Advertisement
Published: January 13th 2015
Edit Blog Post
Traveling with a man in his nineties is bound to come with a few responsibilities. I haven't spent much time specifically tending to the needs of the elderly before but I've always felt like an old soul at heart and feel pretty comfortable around especially mature company. My Grandpa seems relatively low-maintenance; I don't have to help him with any specific medications or health issues, he moves around on his own (though I may walk below him up and down stairs just in case), his wits are still about him aside from the understandable tendency to leave something behind on occasion (which, indeed, is something people of all ages might struggle with), and when he does forget his cane by mistake I think it can be counted as a blessing that he walks so well that forgetting a cane is within the realm of possibility.
I woke up on the last real day of the trip and decided to let him sleep as long as he wished, since we'd had a big day before. So I showered, went to breakfast, came back to the room and did a couple emails, then turned to writing the blog that I meant to
finish the night before. At 11am Grandpa finally woke up, apparently glad for my having let him sleep and ready to order in a bit of breakfast. Besides my blog, which took more than an hour by the time I sorted out pictures and the like, a few other matters needed to be attended to--a package we expected to be delivered, a couple phone calls to make. Since our layover the following day would be in Tokyo Grandpa wanted to try to meet briefly with a friend of his. Ichiro Ito was, as Grandpa explained it, a Kamikaze pilot who, lucky for him, never got his plane. It's one of my favorite things to tell about my Grandpa that after fighting such a brutal war against the Japanese and killing some two dozen of them personally, only a handful of years later he began forming business partnerships and friendships with people in Japan. One such man gave him a couple beautiful paintings, which have been passed down and are now hung proudly on the wall in my apartment. Sometimes I've displayed it in conjunction with a money pouch he ripped off a dead soldier, for added meaning.
Sadly, Mr.
Ito's phone number was not to be found. It was in none of the books Grandpa had brought with him, though he did have an address. We may have possibly found a number for the correct building. I tried making an international call from our room to see if we could make contact. An operator patched us through to a young lady with a very, very high pitched voice speaking rapid Japanese to this strange American calling from the Philippines who only spoke English. With the operator's help translating we determined that the young lady worked for a grocery store of some sort and, unfortunately, did not know Mr. Ito.
Finally, we were at a point where we could begin planning for some sort of site-seeing. Nothing had been arranged in advance so it was up to me to figure out what a 90-year-old WWII vet and his grandson could enjoy together. Should we tour the walled city of Intramuros? Too much walking. A bus tour might have been ideal but it was too late in the day to catch one. Should we find a good shopping mall? Does Manila even have shopping malls, as Americans conceive them? I
finally thought a dinner cruise might be nice. Our concierge helped us make calls to a local company. The first option was sold out, but we eventually found another. By now it was about 4:30pm and we needed to leave right away for the tour.
Site-seeing, then, ended up being pretty limited for the day. Nevertheless, the dinner cruise did turn out to be a good choice; we got some beautiful sights of the city from Manila Bay, had a decent meal, listened to a local Filipino give his best impression of Frank Sinatra, and mostly enjoyed each others' company. Grandpa enjoyed people watching; some of the locals celebrated birthdays and the like on the cruise, dancing and laughing and having a great time of their own. I managed to hear a few stories from him that he'd not told before--some of them not even related to the war. There was even a firework display that took place during one part of the evening. Sitting on the deck of that ship, watching the sunset as bright, southern-hemisphere stars that I'd never seen before began to peak out of from behind the darkening blue veil, and sharing a hearty laugh
with my Grandpa will be one of the trip highlights in my memory.
We did manage to find a large gift shop on the way back to the hotel. I picked up some chocolates with mangos and a few other trinkets to share with friends and family. Grandpa got a nice hand-carved wood cane with inlaid mother of pearl. We ended the evening with a couple Manhattans in the hotel's lounge, and with me plunking out the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 101 on an unfortunately out of tune piano in their bar area. Still, a great time my Grandpa and I were both thankful for.
One side note on music in the Philippines: I was impressed by the significance that it clearly had in the lives of the people there. I don't just mean in the sense that they played the radio or listened a lot. The piano in the bar that I mentioned above was not the only piano in the hotel but it was the only one that was not already in use at the time. Through much of each day, it seemed, pianists had been hired to come in and play in the lobby
where another, better piano was in place. When we returned from the cruise there was a six-piece ensemble performing some pleasant, light music of some sort with which I was not familiar. I recall also during the Lingayen visit the day before that, whatever part of the town one was in, at any given time, if I listened closely enough I could hear someone in the village singing. Karaoke wasn't just a night-time joke to take place in bars on the weekends; it was the accompaniment to the song of their day-to-day lives.
For a while I'd been reading Grandpa's book Commissioned in Battle for the second time as he read a book that I'd recommended to him--Mere Christianity. I think we both enjoyed our reading. When our conversation resumed on the plane the next day I realized the one disadvantage of first class international travel; the compartments are built in such a way that, when one is sitting back in their seat, there is a barrier between them and the person next to them and, especially when speaking to one hard of hearing, the two must lean over to have face to face conversation. Grandpa remarked at one point how good the food was on this plane, especially with such attractive servers (one of whom was present). It's funny for me to consider it now but maybe it was then that I realized for the first time how profoundly similar my Grandpa and I are. Despite the fact that his life highlight was a war, despite the fact that he spent much of his life as a competitive sportsman, enjoying and excelling in countless "manly" enterprises, he is, in my opinion, a man who is guided in his core by a sense of compassion and a love for the beautiful. It was this compassion that allowed him to form friendships with former enemies. It was this love that called him to the woods, drawn by the beauty of trees and birds and all else. At one point during our flight I told him about how I'd read a biography of Beethoven recently that includes many accounts by his friends of visits and days they'd spent together. All of them say the same thing about Beethoven--that he was the greatest lover of nature that they'd ever known, taking such time to examine every plant and every little creature they came across. I could see in the way that this lit his eyes that this resonated deeply with him, "I'd never heard that...no wonder his music is so great." I can't help but agree.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0428s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Josevich
Josevich
a lovely read
I like your writing style. Very eloquent and sober. It's always interesting to read about one's hometown from a foreigners perspective. I never got to travel with my grandpa and never would as we were not close. It's so refreshing to read about a grandson-grandpa travel account as I've never read one like it before :-)