When I was a child, my yaya was Segunda, who hailed from Cuenca, Batangas (where the best maids then came from). I must have been 4 or 5 years old because I was still sleeping in a trundle bed with railings on either side.
Segunda sat on the floor next to me. She told stories of Juan Tamad and sometimes sang to me till I fell asleep. She must have been very homesick, because she often talked about a brother named Igme, and her songs were always sad, like “Ako’y Isang Ibong Sawi.”
The lyrics were so piteous and always made me cry. I would put my hands on yaya’s mouth so she could not continue the song. (It turned out to be a popular kundiman by Juan Buencamino.)
Ako’y isang ibong sawi na hindi makalipad
At sa puso’y may sugat wala pang lumingap
Inabot ng hatinggabi sa madilim na paglipad
Saan kaya ngayon ang aking pugad
Sa mata mo’y may isang langit ng pangarap
Sa puso mo’y mayroon kang pugad ng paglingap
Kung ako’y mamamatay sa kapighatian
Sa puso mo lamang muli akong mabubuhay.
Movie sensation
The years 1935 to 1937 were the Shirley Temple era. A child star of international fame, she sang, danced and acted and was a box-office movie sensation.
My mom, like most mothers then, was crazy about the precocious moppet with blonde ringlets. Mama kept a Shirley Temple album, signed, which I only recently donated to the Ateneo Library of Women’s Studies. It included a signed photograph of Shirley from Hollywood, too.
Many kids were made to look like Shirley by starstruck Filipino mothers. I had to endure curling irons and wear extremely short clothes. There were many Shirley Temple look-alike contests which thankfully my mother was too classy to make me join.
Here is one of Shirley Temple’s signature songs:
‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’
On the good ship, Lollipop, It’s a sweet trip
To the candy shop
Where bonbons play,
On the sunny beach
Of Peppermint Bay
Lemonade stands
Everywhere
Crackerjack bands,
Fill the air,
And there you are,
Happy landing on a chocolate bar.
See the sugar bowl
Do a tootsie roll
In a big bad Devil’s Food cake, If you eat too much,
Oh, oh, you’ll awake,
With a tummy ache.
The first record I heard on our crank-up phonograph was called “Ang Bibingka Kung Lutuin,” sung by Vicente Ocampo, a popular vod-a-vil-iata of the ’30s. I had no idea why my very proper parents owned such a record. Could it have been one of the earliest Tagalog records ever produced (on a thick breakable disc with grooves for the needle)? And, therefore, a collector’s item?
I didn’t have to Google the words (at least of the first part) because I still knew them by heart.
“Ang Bibingka”
Ang bibingka kung lutuin
Ay kaiba sa lahat.
May apoy pa sa ilalim
May apoy pa sa itaas.
Si Nanay at si Tatay
Minsan ay nagkagalit
Ang bibingka daw
Ni nanay ay malagkit.
Ang bibingka kung lutuin…
Shown off
It was the fashion then for parents to make their children perform in the sala for visitors. Either play the piano, recite a poem or dance. I was lousy at all three, and I hated being shown off and looking silly.
One could forget the next line of a poem or make a terrible mistake playing “Fur Elise”—and dance? It was just too ridiculous.
I wasn’t a performer, but nobody ever asked me to draw or write.
Elocution contests were the vogue in schools. The piece that seemed to be the winning-est was the dramatic “Captain, Oh My Captain.” I always clapped like crazy over the winner. At least the nuns were smart enough never to make me compete.
‘Captain, Oh My Captain’
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here, Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
