Behind a Tiny Story

By Myrna Pilpa Barinaga

A story of a family’s struggle and survival of the brutal Japanese-American war. I was one of eight children in that family, walking for days in the jungle for safety and living on prayers. Thankfully, the war ended with us all in the family alive and together. Marriage and childbearing brought four children, two with very special needs. S

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jul 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643676104

Myrna Pilpa Barinaga

Myrna Pilpa Barinaga, former Nurse Educator and entrepreneur. With her husband, they founded Bethany Home Health Care in Pasadena and Moreno Valley, Riverside California. Myrna served as President/CEO of these two corporations after the death of her husband. Myrna Barinaga's academic career includes a bachelor of science degree in nursing from Silliman University in the Philippines and master of science in education from University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Book preview

BEHIND A TINY STORY

MY NAME IS Myrna Pilpa Barinaga. I live in Pasadena, California I am trying to write my story so that my children and grandchildren, and those who will come after me, will know my story from before they met me.

This will be bits and pieces of my life that hopefully I can later put in the right order.

I am a member of the Altadena Baptist Church (ABC). I am a steadfast churchgoer just like my father. At one time, Rev. George Van Alstine, our pastor here at ABC, requested the congregation to write a tiny story to share about the beginnings of our faith and spirituality. I wrote about my mother who loved to sing. Most of my mother’s songs were hymns. She sang hymns while doing chores at home, and she put her babies to sleep singing hymns. As a child, my favorite was Yes, Jesus Loves Me because this song always assured me that Jesus truly loves me. Many times, my mother would gather us around the piano to sing as she would play. Early morning hours, I would be awakened by my mother’s voice singing When Morning Gilds the Skies. May Jesus Christ be praised is a phrase from that song that has not left my heart though my mom’s voice has long since been silenced.

The experience of sharing this story made me recall many memories of my childhood. It reminded me of growing up with my parents and my ten siblings and all that we went through. And I am humbled that Rev. George Van Alstine featured my tiny story in his article, Our Philippine Connection, for ABC and placed it on Google.

So here’s more:

As a child, my mother taught me so many songs. However, there is one song that I give credit to my father for teaching me. The following are lyrics of the song:

I WOULD BE TRUE

I would be true for there are those who trust me, I would be pure for there are those who care,

I would be strong for there is much to suffer, I would be brave for there is much to dare

I would be brave for there is much to dare.

I would be friend of all the foe, the friendless, I would be giving and forget the gift,

I would be humble for I know my weakness, I would look up and laugh and love and lift. I would look up and laugh and love and lift? (Howard A. Walter, 1906)

THERE ARE FOUR verses of this song. However, I can remember only the first two verses. These two verses have real meaning for me. They seem to hang over my head and have guided me through my life’s journey.

My father loved poems and verses from the Bible. He was a reader of good books. He loved English and American literature, prose and poetry, history and bios of great authors and great men and philosophers. He travelled the world through reading. However, his daily bread was the Bible, and he read it over and over. He always encouraged us to do the same. It seemed like he had a verse for everything and every happening in life. It was awesome for me to listen to him spontaneously reciting a poem or verse so appropriate for the occasion. I adored my father, and I wanted to be everything that he was. He answered all my questions, and I believed in all his answers. My father was also my schoolteacher in third and fourth grade. He was a disciplinarian, yet his classes were fun. Parents sought him to be the teacher of their children. My father was open about his faith, and he would share his faith with his pupils and coteachers. I admired his boldness in telling people about Jesus. Despite the fact that he was the only Protestant Christian among his colleagues, he was so well respected. On many occasions, when my father was requested to speak, he’d use this opportunity to also talk about his faith.

MY PARENTS

MY FATHER GOT married when he was twenty-five years old while my mother was only seventeen. Their marriage was a talk of the town, especially among my father’s lady friends and colleagues. My mother had finished seventh grade while my father was already a professional schoolteacher.

My mother had very poor beginnings and had seventeen siblings. Half of these siblings, she did not get to know. She was the youngest, and when she was orphaned at three years of age, she was passed around her older siblings who were already married.

On the other hand, my father was an only child of a public defender in Burauen, with quite a few agricultural land holdings. His father was known as a procurador and a sentenciador by Burauen old folks. That means he was a lawyer and a judge.

Fortunately for my mother, in her early teens, she lived with an American missionary couple. The wife of this couple taught her how to sing and play the piano. It was here that my mother learned so many songs. And it was in one Evangelistic meeting held by the couple where my mother sang and captivated my father’s heart and soul. And all that followed is history.

