restraint

There are days when you feel like a big vessel brimming with tears. As you sit up in bed in the morning you feel waves of it rocking inside you, threatening to spill. You walk with mincing steps, holding everything in--for one quick movement, one sudden jerk, and those tears may start sloshing down at the sides. You dread the moments when people talk to you or smile at you, for you will be forced to smile and talk back. The smile will widen, split your face in half, and everything will come rushing out, leaving nothing but ugly, rubbery folds of skin where your grinning lips and happily flushed cheeks used to be.

(es)chewing the fat

When did the Pinoy custom of greeting someone you haven't seen in quite a while with "Saan ka papunta?" or "Kumain ka na?" get replaced with "Tumaba ka, ah." or "Ang taba mo ngayon."

I've been puzzling over this with my friends P, R, and J for several days already. Two of them came home (for vacation) from studying abroad and the people who've seen them kept on remarking on how they've put on weight. I'm very sure they really traveled back all this way just so they could hear that delightful piece of news.

Last Saturday, I saw someone whom I hadn't seen for several weeks and the first thing she said was, "Taba mo."

I was actually feeling good that day, and thought I looked quite spiffy in the white shirt I was wearing for the first time. And she just managed to ruin my mood with that very thoughtful remark. Okay, maybe she didn't know that I used to have a major problem with my weight and that hearing that I've gotten fat is never welcome. Still, I was pissed, and told her, "Tang**a, kailan pa ba nauso na gawin pambati yan?"

She obviously did not get that she had actually offended me and even added, "Hindi nga, seryoso." And I felt even more terrible. Okay, so she isn't at all ugly, and she is thin. So make me feel like a fat cow, why don't you?

R, when I had asked him several days ago about this social behavior, actually tried coming up with an explanation. He said that it's probabaly a Pinoy way of establishing a feeling of familiarity, closeness, and community. What they're actually trying to say is: Hey, you are my friend and so I say this ugly, mean, horrible, wicked thing (since I don't have enough EQ to be aware that it is potentially offensive) just to let you know that I care enough to actually pay attention when there are changes happening to your body.

However, yesterday, before J and I dropped him and P off at Metrowalk, we again got to talking about it in the car, since R mentioned that people have once again been saying that he's fat. J said that people who say such things are stupid and rude, and I reminded R about what he had told me. He responded, "I just said that to try to make myself feel better."

When they got out of the car, J turned to me and said, "See, it doesn't matter if you try to explain that behavior in fancy words. There's just no accounting for rude and stupid."

Do I Have To?

My interactions with rice have always been tainted with guilt. At the tender age of nine, under the disapproving eyes of my mother and aunts, I would devour one whole bandehado of rice--equivalent to about three cupfuls--on regular meals. When the viand along with the rice was a favorite, like talunang manok or talangka, I could chuck in another cup or two. One of the more famous stories my relatives love trading around the reunion dinner table is of how my mother once tried putting me on a diet. When she brought me to my Lola’s house for our weekly family get-together there, she put the big bandehado of rice all the way to the end of the long narra table—and well away from my reach. Whoever was telling the story would start shaking with laughter as he or she recalled how I looked longingly and with such hunger at that pile of rice after I had finished the half-cup my mother had placed on my plate. It got so bad that a single tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. My lola, when she saw that tear, started cursing everyone at the table for their cruelty—“Hindi na kayo naawa sa bata!”—then she proceeded to grab the bandehado and plonk it right in front of me. No surprise then that I became quite pudgy—and my cousins and friends would often taunt and tease me about it.

The worst of the lot would be the grubby boys of our truck mechanic. And too bad they also happened to be my favorite playmates. Sometimes, since these boys lived just a stone’s throw away, I would go home with them when their mother, a big-haired, gap-toothed woman who looked perpetually pregnant, hollered her “Oy, mekeni!” in a voice like a foghorn. For merienda, Aling Syoneng would often serve us a peculiar sort of lugaw with regular long-grain rice cooked in lots of water and flavored with white sugar. She’d sit at one end of the table and go slugging away on a bottle of pale pilsen while watching us eat. If I stayed long enough I sometimes saw them cook rice and ulam not on a stove, but by using panggatong. One time, when I tried helping by loading some more wood to feed the fire, I lost my balance and burned my leg. When Mother found out how I got the burn, she lectured me on how I shouldn’t impose on the pobre mechanic’s family and how they have little enough to eat without having an extra mouth—mine—to feed. The next time I ate at the boys’ house was several months later. I was served biscuits and coffee at the wake of Aling Syoneng who had died of cirrhosis.

