The Banner Photo is a picture of me during the quiet years when I wrote my first three books. Writing helped me through times of illness, despair, and the mental decline of my first wife (Nympha).

Loss and Liminality

In 2010 I knew I had taken my last group of students on a trip. My ability to walk was limited and the pain in my hips was becoming unbearable. My departure from teaching was not of my own choosing, though some would say otherwise. During our 2008 trip an incident with Nympha was confusing for the interns and others who did not understand my concern when she disappeared one evening before our departure. For decades I had managed the trauma of her past, knowing she had in her the potential to abandon all that she knew to return to the wildness of her youth; not a return to the bars but to the freedom of being one among the masses in the culture of her origins. We were spending our last evening at Bethel Bible College in Manila prior to our flight for the U.S. She had been texting Marlon who was traveling to Manila to say goodbye to her. We had not taken him with us to Leyte (he was working as a security guard). Nympha could extremely kind and open to others; this made her an easy victim for ill intentioned persons. I had lived with this unpredictable side of her personality so her absence to meet Marlon caused me to raise my voice asking if anyone knew where she was supposed to meet up with Marlon. I was also wondering why he was unable to find the school’s location knowing Nympha had spent most of her life in the U.S. and did not know her way around Manila.