Hapa

In less than a week, I will exit the customs area at Ninoy International Airport in Manila and begin looking through the crowd for a sign that reads 'Robert and Pat.' The man holding that sign will not be a hired driver, nor an employee of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. He will be Pedro Baraoidan.

Around 1960 Pedro was a Filipino cadet at West Point, continuing a long tradition of Filipino men trained in United States military academies, for export back to the Philippines. I have a very faint recollection of him, or perhaps only a picture of him: a young, handsome, slightly built man with an easy smile. In 1960 I was an awkward, gawking thirteen year-old living with my family in Michigan.

Just barely into adolescence, I had new 45 rpm records of Fabian and Elvis, but still liked to pretend 'boat' with my younger brother Peter in our recreation room. 'Boat' was an enactment of our family's former life on the southern shores of Long Island where we ferried to Fire Island on summer weekends. Long Island and Queens is where Pedro showed up, on weekend leave from West Point.

West Point is where Petra, my father's elegant, tempestous Filipino-American sister, and John, her third husband, along with Janet, his beautiful 16 year-old oldest daughter, showed up. They came up the Hudson because John, a full Filipino man who immigrated to the United States in the 1930's, was Pedro's uncle.

A big family drama happened next at West Point, with Pedro and Uncle John as innocent bystanders. There, my sister would meet her husband, Bill, and, there, my Aunt Petra would secretly court her next husband, a West Point cadet named Will, and eventually divorce our beloved Uncle John.

Uncle John carried an eye-popping wad of money at all times, and had equally eye-popping biceps. He dressed in fine suits and drove fancy cars, and treated me and my brother like we were his kids. John was a bartender and bookmaker for the Mob. But he cried when my aunt left him.

See, the trips to West Point not only strengthened a nephew-uncle connection; they enabled contact between the glamorous Carino women and handsome, uniformed West Point cadets. From our home in the midwest, my father heard the stories, and wrung his hands over his sister and daughter. These romances ignited in the fires of West Point dances, New York City nightclubs, and Sunday dinners hosted by my grandparents in their Queens row house.

I can see how it all happened. I smell the beer, taste the fish and roast beef and rice pudding, and hear the laughter, the piano, the barking dog, the sound of the front door opening to streams of people. Because as a child I sat there too. I can see Pedro, John, Petra, John, and other West Point Cadets sitting around a dining room table crammed shoulder to shoulder with relatives and friends, many of them Filipino-American, every one of them embraced as 'family' by my grandmother. She probably met my grandfather Pio that way, in Brooklyn, 30 years earlier. A uniform always turned her head, and so that legacy continued with her daughter and grand-daughter.

I saw John only four more times before he died in the 1990's. The last time was a day in Florida at his home. We sat in his overheated tropical garden talking quietly about his past, his family in the Philippines, and what had happened to each of our lives since 1961.

Pedro would fade from my consciousness. My sister kept some contact with him. At some point Pedro returned to the Philippines, served in the military there, married, and had a family. He lived for a signficant time in the United States. As I planned my trip to the Philippines, I thought of him, and called John's second wife and widow, Ruth, who gave me Pedro's address in the Philippines.

Here in the United States, given our vast mobility and high disregard for tradition, 'family'is a watered-down concept. In an email from the Obispo's, our host family in Bauan--strangers who are already referring to us as family--Tita Pat and Tito Rob, Aunt and Uncle--they seem very pleased to hear that I will be spending time with Pedro and his wife,Lydia. True to the Filipino definition of family which is very strong and inclusive, they call them 'my family.'

Indeed Pedro, my late, former uncle-in-law's nephew, is taking just that kind of interest and care. He and his wife, Lydia, will escort us for two days, and we will catch up. I will hear how Pedro's life went after West Point, learn more about our Uncle John, and Pedro will get to know me for the first time.

A seafood dinner is planned with them Sunday night. We will eat, drink, talk, laugh,and tell stories. We will pick up the end of a string dropped over 40 years ago by time, loss, and neglect, and complete an arc, from the Philippines to America and back. We will do pamilya.