even allow a single fly to touch her children and would watch over them in the duyan or hammock that she swung while driving flies away with a light towel". This impressed my classmate apparently and she wanted me to know how much devoted my mother was to us.

One thing my mother loved doing during our first day of school was to make sure that my sister's and my hair were properly combed and usually bedecked with a large ribbon for that day. I remember this particular incident during one of this first day of school. She had just dipped a comb in a glass of water and was parting my hair to one side while my youngest brother who must have been two years old at that time was marching while singing his favorite song.  At the corner of my eye while my mother was combing my hair I saw him put one compartment of the three tiered metal lunch pail (piyambiera) on his head to simulate a soldier's hat and started marching around the house and then towards the top of the stairs with his eyes covered by the pail.  Before we knew it, we saw him rolling down the stairs and my mother screaming in horror.  The landing did not stop his travel down the stairs.  Fortunately my father was sitting in the easy chair in front of the house and heard my mother's voice and caught my brother as he rolled from the last step.

The house had another set of stairs made of white marble before you get to the main door of the house. The house had to be raised from the ground since we lived by the Malabon River which could overflow during heavy rain.  It had a wide landing at the top with a corner big enough for a large easy chair to be placed. My grandmother loved to spend her afternoon in this easy chair looking at what was going on in the fish sauce factory her family owned which was located on the same grounds as her house. When the drivers of the fish sauce delivery trucks came back to Malabon from their travel around the country, they would sometimes come and visit my grandmother. A memorable incident that I remember was when my mother panicking ran down the stairs from our living quarters into the group of drivers visiting my grandmother for help. My oldest brother swallowed a large hard candy and was choking. Somebody did dislodge it and one could see a red color liquid coming out with the hard candy which my mother was so worried was blood.  I remember one of the drivers, Mang Ico, assuring her it was just the dye from the red hard candy my brother swallowed.

These two incidents with the stairs as a backdrop were funny to recall now and which I and my siblings loved to tell among ourselves and our own children once in a while. However, one particular memorable thing I remember was more poignant and sad. I remember my mother going up the stairs sobbing after she answered a phone call at the adjoining office by the house, telling her that one of my uncles, her brother, had a nervous breakdown. I remember her saying," He just lost his mind".  My uncle was single and lived with his other sisters who happened to be single too with my maternal grandmother at their house in Quezon City. His ambition to be recognized and allowed to be one of the council's candidates was not fulfilled and he got despondent. He fortunately recovered after a short stay in a place in Mandaluyong.

In a way the stairs was a metaphor for the life I witnessed especially with regards to my mother in my grandmother's house. It has its ups and downs, funny and sad tales and at its center the heart of a loving, caring mother whose goal was to protect her children from any harm including a tiny fly to touch them.

My Nanang Pina

Nanang Pina is my late fraternal grandmother.  We lived with her at her house by the Malabon River till I was in the fifth grade. She lived downstairs while my family lived upstairs.  I remember eating dinner with her once in a while in the long dining table with a glass top that could sit 12 or more people. It was massive. I remember her sitting at the end of the table, not the head position but close to it.  I would sit beside her while she told me stories which I enjoyed listening to. I still remember her chuckle and those gleaming eyes behind the rimmed glasses as she told some hilarious ones in her sometimes sarcastic way. She also loved to put both legs up on the chair while she ate, a habit she carried also when she sat at the easy chair by the entrance of the house while she rolled strings into balls.  The strings would be used to keep bottles of fish sauce together for people to buy when they dropped by at the factory she and her children owned.

Actually I do not remember any of the stories now that she told me but I have heard tales about her life from others.  My favorite is how she and two other friends shared one balut, a Filipino delicacy famous all over the world as one of the weirdest that one could be dared to eat.  This is not for the fainthearted so skip the rest of the paragraph if you are. This delicacy is an unhatched egg embryo still in the shell. They are cooked first by boiling them. Inside are the fluid, the yolk, the hard white protein part and the semblance of the chick itself. If you eat this all to yourself you first crack the tip carefully, add a little salt through the hole and slurp the fluid. Then you break it open a bit at a time and eat the yolk and the chick parts in the order you prefer. Some eat the hard protein part but I don't.  Story goes, my grandmother and two other ladies who sold fish with her would share one balut with one eating the yolk, the other the white part and the other the almost developed chick part.   No parts as a result were wasted.

