I’ve been looking forward to (and sometimes dreading) my return to teaching after maternity leave. It’s so exciting to get that part of my identity back, but it feels like getting a new job after I’ve been spending so much time learning how to be a mom. Becoming a mom has strengthened and subtly changed my relationship with my own mom. For instance, she recently shared a story about how she left the Philippines to start work at the World Bank. The story was for her baby apo (how you say grandson in Tagalog), but it meant a lot to me too.
She sent these two pictures from January 1971, when she flew to the U.S. with two other women also starting jobs at the World Bank from a group of eight who were recruited from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). She had no idea at all where I was going except the knowledge that she was going to work at the World Bank. Since she was traveling with two friends she just went with the flow. The picture on the left is from her airport sendoff with family (she’s in the fabulous ’70s yellow/orange/green outfit). The other picture was from a stopover in Hong Kong, which was followed by San Francisco, L.A., and then Disneyland. In L.A., she marveled at the amazing things she had never seen before. She had a very enjoyable time because all expenses were paid by the Bank (she had left home with only about $100 in pocket money). On January 31, she and her friends flew to Dulles airport and were met by a World Bank car and driver. They stayed at the YMCA on 16th Street for about four days until they found an apartment where two other ADB girls lived (at 2430 Pennsylvania Ave NW).
Her first day of work was February 1 (I find that symbolic because of today’s date). She recalled being very sleepy at 5 p.m. during orientation and pinching her arm to keep herself awake. She didn’t know what fate awaited her in D.C…only that a certain Florido Buenafe lived on the same apartment floor as her and her roommate Cora. And the rest was history (helped along by my dad trying to woo her by bringing her a watermelon and sabotaging any would-be suitors by telling them that she moved away 🙂
