part 11

Learning To Fly by Patrick Duffey


Leaving Samar for Tacloban, Leyte, Tony, Lochie and I buy the tickets for the ship, I see somebody walk in the doorway and enter. She walks straight ahead to Lochie and they talk, I am then introduced by Lochie as one of her girlfriends, Marivic Mendiola. I somehow knew when her first saw her that she was different, and indeed that she is. At 27 years old she never been married either, like to me she’s been deceived and had her heart crushed twice. Very lovely, intelligent, sweet and funny. She is a high school teacher and an accountant. And what beautiful eyes! I invite her to come with us but she is working and cannot leave.

The three of us leave Tacloban on a bus toward the other side of the island of Ormoc, West Leyte, where we will depart from. We travel over the mountains and hair-pin corners past great fields of sugar cane. Lochie books us on a ferry liner that takes six hours to cross the ocean. I am amazed to find that the state room is bigger my apartment in Makati, Manila. It has a nice deck outside where we share our drinks as we depart into the darkness. I can't somehow get Lochie's friend Marivic out of my mind. I borrow the cell phone and text if she will be my lady and she replies YES! News comes sparsely to us that the prosecuting senators have left the impeachment trial in disgust and there’s no clear direction on what will happen next. The peso climbs to 55.

Saturday morning we arrived in Cebu and checked into the Center Point Hotel. Preparations are underway in the streets for Sinalog tomorrow morning. We roam the streets of the town and rediscover Magellan’s cross of 1621. We attend mass at Santo Nino Church where the original black Santo Nino doll is enshrined. Vice President Gloria Arroyo demands to President Estrada that he vacate the presidential house and with that he resigns by noon that day. He does in fact leave and by 4 p.m., vice president Arroyo steps and as the new president of the Philippines. Five hours later, her old Harvard school mate George Bush takes his oath in Washington D.C. The peso stabilizes at 47 with new hopes of a better future; back in America I’m not so sure.

Sunday morning we leave our baggage with one of Lochie’s friends near the Super Cat Terminal at the pier. Sinalog is underway as we watch from near the beginning instead of the grandstand that has been offered to us because for lack of taxis upon our escape later after the festival. Hospitality never seems to end as I am given press credentials along with Tony to take photographs and video along with ABS/CBN at my side. Through the dancers I squirm is not to interrupt or bump anyone. On the return trip this time we take the Super Cat Hydro foil which only takes two hours.

Back in Tacloban, Leyte, one evening while waiting for Marivic and Lochie, a foreigner passed by the balcony outside my room. Tony and I were finalizing the blueprints for my beach house. I greeted him and unlike most replied in a unfamiliar way. Derek has the “bug”, he is just as excited as I am to be here in shares the same views of this incredible place and the passionate people here. Visiting for the first time only in September of last year he has returned. Derrick has given up his Canadian citizenship and now lives here with his new wife. I may entertain him as a new business partner in the resort at the beach in Dolores along with the reviving the old airport where not too long ago C-130s with land for the military. Only time will tell.

Marie Victoria (Marivic) and I have been on a few dates and have walked and talked to the morning. The courting was brief but she melted my heart before she she even spoke to me at the fery terminal when we first meet. The other evening I asked for her hand in marriage in a dimly lit romantic restaurant and she said yes to me. Funny, you can know someone all your life and not know them, while others feel like you’ve known them for dozens of years. I strongly feel that we’re soul mates. Over the years people have tried to introduce me to someone and I have been asked a few times to marry. But no one had really captured my heart in this way. I waited for years for someone just like her to make my heart beat wildly again. I give her the option of rethinking my proposal to where she could find someone younger, more handsome and with more money. She tells me that as long as we have a grain of rice that she would never complain. Ok, let’s go! My “group” and I traveled to her parents’ home in Tananuan to meet her family. There is a long stretch of sidewalk at their front door from 1944 when Mc Arthur’s GIs built a kitchen for the soldiers. It looks like it was just poured.

Although I am nervous, they make me comfortable and relaxed. The Secretary of Lochie will step in and take “Nanny’s” place because she is not yet available. Later I will find that because I found someone not being from their place, they were NOT happy with me. I have brought ample food and drink. They are having a good time with their karaoke. The aunties, uncles, cousins, brothers and sister are all jolly but still curious. The brother stays in the darkness to observe me secretly. I explain my intentions for their daughter and am accepted within a short time as a new family member. Her mother cries and laughs and her father beams a smile at me. Thoughts of growing old and gray, we will life between the San Francisco Bay Area and our house in the Philippines. Hopefully, later to reside forever in the Philippines and raise our 2.5 children together. Now I’ve really left my heart in the Philippines.




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