Ana Stricoff:  

UPDATE ON MY LIFE For the past 32 years, I have been married to Scott (aka TheBuBuBunny.) I have been blessed with a good husband. He adores me and spoils me rotten. We are very fortunate to have two wonderful children who have strong values, work hard, and have good hearts. They also happen to be gorgeous and intelligent to boot! Jessica (25) is married; she and her husband bought a house last year and they live about 15 minutes away from us; she has a good job as a software developer. David (24) received a master's degree in religion in the UK two years ago. The irony is that the boy is a heathen! (You can tell right away he's my biological son! Jessica was adopted from Korea.) David returned and lived at home for six months and then ran away from home! He lives about 10 minutes away. He is currently handsomely employed as an editor; after two years of work experience, he is thinking of getting an MBA. I am dying for grandbabies but I have to wait. All I have now are grandcats!!!! Boston has been our long-time home, although we did move to Santa Barbara several years ago and lived there for eight years. St. Babs was gorgeous but I was bored silly. When the kids came back east for college, we decided to move back to Boston. Scott now commutes to California where he is president of a consulting company. I stopped working several years ago and for a while was a juvenile delinquent and proud of it! Until several months ago, my days were spent playing online scrabble and bridge, and singlehandedly upholding the US economy by shopping on eBay. For a year I volunteered as an ESL tutor but since then have regressed to juvenile delinquency. Last year I also worked my tushy off to get a scholarship in my classmate¿s memory endowed at my alma mater, Maryknoll College in the Philippines. I was the sole fundraiser and am proud that I not only reached the endowment goal but surpassed it handily. One delightful benefit from this labor of love is that I reconnected with old classmates. My mother, Lucy, passed away seven years ago. She is sorely missed. Below is her eulogy which I wrote. LUCY TIZON FIGUERAS My mother, Lucy, was born in Shanghai, China, on 3 July 1919. As a little girl, she was taught by the Loretto nuns in a school where she was noted for her mischievousness and high spirits. She was also a feisty kid who could not tolerate bullies and was always ready and willing to punch out anyone who was mean to her friends. She spent a fair amount of time in detention arguing with her teachers that it was better to fight injustice than to turn the other cheek. When she was in her late teens, her father took the entire family to Europe for an extended vacation. While in Paris for the World¿s Fair, dressed in her Chinese cheongsam of Wallis blue, she was strolling along the banks of the Seine when suddenly a commotion ensued, with gendarmes proclaiming ¿Le Roi de Belgique!¿ ¿Le Roi de Belgique!¿ Caught up in the melee, she somehow found herself face to face with a handsome man dressed in riding clothes (whom she later described as resembling the actor Christopher Plummer.) The stranger bowed to her and she curtsied in return. And that¿s how Mummy met King Leopold of Belgium. Mummy reveled in the re-telling of this story. Mummy married my father, Jose Oriol Figueras, who was a Catalonian from Barcelona, Spain. Papa¿s family had supported the losing side in the Spanish Civil War and they decided to start life anew in the Orient. My parents soon found themselves enmeshed in the turmoil of warfare: World War II, the Japanese Occupation, and the Communist takeover of China. When Mussolini¿s son-in-law, Count Ciano, was in Shanghai, Jews who were classified as ¿displaced people¿ were especially desperate to immigrate but were unable to do so since they lacked passports. Mummy happened to play high-stakes poker regularly with some ambassadors from the Latin and South American countries. Since she regarded herself as the Potentate of Poker, she occasionally persuaded these diplomats to settle their gambling losses with passports, which she in turn gave to her Jewish friends. Not only did Mummy still champion the underdog, but she did so in a resourceful manner. We lived under the Communist regime for about a year before we were able to leave as foreign refugees since my father was a Spanish citizen. We made the long, harrowing, and arduous journey by train to a designated seaport, with aerial dogfights peppering the air overhead. In the midst of the chaos, Mummy managed to cajole a young Communist soldier into purchasing smoked duck for her from the train station vendors while my jittery father stood by, sweating bullets and remonstrating with my mother. Our early years in Manila, Philippines, were difficult. We first lived in a settlement house and slowly began re-building our lives. Mummy and Daddy took whatever jobs they could find, with Mummy walking for miles in her stiletto heels since she couldn¿t afford bus fare; but all the while I still had my ballet lessons. Little by little our lives improved. We were comfortable financially and Mummy spent her days taking care of us, running the house, playing mahjong, and traveling extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. The eldest of six, she helped her family purchase a house in Colorado and she financed the college education of her only brother. Then Papa died. Mummy tried to run the business herself, but gave up after a year. This was the woman who had never balanced a checkbook, whose cook re-sold her own groceries back to her, and whose chauffeur was repeatedly given money to replace twelve tires and three transmissions on one car within one year. So here was Mummy, widowed at forty, with a twelve-year-old daughter, with almost all her financial resources depleted, and without any business skills. This is the part of the story where Mummy would always tell me to hush when I recounted to people Mummy¿s sensible albeit unorthodox solution for survival. Mummy regarded herself as ...Expand for more