That is typical of my Nanang.  She was very frugal even when she had gotten rich when she discovered that one could obtain a delicious amber color fish sauce from the anchovies that were stored in the banga or earthen jars that were in their backyard.  The anchovies were small fishes that were not sold from the fish sale of that day.  I have heard of an anecdote that was told that the supernatant juice one day splattered from the salted anchovies and she tasted the wonderful flavor of the juice. This made her think of bottling what would be patis or fish sauce that we know today. I have read accounts in various media crediting her for discovering this very popular condiment found in almost all Filipino households. This sauce is now popular with foodies even in the western part of the world in their cooking.

My Nanang was ahead of her times not only in making serendipitous discoveries but also when it came to conserving natural resources and caring for them. I remember something vividly which she said while washing her hand using the rainwater running from the extra faucet built to conserve water. She looked into the window from where the faucet was and gazing into the river she said, "One of these days it (the water) will be all gone." I remember listening in awe even as a child at her wisdom and how she said it with that serious prophetic tone.

Of all the memories I have of my Nanang, this scene by that faucet is what I remember the best.  She was proactive to solve what she thought would be a problem. I actually saw the factory's plumber, Mang Moises, constructing a huge vat to hold the rainwater and the necessary plumbing to deliver it to that little faucet by the window where I witnessed my first lesson for respect and conserving nature's resources. I did not know then what motivated my Nanang when I watched the plumbing being constructed nor did I understand fully its significance until talks of climate change and water pollution were discussed when I grew up as an adult.

I am now a grandmother to two very young children. I hope I can pass some nuggets of wisdom to them like my Nanang did. I hope they will not remember just those no, no words I try my best to avoid saying but something more reverent and profound.

A Family That Plays Together Stays Together

A Family That Plays Together Stays Together

The mantra in the poster above is patterned after the slogan with the more serious message, "The Family That Prays Together Stays Together". This sacred version was popularly used in the Philippines in the sixties and even decades later to motivate Filipinos to pray the rosary together every night.

My late mother heeded this message. In the eighties when I went home to visit my ailing father I remember praying part of the rosary kneeling on the hard marble floor every night with my two year old daughter. Thank God there were decades of the rosary when we could sit. We all gathered as a family, with some half asleep, in front of the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in our living room with my mother with her hair in rollers and cooling herself with a pamaypay or fan leading the rosary.

I remember after saying this form of prayer where you repeat the Hail Mary's over and over again we would then get up and we, the younger members, would then go to place my mother's hand on our forehead, a traditional gesture of respect for our elders in the Philippines called mano (hand).  We used this simple act as a form of greeting for our elders and also after Mass and prayers. During my visit, my father who was terminally ill of liver cancer was bedridden.  I remember a picture taken of my young daughter putting his hand on her forehead while my father was lying in bed after the rosary was said.

One more thing that kept our family together at certain times was playing mahjong.  Last week, I finally was able to play it with the Mahjong Group of an international club I just joined. Even though I have not played this game in decades, I actually remembered how to play it.  Mahjong is one of the most popular parlor games in the Philippines which can turn into a high stakes game played in some peoples homes.

At our house we did not pay for pesos but for small change, single centavos. We just enjoyed winning and shouting Mahjong victoriously when we had the right combinations especially those which gave the most points.  My mother was the expert when it came to counting the so called flowers and the assigned points to the more challenging combinations like the escalera or consecutive tiles of the same suit or siete pares or seven pairs.

I remember one particular summer, when we played mahjong in my brother's room every weekday after lunch.  He was the only sibling who did not have to sleep with another one and his air conditioned room could easily accommodate the card table where the mahjong tiles were set up into four double layered walls which the players picked from. We took turns picking a tile and throwing the unwanted one in the center space on the table. We arrange the tiles into combinations that fit what we had on hand sometimes aiming for ambitious ones. One could hear us occasionally shout the familiar words pung, chiao, cang during the game and the triumphant word Mahjong when one of us complete the winning combination.

