Curtains put up today. Two old scalloped blue bedspreads which, when split down middle, make curtains already
edged and hemmed at bottom. Also, with material from local bodega, made curtain to tie to cross beam of roof to cut off a part of bedroom for bathing. Cloth like heavy white canvas, filter cloth used in sugar mill, is the same material supplied each person for sending bedroll to camp.
Windows put up today. Squares of nipa tied to tree branches. No hinges. Windows tied to house with heavy wire. A long pole stuck in hole in base of window and another hole cut in window propped open. To close we simply remove stick, or pole. For half-open window will have to cut other poles to desired lengths.
A tri-motored Jap bomber flew low over camp this morning and few people even glanced up. We have become reconciled to the fact that we shall probably lose our lifetime collections of household effects in this country occupied by enemy troops. We can do nothing in the face of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of armed hordes. Sometimes I feel equally as helpless to prevent the destructive playfulness of my two rip-roaring, orphaned offspring.
When the children are most annoying I wonder if Pearl Buck might not have been right when she said, in effect, that housekeeping is deadening for a woman. Then I recall how Jim and I, while engaged, sat in darkness watching the lights on Manila Bay and timidly agreed that we’d like a family someday. And I remember, too, the morning in Iloilo, at Letty Tyron’s house, and how the three visitors admired Letty’s layette on which she was working. Doug, her husband, was decorating nursery furniture with pink and blue bears, ducks, and rabbits.
At lunch that day I told Jim my mind was made up, | wanted a family at once, for I wanted to be making pretty baby things like the ones I had seen and I wanted Jim to be painting little pink and blue animals on tiny white furniture. How Jim laughed. But he said, “You are the one to say when you want a family. I think we can afford a baby now. Are you sure you want what might be a little duplicate of me?”
We anxiously and happily waited for Beth—named by Jim over my protest at having two by the same name. Before leaving Mission Hospital I asked Dr. Waters how soon I could safely have the second baby as one was not a family. How friends laughed at Jim because he had to go to bed for 24 hours after the strain of my having Beth. Clay was as eagerly awaited as Beth, Jim knew the second would be a boy and he wanted to name him after Jim’s father who died of cancer when Jim was about twelve. Jim’s happiest memories of childhood were of his father. We were shocked to learn that Dr. Waters was going back to the States, on vacation, but were relieved to have the woman missionary doctor take over his duties at the hospital. Dr. Dorothy Chambers had coffee brought to the delivery room early on Sunday morning and she, Jim, and I drank to the new one not yet arrived. Then I went under ether and Jim went to corridor tramping again.