Being the only child, my father wanted many children. He often spoke of his lonely childhood and about missing his mother who had passed on when he was six years old. His father’s helpers at home were all men, much older than my father, after the death of his mom. Then in his early teens, his father remarried. The woman brought to the family four girls older than my father. This created a big change in the family dynamics that made my father feel like running away from home. The blessing came when his father decided to send him to school far away from home, to Silliman University, a Christian American school in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental. In later years, my father sent most of us, his children, to Silliman University as well.

My father was a very devoted church worker. After the war, he took it upon himself to get the church going. The church became his passion. He gathered the few families that had survived the war at home and spearheaded the church activities. The few members in the congregation could not afford a Pastor, so my father played the role. My father taught Sunday school for the adults, and my mother helped with the children. The message was given by my father, while my mom led the singing of hymns. As the attendance increased, my father opened the church for Wednesday evening worship. My father invited ordained pastors from Tacloban to officiate weddings and baptisms. This also happened on special days such as Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Christmas. Our DVBS (daily vacation Bible school) was all summer long and well attended by many children from Roman Catholic homes.

My parents made sure that everyone at home, including the helpers, attended church service every Sunday. We all would look forward to this day of the week when we could gather in church and fellowship with others whose faith we share. Oftentimes, my parents would invite the church attendees to have lunch with us at home.

The Philippines holds the largest Catholic population in Asia. It is known to be the cradle of Catholic Christianity in Southeast Asia.

Today, our town is still predominantly Roman Catholic. We were known to have a different faith from most, and oftentimes, we were stigmatized by our belief. I admired my father’s boldness in telling people about Jesus. I admired his passion for the church. My father’s friends and our neighbors all knew our faith and belief because my father was open about that. He would talk about God’s love, mercy, and grace that led us to survive the war. My father was the most prayerful man I had ever known. At home we continued with our morning and evening devotions.

CHILDHOOD

I WAS ONLY over a year old when my nine-year-old sister, Josefina, took me to a hammock that hung in our backyard. I was cheerfully laughing and happily enjoying the ride. My sister enjoyed my baby laughter and wanted more of it, so she started to tickle me. The hammock flipped, and we were both thrown out of it. I fell off the hammock and landed facedown on the stony ground. This broke my right clavicle, and I had to wear a sling for some time. A few months later, my mother noticed that my right eye seemed to have bulged out and had become somewhat cloudy. She was worried that I would become blind. I had also become irritable and fretful.

One day, my mother had a dental appointment, and she decided to take me along because I was so fretful at that time. Upon seeing me, the dentist told my mother that it looked like my right eye had some inflammation behind it and that he could feel that there was pus. He told my mother that if she consented, he could let the pus out by doing a small incision on my right lower lid. My mom assisted in the procedure and was surprised by the amount of pus that came out from my eye. She was happy that the dentist was able to see what was wrong with me. The outflow of the pus had put my eye back in place. My mother did not realize that the condition of my right eye was connected to my fall from the hammock months before. Days later, my mother took me to the doctor, who did not find anything wrong with my eye. However, he told my mother that I will have the scar for the rest of my life. My mother thought that the scar was a better trade-off than my being blind for the rest of my life.

I have this physical scar caused by that fall, and it is with me for a lifetime. When I was young, I was very conscious of my scar. It was the first thing I saw when I looked at my face in the mirror. And I hated it when asked what happened to me to cause a scar in my face.

On the other hand, I kind of loved my scar. I liked the reminder that I was once a child enjoying a time with my sister, swinging in a hammock. Our joyful swinging caused the hammock to backflip and threw both of us out. My sister was unscathed while I sustained great injury and pain. I also liked my mother’s memory of me coming home from the dentist with one eye covered yet asking, first thing, for a book. Not to mention, I had gotten a lot of attention from my parents due to my eye problem as a child.

Growing up, I learned to embrace who I was, scar and all. Thankfully, with age comes acceptance. It also seemed that with every passing year, my scar got minutely noticeable, or I must have become more nearsighted. I also believe that my face keeps changing. Each glance in the mirror is a new challenge to be content and happy with the face looking back at me, a face that is not quite the same as the one that was there years back. I would simply rather not have a blind eye. I had much worthwhile things to do than waste time worrying about how my face looked. For one thing, from beginning to end, my husband never made mention of my scar. That meant a lot to me.

In my teens, I often complained about my vision and some pain in my right eye. I was prescribed a pair of eyeglasses since I was eleven years old. However, this did not help with the occasional feeling of pain and tightness in my right eye.

In a few months after coming to California, I decided to see an ophthalmologist. Tests on my right eye revealed high pressure. However, tests for glaucoma were negative. I was then referred to the Jules Stein Eye Institute in Los Angeles where MRI (magnetic resonance