When I was diagnosed as a juvenile diabetic due to obesity and old enough to have an interest in boys as more than just playmates, I went on a strict diet that limited my caalorie intake. That meant going from several cupfuls of rice every meal to a cup or less. I shed a lot of pounds—and wouldn’t stop. When I started looking like a walking pile of fish bones and getting sick almost every month, my mother put a stop to the nonsense and ordered me to eat. I obeyed, but not without feeling like I was doing my body a disservice every time I did so. It was only when I took up running as a P.E. course in UP that I started eating sans the accompanying queasiness from guilt.

As a college dormer in Diliman, I survived on instant noodles and canteen food so I never learned how to cook. It was a different story though, when I went on to stay in UP as a full-time teacher. I had my stomach to appease, I was getting sick of fast food, and I had a boyfriend to impress. Being the staple, rice was top priority. I faced the challenge of cooking with much trepidation, considering that another famous story in our family is how I almost burned our house down by boiling an egg and then promptly forgetting about it. The by-product of that experience was a blackened lump in the middle of a smoking Teflon pot never to be used for cooking again.

My first attempt was a huge letdown. I put in just enough water to cover the rice instead of following the 1:1 ratio and, of course, the grains failed to fluff up and cook completely. With a sudden attack of conscience from knowing how many mouths two gatangs of rice could feed, I sadly threw my failure into the trash.

With all these unpleasant memories, I should’ve given up entirely on rice. But it’s such a pervasive part of our daily lives. What needs to be done is to found fond memories of the vexing grain. Maybe in doing so, I can make peace with it and, eventually, lay all this guilt to rest.

first kiss

My first kiss came from a boy named Valentin. He was standing in line behind me as we waited for our turn to drink from the water fountain beside the school canteen. I had just come from a game of Chinese-garter with my friends and could only think of that first cold mouthful of water going down my parched throat. As I bent down to drink, I felt something soft and dry brushing swiftly against my cheek. Like dried leaves. I didn’t even know what had happened, and it was only when the other people in line started puckering their lips and making kissing motions that I realized Valentin had kissed me. He was just standing at one side with a goofy grin on his face. And then—was it embarrassment? surprise? fear?—whatever it was, it made me grab an empty bottle from one of the soft drink crates and chase him around the school playground with it. Thankfully, I never caught him. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I did. Would I have hit him on the head? Would I have cried? I still don’t know up to now.

eulogy (more than a year later)

The clearest childhood memory I have of Daddy was of the time when we went to Fiesta Carnival, which was, back then, still a hip and happening place in Cubao. I remember wearing an itchy yellow dress and white mary janes and when Daddy introduced me to one of the giant statues there—that of a clown—I started bawling my lungs out since I was terrified of the clown’s huge painted face. But with his usual low laugh and encouragement, I overcame enough of my fear to later on actually sit on the shoulder of that clown for a picture.

My dad was always like that—he pushed, teased, cajoled, encouraged, laughed you into realizing the potential he'd been seeing in you all along. He always believed in his kids—in their intelligence and talents—pretty much because, he always said, “May pagmamanahan kasi.” This confidence in his family and in himself was nothing short of astounding. He believed we could do anything, and so he would always drive us into going beyond our perceived limitations.

This is not to say that Dad was some maniacal slave-driver—he was actually more of the sentimental sort. I remember how every valentine’s day and birthday without fail, a dozen roses would always arrive for mommy (mostly yellow, her favorite), and how he would embrace and kiss us whenever he felt like it, how he took us to the best restaurants, and how he insisted on buying us the best things his money at the moment could buy. He gave each of his children silly pet names—like “Megoy Panghi” and “Pupay”. My mom he always called Darl—short for darling. And we, not just my mom, all felt that indeed we were that—my dad’s darlings.

My dad loved to live. He was completely, absolutely tone deaf but would always compete for the mic in videoke sessions to belt out the most hideous renditions of "My Way", "Bikining Itim", and Julio Iglesias’ "To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before". He didn’t know how to dance but would pull insistently on my mom’s hand to lead her to the dance floor and do the cha-cha. He enjoyed life’s little luxuries—good food in some fancy restaurant, the occasional pleasure trip overseas with mom, high fidelity music from some expensive sound system he had bought. Even after his first stroke, Dad never stopped enjoying what life had to offer. One thing that actually astonished his doctors so much was the speed of his recovery. He could hardly talk and move half his body at the beginning of his illness but he undertook his rehabilitation with single-minded determination and sheer strength of will so that he was able to function normally in no time. Even in his last few weeks, when he was getting extremely weak, he would insist on moving about by himself—unbelieving that there are things he couldn’t possibly do.

