Old Photographs — Baby Pictures of Cecilia Brainard

One shows me on the bed; this pho­to is in very poor con­di­tion (it looks almost like some kind of art). The oth­er shows my sib­lings and me the baby. L‑R: Vicky hold­ing me, Ana hold­ing a doll, and Junior or Jess hold­ing a Brown­ie cam­era. In the back, you can catch a glimpse of my father’s Buick.

This pho­to was tak­en in 1947 (yes, so long ago!), and the Philip­pines was still recov­er­ing from World War II. My par­ents and three sib­lings were in Min­danao for most of the war years; Papa was in the guer­ril­la move­ment. When war end­ed, and because Mani­la was almost total­ly destroyed, my father’s house includ­ed, they decid­ed to rebuild in Cebu, where Mama’s fam­i­ly comes from. In this pho­to, we were still stay­ing in a tem­po­rary house in Tal­isay and Papa must have been build­ing our house near the Capitolio.