Nostalgic Interlude

My first memories took place during the revolution. Sure, most of them run the usual happy childhood gamut like playing on a white sand beach with a friend, but even with that memory I distinctly remember the razorwire fence looming over the proceedings. Most of those earliest memories contain some similar quirk marking where and when I first began to understand the world, be it the seemingly ever-present fence or the ugly cinderblock duplex the military had the outright gall to call housing.

"Welcome to the 17th Surveillance Squadron, San Miguel, NCSP, Republic of the Philippines circa 1985! Home sweet home. Some quick corrections to the pamphlets: We're proud to announce that we no longer have a major rodent problem within the base, however the local cobra population has increased significantly. Also, the Filipino snake-catchers are on strike. So... good luck with that."

"Geckos. You're not afraid of lizards, are you? We strongly recommend you let the geckos in your house do their thing. The geckos normally keep the roaches in check, but if the roaches get large enough they begin actively hunting and devouring the geckos. Yeah, we're not actually too sure why that happens, but conventional poisons don't work on the uber-roaches. When it gets really out of hand (and it will) you'll have to requisition some tetraboric acid from the commissary. I'll leave the paperwork on your kitchen counter. Once again, Welcome."

I don't think the implications of the revolution itself had dawned on me at that age. I was an Air Force brat through and through, and it never occurred to me that my cousins back stateside probably never came across Navy SEALs in their backyard during a dry run base evacuation (yet another happy memory).

My simple understanding of the situation in which I lived was that the "Good Marines" were going to "Get" the "Bad Marines." To this day I still don't know who the "Bad Marines" were. I'm fairly certain my parents were sympathizers with the whole "democratic revolution" thing even while the Reagan administration was putting its chips on the Marcos regime. I guess Mom could have been talking about the New People's Army communist guerrillas, but more likely they went with the whole Good Marine / Bad Marine paradigm because it was easier than saying:

"Daddy can't come home for the next few days or so because the assembled angry masses outside his work have taken issue with some of President Gipper's foreign policies, and, despite the legitimacy of their concerns, if it weren't for the high-powered weaponry daddy's friends have pointed at the rabble they would have probably already ransacked the base and lynched him. Good night, sweet dreams honey."

Still, it wasn't all Bad Marines and revolutions. I remember watching the gorgeous orange and red sunset from my mother's lap as the - somewhat toxic - cane toads hopped up the hill on their nightly trek towards our house. Then there was my pastime of sitting on the windowsill just watching the typhoons roll in from the sea during the monsoon season (Note: Floridians are pussies; hurricanes are easy to weather if the Engineering corps. made your house completely out of cinderblocks and concrete). And who could forget the time I ate a poisonous native flower... well, actually I don't remember that one, but I've been told the base's emergency room was very nice.

Happy childhood memories, all. The geckos were awesome. I might have come back from that tropical hellhole of an island with thinned blood and a slight case of tuberculosis, but I had a happy childhood thanks to the complete inability to understand just how much of a fucked up situation my parents knowingly put me in.

The bitterness came later. Biennial chest X-rays my ass.