My Memoirs: A Remembrance of Love, Hope and Survival

By Afriquita Lapuz Peterson

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453571170

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CONTENTS

My Journey Through Memory Lane

Early Childhood

The War Years 1942-1945

MacArthur’s Return

Liberation Day

Our Courtship

The Long Wait

My Journey

Our Reunion

BACK HOME AGAIN

San Antonio, Texas

Rawlins, Wyoming

Our Home In San Angelo

Eglin AFB, Florida

Back To San Angelo

Malmstrom AFB

Colorado

Indian Creek Wilderness

Murrieta

Henderson

My Years Of

Fighting Cancer

The Miracle

About Mom And

Dad And My Sisters

All About Larry

Our Future

The Final Chapter

Epilogue

MY JOURNEY THROUGH MEMORY LANE

A few weeks ago, I talked on the phone to my sister Meding in the Philippines. She made me promise to write the story of my life. She thinks I have had a fascinating and interesting life. I will attempt to write something about me for the sake of my grandchildren and great grandchildren whom I may not have a chance to meet or spend much time with them since I am nearing the sunset of my life.

EARLY CHILDHOOD

I was born in Santa Maria, a small barrio with no electricity; we used candles or kerosene lamps for light. We used a well with a hand pump to get water for bathing, cooking, and drinking (we had no running water). There was no indoor plumbing, so we used an outhouse. Our roads were unpaved. In the dry season, they were dusty and in the rainy season, they were so muddy that they were hardly usable. The road would be slippery or with mud up to your knees. Sometimes our neighbors would give us a ride in a calesa (a horse-drawn cart). We had a small chapel in honor of the Blessed Mary we called Apu. The only time Mass was celebrated was during the town fiesta in honor of Apu, because the Community couldn’t afford a full-time priest. We were only able to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation by walking more than five miles to Santa Ana. I was too young to realize what my parents went through during those years when we lived in the barrio.

Before I go on with my story, I want to talk about our family. There were eleven children in our family, but only five girls survived: Consuelo, Dina, Meding, Luring and me. Our break away from that primitive life style in the barrio came when a very powerful typhoon blew our house away. No Red Cross or any charity organization came to give us any assistance. We lived with my Dad’s sister for a while. Then our parents decided to move on with our life, so we moved to Caloocan, a suburb of Manila. Our new life was very different from our life that we left behind in the barrio. We adapted very quickly to the new style of living. I started school in the first grade in 1936. I liked our house in Caloocan, all we had to do was flip a switch and there was light, turn on a faucet and there was running water, a luxury in life we never experienced before. Our good fortune didn’t stop there, because the house we rented was only a stone’s throw away from a beautiful Catholic church. At 6:00 o’clock every evening, the Church bell would toll. We called it the Angelus which means we had to be home for the family evening prayer. I had to run home when I heard the church bells, even if I was in the middle of a game of marbles with my friends, or else I would be in trouble with my Mom. Our Mom was a very strict disciplinarian when it came to our Catholic upbringing.

THE WAR YEARS 1942-1945

I was twelve years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, which started World War II. Our life was turned upside down. There were no jobs so we ended up going back to the barrio. It took us four days to walk 98 kilometers, because we had to keep off the main highway to avoid the Japanese patrols. We walked the whole distance without stopping to sleep. We were in a hurry to get to Santa Ana, because we were hungry and had no food with us. We lived with Dad’s sister again, but we had to earn our keep. We learned how to do the hard work in the rice fields. At the end of a long, exhausting day, our reward was all the palay (unprocessed rice) that we could carry on our heads. I was the workhorse in those hard days. When harvest time was over, I was chosen to make the trips to a town near Mount Arayat to buy rice and corn. The distance that I had to walk was nearly 12 kilometers round trip. I only bought a few gantas of rice or corn each trip, because I could only carry so much on my head due to the heavy weight. I had to make those trips two or three times a week. What was so gross about these