Tables have been designed to have drawers for money and later on for the snacks served.  In some households, the players hardly got up and stayed in their seats the whole day.  Mahjong was that addictive.  In our case since we had a big family, we took turns and in between turns we partook of the snacks.  We of course had Pepsi over ice and if I remember right, fried hot dogs on toasted bread. With catsup of course. I am salivating just recalling this. I also recall, we also had greasy garlic toasted peanuts to snack on which we bought from a vendor at a nearby corner from our house.

My mother as I mentioned was the one who calculated the points and she stayed through all the games to perform this task.  When I recently played mahjong this past week after so many years, as I heard the mahjong tiles being shuffled on the table I could not help but be reminded of my mother's eager face as she played and her joy when she picked the tile to complete her combination especially if it was an ambitious one.  She would triumphantly place the tiles down as she shouted Mahjong to prove to us she got the winning tile and the correct line of tiles. Then she began the count of the points which she was an expert of.

I would admit these memories made me pretty homesick for home especially my late mother while I played this game recently. This homesickness stayed with me for days. They were beautiful wistful memories. This game mahjong did keep us together that one particular summer.

I could hardly wait to look for my mahjong set I have somewhere in our basement and play it with my own family now.  I have a lot to learn of the game especially how to count the points which my loving late mother enthusiastically did. I am looking forward to making memories as happy as those I had during that one memorable summer.

Slow Cooker Beef Nilaga

My childhood memories will always include Sunday dinner at my late maternal grandmother's house.  We would ride our jeep from Malabon to Quezon City where my grandmother's house was located. All six of us siblings somehow fitted in the vehicle.  The dishes we had those Sundays at my Lola Sefa's house included Beef Nilaga and a chicken dish either fried chicken or chicken curry.  These dishes were consistently served that one recipient of the family's generosity, the hueteng bookie, I heard one day complained that his free meal was always the same. Well, that was the way my late mother wanted it and we never got tired of it. Beef Nilaga spelled comfort and being home again for all of us, my family and all my uncles, aunts and cousins and my Lola.  It still does with my own smaller sized family now. My husband, an American, l notice relishes this dish with gusto every time I serve it.

I like to use beef chuck roast which has some fat in it.  You do not need beef bones like beef bulalo, a similar dish, so it is relatively less expensive and the ingredients more accessible.  The vegetables would vary depending on your preference and the availability of the ingredients.  I sometimes use carrots instead of butternut squash or both.  As for the leafy vegetables, I usually utilize plain green cabbage since they keep for a long period of time in the fridge so it would be available when needed.  If you have access to bok choy that would be even better.  I like to use green beans either fresh or frozen.  The potatoes give the starchy component and texture.  This dish is served with rice, lots of them, with the fish sauce as a side condiment where we dip the meat for added flavor while eating.

The slow cooker method is most convenient for preparing this dish.  The meat gets very tender without you boiling it to death over the stove or resorting to using the pressure cooker.  You just dump the ingredients in the slow cooker and go.  If you want the green beans to be crisp add it at the last 15 minutes of cooking.  If using bok choy, do add it also the last 15 minutes. This will be one of your family's favorite dinner on Sundays or any day.

Slow Cooker Beef Nilaga

• 3 lbs beef chuck roast, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 onion sliced
• 2 potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1/2 butternut squash, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1/2 head cabbage, cut either in quarters or into 1 inch slices
• 1 cup green beans, fresh or frozen
• 3 cups water
• 3 tbsp fish sauce or salt to taste, plus more fish sauce as side condiment while eating

Place all the ingredients in the crock pot except the green beans.  Cook for 4 hours at high setting or 8 hours at low.  Add the green beans during the last 15 minutes of cooking. I used an Aroma Brand rice cooker/slow cooker and cooked the dish for 3 hours at slow cooker setting.  Serve with rice and more fish sauce as a side condiment for those who prefer to use it.

Growing Up By the Malabon River

The first house my family ever lived in was by the river, the Malabon River. We lived in the fifties at my fraternal grandmother's house located in the fishing town, Malabon, which was about 20 minutes without traffic from Manila. My grandmother lived on the first floor while my family occupied the second floor. In fact, my uncle who was single then when we were staying at this house also occupied a room on the floor where we were.

