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Memories & Sketches by Cecilia Brainard — Santo Nino de Cebu

August 30, 2021 by admin Leave a Comment

I will be blog­ging my mem­o­ries of Cebu with accom­pa­ny­ing sketch. This first per­son­al essay is about the San­to Nino de Cebu.

These sketch­es are part of the book, Mag­i­cal Years Mem­o­ries & Sketch­es by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, avail­able as a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 100 copies from palh@aol.com. 

~~~

SANTO NINO DE CEBU

Copy­rignt 2021 by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard

I was born and raised in the island of Cebu where my mother’s peo­ple came from. My father and his fam­i­ly came from anoth­er part of the Philippines—the North, Lagu­na specif­i­cal­ly, where peo­ple spoke anoth­er dialect and ate meat and veg­etable dish­es with strong fla­vors.  Lagu­na used to fas­ci­nate me for the sim­ple fact that my father was born and raised there. Oth­er­wise, it looked like any oth­er provin­cial town, with a city hall, old church, and Span­ish colo­nial stone and wood hous­es. I nev­er lived there and only heard sec­ond­hand sto­ries about my father’s fam­i­ly, about how for instance they had owned huge tracks of land which my grand­fa­ther gam­bled away. Lagu­na was a kind of myth­ic place which I didn’t real­ly know.

It is Cebu I know. The very first breath I took was in Cebu. My first words were those spo­ken by Cebuanos. Even though I’d gone on to live in oth­er places in the world, it is as if I car­ry a part of it with­in me always and like­wise I feel as if Cebu has a place for me always.

My moth­er was in the near­by island of Opon for the fies­ta of the Birhen sa Regla (Vir­gin of the Rule), patroness of the place, when her birth pains came. This was in 1947, two and a half years after Lib­er­a­tion. She had to catch the fer­ry to hur­ry to St. Anthony’s Mater­ni­ty Clin­ic in Cebu City. It was Doc­to­ra Ramona Fer­nan­dez who assist­ed her. She had to be sum­moned in the ear­ly morn­ing. On Novem­ber 21, at 8:30 a.m. I was born, the fifth child of my moth­er, although one had died dur­ing wartime and so I grew up with three sib­lings. I was a large baby, almost 10 lbs, but with beriberi, a dis­ease caused by thi­amine defi­cien­cy (B1 specif­i­cal­ly) and char­ac­ter­ized by ede­ma, weak­ness, irri­tabil­i­ty, and more seri­ous issues such as heart prob­lems. I was always told this was because my moth­er was mal­nour­ished dur­ing the War, and I, her baby in her womb, was also malnourished.

Mama turned to the San­to Niño de Cebu, the Child Jesus patron of Cebu, famous for being mirac­u­lous. My moth­er danced her prayer to the San­to Nino so I would live. There in the old stone church, she shuf­fled to the left and to the right, as she prayed: Please mirac­u­lous San­to Nino, save this child. I already lost the boy dur­ing the war, save this lit­tle girl. She lit can­dles; she walked on her knees; she bar­gained with God.

In 1947, two years after end of World War II, my mother’s health was still frag­ile from their harsh war life in Min­danao where my father worked for the guer­ril­la move­ment. She was mal­nour­ished and still had bouts of malar­ia which she con­tract­ed in the hin­ter­land. Her vit­a­min defi­cien­cy, thi­amine in par­tic­u­lar, caused my infan­tile beriberi. Fam­i­ly mem­bers said I had ede­ma and my eyes were rolled up so only the whites could be seen. The symp­toms of beriberi include these plus vom­it­ing, diar­rhea, ill tem­per, weight loss. Unchecked I would have had car­diac and neu­rol­o­gy prob­lems. Put sim­ply I was close to dying, and while dying had become part of their lives from war days, they fought to keep me alive.

Doc­to­ra Fer­nan­dez pumped me full of thi­amine, while my moth­er turned to the San­to Niño of Cebu, the wood­en stat­ue of the Child Jesus, which was said to be mirac­u­lous. Peo­ple told fan­ci­ful sto­ries of how He roamed at night so that in the morn­ing his boots and robe were damp and dirty from his noc­tur­nal walk. But peo­ple pre­ferred talk­ing about the mir­a­cles caused by the San­to Niño: dis­eases con­quered, alco­holism stopped, lone­ly peo­ple find­ing their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, legal dis­putes solved, mon­ey flow­ing in abun­dance, lives saved. Like mine.

The stat­ue had been brought to Cebu by the Por­tuguese nav­i­ga­tor Fer­di­nand Mag­el­lan who led the Span­ish expe­di­tion in 1521.  The image of the Child Jesus was one of his gifts to Rajah Hum­abon and his chief con­sort Hara Huma­may (lat­er chris­tened Jua­na). This first vis­it by the Euro­peans turned out dis­as­trous with Mag­el­lan get­ting killed in the island of Mac­tan and the rest of his crew dri­ven away. But the Spaniards returned in 1565. They attacked and burned the native set­tle­ment. In the midst of the destruc­tion, a pine box with the stat­ue of the San­to Nino was dis­cov­ered. The San­to Nino was intact and this was tak­en as a mirac­u­lous sign. A church was built on the spot where the image was found, and from that time on, peo­ple have always turned to the San­to Nino for help, as my moth­er had.

All through­out my child­hood and even lat­er on as a grown woman vis­it­ing her, my moth­er brought me to the San­to Niño. She and I would stand in line and make our way to the back of the altar, climb some steps, and kiss the base of the stat­ue.  She made me under­stand I owed Him my life, that I was some kind of mir­a­cle. I did not know it but my birth, my sur­vival, was a sign of hope to my par­ents. I sig­naled the sure begin­ning of a new life. A life unlike the one they had led for four years in the jun­gles of Mindanao.

###

For more infor­ma­tion about Mag­i­cal Years: Mem­o­ries & Sketch­es, click here

https://ceciliabrainard.com/book/magical-years-memories-sketches/

Tags: #Philip­pineau­thors #Fil­ipinoau­thors #Fil­ipinowrit­erst #Philip­pinelit­er­a­ture

 

Filed Under: Nonfiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: Cebu, Personal Essay, Santo Nino

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

Please read my full biog­ra­phy here

 

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