By Lizzie Radam Lazo | Special to the BusinessMirror
IMA has made a deal with her first-born, Daughter No. 1. She would live to 100 years old and, therefore, be entitled to the P100,000 given out by the government to centenarians. She likes the idea the government rewards elderly people for taking care of themselves so that they get to celebrate their 100th birthday.
Ima, baptized Socorro Valencia, was born in Tondo, Manila, on January 21, 1924. She turns 93 today. Her seven surviving children—six daughters and one son—are fervently praying she lives up to her promise.
Ima, or Curing to her late husband Col. Julio C. Radam, to parents, siblings, relatives and friends, was the youngest of nine children of Rodrigo Valencia and Isabel Cortez, of Santa Rita and San Fernando, Pampanga, respectively. Ima and Julio had given life to nine of their own children, but they are now minus two. Daughter No. 4, Felicitas, was taken away by pancreatic cancer before reaching 50. The youngest, Manuel, now known as a “special child”, was lost to bronchopneumonia at age 9.
These days, she lives at the ancestral home in Sampaloc, Manila, a house built by her father shortly before he died in 1962. She lives by herself, a widow for more than two years now. But not entirely alone, because there is a grandson she raised from infancy who lives with and cares for her. A daughter, Child No. 8 who has settled down in Davao City, is frequently with her, too, being an economist who must do some work for the current Davao-originated administration.
It is her big regret she has no spinster-daughter. Every time one daughter married, she would complain, “They have stolen a flower again from my garden.”
Now she often laments, “So life is this way. Although you have given birth to many children, eventually, you will be alone.”
Her daughters, who have set up their own homes in various places—one in Cebu, another in Davao, one in Toronto, Canada, and the first-born in Makati—frequently asked her to come live with them. But no, she wouldn’t have that.
“You think I can stand living with your husbands? Humph,” she’d retort. She’s a classic example of moms who are convinced no one can be good enough for their daughters (or sons).
Not only that. She cannot leave the home she inherited from her father, Ingkong Digo. After all, it is filled with a lot of things that bring back memories of the past years: The huge sepia-tone portrait of the family bordered by an antique frame, showing her as a child of about 5 years old with her siblings and parents; glass-encased cabinets, also of antique design, holding her husband’s military caps; some toys of her children from those far-off childhood years; ornamental figurines, plates and other houseware from long-ago years she cherished.
Ima is happiest when she recalls what is known as the “peacetime” years before World War II. The way she and others of the same generation describe those years, they were the most idyllic period in Philippine history.
Growing into teenhood in early- 1930s, she remembers how peaceful and safe Tondo was—her birthplace in Manila—how gracious and mannerly the boys and the girls of those years were, how the more affluent families did not keep distance from those less than rich. (Very much unlike today, where a huge wedge keeps the very few super rich from the very many super poor).
Peacetime for Ima was being loved and cherished by her parents Tatang and Inda, and her older siblings, various koyang and achi as she was the youngest in the brood of nine (only seven lived to adulthood, two having died as little girls). In particular, peacetime was basking in the affection of her idolized Koyang Titong, the youngest of the boys and four years older than she, with Dolores, the eighth and next youngest, between them.
Koyang Titong, Cadet Fausto Valencia of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class of 1940, had a lot of big dreams for her. One of these was to enroll her at the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music after his graduation. The two of them both loved to sing and would often join their voices in a duet of the popular tunes of the 1930s. They both were musically talented, their friends would agree.
Peacetime was when she danced in a school program at Balagtas Elementary School, also in Tondo, as “Raindrop”. For this, her mother Inda, named Sabel, made a long straight gown for her, which was plastered all over with tinfoil.
“My elder brothers, Koyang Estong [Ernesto] and Koyang Titong, helped your Apo [lola] make the tinfoil-covered gown. She was so tired, spent the whole night doing that. Only my brother Koyang Estong watched me onstage,” Ima would tell her daughters. She cannot remember the music she and other pupils danced to, but it was a classical tune.
Unknown to her then, another fond brother, Titong, watched her from the branch of a nearby mango tree.
“There were so many people in the school grounds, he could not come in,” she recalled.
And then, as she arrived home still in her costume, she heard her siblings cheering as she walked in, “Here comes the raindrop, here comes the raindrop.”
Her beauty and fine behavior endeared her to her teachers in her elementary school and Arellano High School. Although at about third-year high school, she was transferred by Koyang Titong to Far Eastern University Girls’ High, they would often request her to return to her old school to help with activities.
One was when her teachers at Arellano High asked her to join a school activity for which they needed her to reign as Miss NEPA Day (for National Economic Protectionism Association, a (non-governmental organization). “For this, your lola made me a Maria Clara skirt striped red and black.”
Peacetime was also the time when she sang a kundiman at the Metropolitan Theater. The eldest brother Arsenio, who would become Dr. Arsenio Valencia the dentist, had as a good friend an aspiring music composer from Angono, Lucio San Pedro (later to become a National Artist for Music). He once had a piano composition he wanted to present in a show and Arsenio volunteered his sister Curing as singer.
“I sang ‘Madaling Araw’ at the Metropolitan Theater, with Lucio San Pedro as the pianist. The stage was huge and it was overwhelming,” she recalled.
“Weren’t you nervous before such an audience?” we asked.
“Of course, I was, but I had lots of practice with a singing family near our home in Magdalena and that gave me confidence,” Ima said.
She never got to have a music education as her Koyang Titong dreamed for her. The outbreak of the war ended those dreams and Fausto would later die in the fighting in Bataan.
Ima recalled going to Capas, Tarlac, to look for her brother in the prisoners-of-war camps, but her search was in vain. They would never even find his remains, but Lieutenant Valencia’s parents would later receive a letter from the military authorities acknowledging he was among the first batch of soldiers deployed, he and the other fresh graduates of the PMA.
The end of World War II unsettled all the old values that sustained the gracious living Filipinos enjoyed during peacetime, but for Ima and some of her fellow survivors from that period, memories of the good days continue to strengthen their spirit.
That is a consolation and a source of joy in these sorry days.