The house was located on the same compound that had then and even now the bottling facilities of the fish sauce company (Rufina Patis) my grandmother who I called Nanang founded and which flourished in the hands of her five sons and two daughters. We lived in this house in the fifties till I was ten years old.  Below are photos taken during my visit with my husband, Bob, at the bottling facility in compound number 1 by the Malabon River February 2023.

I remember a flat large deck on this second floor where our labandera or laundress would hang wet clothes on the clothes lines to dry.  As young children I remember eating fried chicken on the wide windowsill in front of this deck during which one of my brothers, Benjie, would be throwing the chicken bones to a rat (or two) for it to eat.  He found pleasure watching them gnaw on the bones while they were trapped in an inverted waste basket made of wire with holes in it. However, he discovered those rats could squeeze themselves out through those small openings easily once they were full and escape. This was one of the ways we found to amuse ourselves during our stay in this house.

For me I entertained myself by watching the various vehicles that passed through this river. From large fishing boats called lantsa to small ones ran by motor or by hand. The ones that fascinated me the most were the bamboo rafts that "parked" across our house for two or three days.  The raft had a little igloo shaped structure made of nipa which was just big enough for the fisherman to sleep in at night or shelter himself from rain.  Once they found the right spot for fishing, I always admired how these men skillfully maneuvered the rafts in place onto a post with their long bamboo poles.

These fishermen looked so peaceful, and Zen like in their movements.  Everything they did seemed more like they were on vacation rather than making a living. Whatever they caught did not seem much to me either and were deposited in woven baskets with covers. Once filled they would set out to go back to their homes. They apparently knew the meaning of enough. see photo below from this website

Salambao fishing raft, Malabon River, northern Metro Manila, Philippines, 1899 or before

Description with picture: Shows river, stone bridge, native raft of bamboo, poled by two men. Raft has grass hut, fishing net suspended in front.

 

Published in: Our islands and their people as seen with camera and pencil. St. Louis : N.D. Thompson Pub. Co., c1899. Vol. 2, pg. 762. Captioned: Native raft of bamboo poles on the Pasig River.

(Notice that the caption in the book is Pasig River that is in error and seems to be intentionally so)

 

Photograph is in an album that documents experiences of Frank Freeman Atkinson, Sergeant in Battery D, US Army.

Photograph was a gift to the library by Mrs. Frank Atkinson, Feb. 16, 1948.

 

California History Room picture Collection

California State Library

I always pictured the scene of these fishermen in their bamboo rafts like they were taken from one of the paintings of the great Filipino painter, Amorsolo. They were iconic and pure and truly represented the Filipino life then which was simpler and less hectic than today.

The river was more than a place for boats to travel or for people to catch fish during those times in the fifties when the river water was still clean and free of pollution.  During the month of December, exactly on December 9, a fluvial parade featuring a pagoda on a barge was held to celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception which is the patron saint of this part of Malabon where we lived. This custom is continued to this day, and I believed was and might still be sponsored by the company my Nanang Fina established. I remember days before the pagoda set sail, people from the factory planning, building and decorating it especially the focal point where the statue of the Blessed Mother would be perched.  see photos in this website and this website.

The statue of the Blessed Mother was carried on the shoulders of several men who transported it to the pagoda starting from the church with people in a procession on foot.  The pagoda by that time would have been decorated with lights, flowers and balloons.

Also, part of the day's fiesta celebration was the fireworks show that was actually performed across the river from our house on the shore of Navotas, the adjoining town to Malabon.  I remember as a child, fearing some of the relatively harmless remnants of the fireworks descending on me which I brushed off with my hand while screaming.

Before this show, we would eat a big feast attended by guests of my grandmother's seven children.  I remember several people on tables strewn around the compound feasting on the food prepared by cooks imported from another town.  My favorite dish served was the paella to which I compared everyone I have ever eaten of this dish ever since.   Once we heard the blaring music from the pagoda we would run quickly from where we were eating and to the short wall that separated the grounds of the house from the river. We would try to fight for the space that had the best view of the beautifully decorated barge bearing the Blessed Mother.

