Children

Khristinn and Kriscia

Linda and Red had two children: Khristinn and Kriscia. They came to Sydney with Linda in 1988 and continued their schooling. In 1991 they became Australian Citizens, along with their mother.

Kriscia graduated from the New South Wales University with a BA (English) in 2000. In 2001 she moved back to Manila to be with Carlo Tapia (her childhood sweetheart), and worked there as a freelance writer. In 2002 Kriscia and Carlo married in Davao. Sabine Isabel was born in Sydney in 2003, and in 2005 they all moved back to Australia.

Khristinn was not ready for tertiary studies after high school, and instead took employment in a large duty-free chain. It was here she was courted by Nestor Palma. They married in 2003 in Parramatta, Sydney, and Gabriela Ynez was born in 2004. Khristinn felt the call of learning again, and enrolled at Monash University aiming for a degree in Psychology. This was interrupted when she separated from Nestor in 2007.

See the family tree for more details.

Khristinn on Kriscia:

When we were growing up, Kriscia was like my shadow. She wanted to do the same things I did, Mama dressed us in the same outfits (but in different colours). We shared everything from toys to luggage space to food. When she started going to my school, I was a bit embarrassed by her because she would often come up to me “ate” this, “ate” that, “that’s my Ate” to her little school friends.

Her favourite afternoon snack (when she was in primary school) was canned sardines and rice. She would have that at the safehouse. She was like the safehouse mascot…guys from the Marines would babysit her.

We didn’t have a ‘regular’ childhood. We played at the safehouse, guns and other artillery were just part of the furniture for us. We lived in an airbase and then a military camp. When the country (or our Papa) was in trouble, we would get whisked off to somewhere and we were told to not ask questions or to talk to other people about it. We spent some weekends at the firing range where we fired our Papa’s guns (supervised, of course). We spent one whole summer at the Philippine Military Academy and used the gym facilities for fun ( sometimes during the class PE sessions). We learned how to play charades from a couple of Marines guys.

Kriscia’s school friend was Aimee Marcos. Funny thing…Kris Aquino (Cory Aquino’s youngest) went to the same school, so did Gringo Honasan’s sister Alya. Parent-teacher nights were interesting!

Kriscia on Khristinn:

Corny as it sounds, my sister is my best friend.  As children, we fought like “cats and dogs” (as one aunt put it), but later became great allies, with Mama as our Commander in Chief.  The three of us made a great team, particularly within those initial hazy years of our migration.  I believe those years cemented our place in each other’s lives in a way that only single-parenting in Auburn can.

Ate was always the artistic one.  I remember falling asleep to her singing and playing the guitar (self-taught) in our bedroom in Auburn and later, Lidcombe.  She loved the Beatles and once covered our white wardrobe door with a full size sketch of John Lennon.  (She later told me it wasn’t Lennon, but I always thought it was.)  That was just one of her many art works – others worth mentioning are the mixed media and pencils sketch (in the Naïve-style) she did of Tatay’s funeral, and her crazy-hair self portrait in pencil.

Later on she would release an EP, a beautiful child, and soon an essay on the Attachment Theory.

I was and still am a big fan of Ate’s.  We grew up together in unusual circumstances, surrounded by extraordinary people with Forest-Gump-like abilities to be celebs.  Maybe one day we will be famous too?  Until then, we will go for walks or stay up all night talking about what we noticed about ourselves and our kids.  We continue to be great allies and each other’s Dr. Phil.

Fact is stranger than fiction

When Kriscia was about 7, she befriended one of her class-mates who was being teased by the other children. Her name was Aimee Marcos, and she was the daughter of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.

They became good friends and would “hang out” together at school. One day Linda received a call at work  from the maid to ask if it was OK for Kriscia to go to a birthday party. When the maid said the invitation was from the Presidential Palace Linda panicked and immediately left work to buy clothes for Kriscia to wear.

Kriscia and Khristinn would often go to the palace for a swim. Kriscia recalls that their home would fit inside Aimee ’s bedroom, and her toys were something to behold. Despite this, Aimee would spend time at Kriscia’s home. She would arrive with an entourage of bodyguards and nurse who would wait outside while Aimee was inside playing with Kriscia.

All this was happening while Red was plotting the overthrow of Marcos, and EDSA was only about one year away. Once, Red came home to see Aimee’s bodyguards outside, and thought that his plans had been uncovered. He circled the house for ages before satisfying himself that everything was OK.

Later, Kriscia became an unwitting accomplice to the coup. Red would play games with her involving drawing the houses of her friends. Gradually he led her to draw a plan of the residential quarters of the palace. Gringo Honasan and Red later commented that it was quite accurate.

Kriscia’s memories of the euphoria of overthrowing the dictator are tempered by the memory of losing a close childhood friend.