(Ness Aquino and I at the bar in the Mabuhay Gardens. I was too young to drink.)
My father had watched “Amapola,” the weekend Filipino variety show on channel 18 hosted by Ness Aquino and Amapola, a local celebrity that wore a beautiful Fiipino dress and sang for her TV audience. The show was always simple, with Ness and Amapola sitting on high backed rattan chairs as they spoke in Taglish.
…this one speaks for many of us who grew up in San Francisco. Bruce Lee. Fuck Mr. Yunioshi.
While I was a prolific letter writer during my teenage years, my choices of pen pals were not always wise. Of course, it took a while to dispense of my one prison pen pal, but I finally managed to confine my correspondence to one nice German girl who sent me wonderful photos of her home in Bavaria and from vacations to Spain.
At some point after I began Kindergarten, there was a noticeable change in the behavior of my parents. Along with homework and my own awkwardness in social settings, I lost contact with both my mother or father.
Opening Day at Candlestick Park was always the best day of the year, a time of new hope, fresh grass, hot dogs, long rides on buses, towering fly balls, hot sun and cold, cold wind.
Among my mother’s group of Japanese friends, she was the only one that learned how to drive. I would sit the back seat of the driver’s training vehicle as she maneuvered around San Francisco to the exasperation of her instructor.
Somewhere between Dublin and Tokyo, Morning Star School in San Francisco began beating its own cultural drum.
We used to celebrate the Japanese observation of Girl’s Day (Hina Matsuri) at home by putting up an old wooden doll display and eating special omanju (rice cakes). My mother treated this day with such delicacy, and we were never to jump around the doll display or behave in our usual rambunctious manner that might cause the dolls to topple. My sister and I were seasoned at house destruction, setting crayons to wall covering with ease or sliding down three long flights of stairs in our brownstone flat while riding a child’s bathtub, ending our trip by crashing into the front door.
Childless and in the suburbs, or don’t spare the speculum!
Published by Anna Pirhana on March 14, 2014If there is one thing I have learned while living in the suburbs, it is that people will find 101 uses for an empty uterus.