Prayers recited in that monotone voice by the leader were also said and could be heard amidst the sound of the Ave Maria music and fireworks. After all this was more than a parade, it was a religious procession except it was held in water with the swarm of people packed like sardines moved by the boat rather than by them walking.

The last time I attended the fiesta was in the early nineties with my two young children.  We were all suffering from jet lags being the first few days of our Philippine trip visiting from the United States. I remember still running when I heard the familiar sound signaling the pagoda was coming and I still jostled for the best spot to view it. I was glad my children were too sleepy to see me do these childish behaviors.

Glitzy as this fluvial parade is, my favorite memories of the river were still those of the vehicles that passed through it every day. I would never forget the serenity of the fishermen in the bamboo rafts especially against the backdrop of the setting sun.  The ordinariness of these scenes of everyday life to me then and especially now is just as colorful as the fully decked out pagoda with all its pomp and pageantry. I am grateful for both the ordinary and extraordinary parts of my stay in the house by the river. I learned from both of them how my faith, culture and experience have shaped who I am now.

Coded Blue

Left to right. Me, Antonio, Lucio, Benjamin and Josefina. Carmencita was not born yet when photo was taken. 

My late mother was very organized and a neat freak.  She made it a point that we had our own chair and plate and she devised a clever way that we would know which ones were ours.  She color coded them!

She assigned to each one of us, her six children, a color and she did not do it randomly for some of us. She had a reason for the color she chose and it was related to our name and the saint from whom we were named after.

Way back in the fifties, the Catholic Church in the Philippines required that infants who were baptized be named after a saint or our Blessed mother. As a result there was a proliferation of names consisting of Maria and then followed by the place where the Blessed Mother appeared.  For example my complete name is really Maria Lourdes and my sister Maria Josefina.  I dropped the Maria which is shortened as Ma. because a cousin of mine read it as Mrs. not Ma. due to my mother's terrible handwriting.  As a young child I did not want to be mistaken to be married. When I was in high school,  one of the sisters at the school I attended said I should have not done that since Lourdes is a place in France not a name of the Blessed Mother, Mary.  It was like I was named after the city of Manila or Malabon, my hometown.

Here is the list of my brothers and sisters, from the eldest to the youngest, and the color assigned to each one.

Maria Josefina - green
Maria Lourdes (me) - blue
Antonio - brown
Benjamin Jr. - red
Lucio - yellow
Carmencita - pink

The eldest, Josefina, has a name that is an acronym of our two grandmothers, Josefa and Rufina.  Josefa is the feminine form of Jose or Joseph.  She would not have had to attach Maria to her name if she was named Josefa because St. Joseph was a saint.  Josefina, an acronym, was not acceptable so she had to have Maria with it.  Her passport actually has Maria as her first name. She was assigned green because those who have devotions to St. Joseph wore green colored dresses when they attended mass.

I, Maria Lourdes, was named after Our Lady of Lourdes.  Those who have devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes wore white dresses with a blue sash when they go to Mass as a form of their devotion.  Thus I was assigned the color blue.

Antonio was named after St. Anthony who belonged to a monastery where the monks wore brown cassocks.  Again devotees to this saint wore brown dresses when they went to mass and my brother was assigned the brown color.

I really do not know why my other two brothers Benjamin and Lucio were assigned red and yellow respectively and our youngest sibling Carmencita, pink. Neither brothers were named after saints. Benjamin was named after my father and Lucio after my grandfather. I wonder if they stopped requiring that infants be named after saints when they were baptized or my mother ran out of names of saints to whom Catholics in the Philippines show their devotions to by wearing color coded dresses. Carmencita must have been assigned pink since she was the youngest girl.

I remember the chairs were shaped like half circles and they were made of plastic weaving.  They provided lots of color to our living room when we took them out to sit on to watch TV.  Our plates were also made of colored plastic.  I remember I was very embarrassed eating from mine since I broke part of it. One advantage of having color coded plates I could think of was they prevented us from catching colds and other infectious diseases from one another.

The color coding approach actually worked.  We did not fight over chairs and plates since we have our own color coded ones. Right now when I think of the fact I was coded blue was that a sign of things to come?