I have been talking at length about Daddy and I’m now just finding it so strange to refer to someone like him, whose presence and charm could once fill a whole room, as a “was” instead of an “is”. The past Valentine’s was the first one he wasn’t able to give mommy flowers and that was already jarring enough. Now, I expect it will feel weird to come home every weekend and not see him in his blue swivel chair in front of the TV. I will be sad every time I leave on Sunday evenings and not be able to kiss him goodbye. As the family he left behind, we can grieve, regret, and move on but I am convinced that one thing we will not be able to do is to forget. For as Daddy’s children, we bear his imprint in each of us. Daddy can be seen in Angela’s snub nose and beautiful eyes; in Meg’s small, full lips and child-like grin; in Ernan’s dusky skin and husky, malambing, bolero voice; in Cathy’s cherubic cheeks and slim elegant feet; and as for me—I see Daddy when I look at my finger and toenails, when I find myself pouting in intense concentration, and when I become tigas-ulo and insist on getting my own way. But most of all, I think, I will see my father in me, my siblings, and my mom when we try to be more than what we can be, when we push the envelope, when we relish each second, and when we grab life by the throat and live it to its fullest, as he had done and had taught us to do.

Let us now say goodbye to a man who, at certain points in his life, was to us Chummy, Pare, Ponga, Barbs, Lolo, Tito, Darl, and Daddy.

self-awareness

This is what you are supposed to do. Cut and paste if you decide to participate in the tagging game.

Each player of this game starts off by giving six weird things about themselves. People who get tagged need to write in a blog of their own six weird things as well as state the rules clearly. In the end, you need to choose six people to be tagged and list their names.
After you do that, leave them each a comment letting them know you tagged them and to read your blog.

Six Weird Things About Me!


1. Whenever I'm drinking, my immediate area should always be clean.

Yep, I can't stand it when my drinking area is smelly/messy. Of course, when my friends start getting bored with the conversation, they start throwing used tissue, bottle caps, matchsticks my way for a good laugh. And I just can't help but wipe/throw it all away. I also hate puddles created by sweating beer bottles/glasses. Shite.

2. If someone asks me to share my food with them and I don't get to have the last bite, I feel cheated and unsatisfied.

So unless I tell you (after having consulted myself, of course) that you can finish it all, please leave me that one last bite--even if the only thing left is the size of a toenail clipping.

3. When I'm out with a bunch of people and I'm getting bored with them, I hold a party in my head with the same people present--but with wittier conversation and much more exciting things happening (like doing a cossack dance under the table).

4. I need a bit of "alone time" every day.

Otherwise, I get cranky and unbearable.

5. When a certain type of food becomes my favorite, I'll eat it every day--and then become so sick of it I won't be able to stand to even look at that food (or even its variations) for months.
Ditto for music--I'll play it over and over again until the tune starts coming out of my ears.

6. When you touch my feet, my reflex action is to kick.

It took a lot of convincing (and conditioning) myself to let other people touch them when I got vain enough to want a pedicure.

food for the heart

I wasn’t at all a sickly child. Actually, I was quite brown and robust from playing patintero, sha-to, ta-ching, tex out in the sunshine the whole day with the six dusty little boys of our truck mechanic who lived in a shanty just a few blocks from our house. It was for this reason that being rendered bed-ridden always came as a big, unwelcome surprise for me and moldering in bed while imagining the boys shouting, running, having so much fun outside was the cruelest form of torture. I was a bad patient, and I screamed and sulked through most of the common childhood illnesses that came my way. The only things that made those days of internment bearable were the marvelous gastronomical treats my Tita Loleng always managed to whip up to hasten my recovery.

Tita Loleng is my mother’s older sister and the family maiden aunt. While I was growing up, she had custody over me and my cousins at my lola’s ancestral home in Zapote, Las Piñas during weekends. She had a wide, angular face where a pair of huge, round-framed glasses always sat and short hair that she coiled into numerous curlers every night so that it would poof up the next day. She was strict and very easy with the back of the tsinelas whenever one of us misbehaved. But my cousins and I, and the rest of the family, knew that we were much loved by Tita Loleng. Not the touchy-feely, demonstrative sort, she displayed her affection in a more subtle and satisfying way—through the delicious spread she constantly laid out on the ancestral house’s long narra table and the specially-prepared meals she sent our way when one of us got sick.

My family is a firm believer in the healing ability of good food. Be it the common cold to something as serious as pneumonia, they would immediately hasten to inform the most talented cook in the family so she can send the patient’s favorite food or something she knows will become a favorite once he or she has sampled it. The most delicious food I’d ever tasted always came at a time when I was ill. Chalk it up to Tita Loleng’s culinary talents that she could make a sick family member come up for seconds when it was a meal she had prepared.

When I contracted measles, I remember my Tita Loleng feeding me pospas, which is like the Chinese congee. But the pospas she served me then was custom-made for it had chicken ass in it instead of regular chicken parts like the leg or breast. Tita Loleng knew that this was my favorite part and had seen how often I had scrabbled to get that delectable piece on my plate before my dad, who also liked it, could do so. Tita Loleng’s pospas was flavorful and fragrant, unlike most pospas or lugaw I’ve tasted in carinderias or fast-food chains. The secret is in the garlic, I think. She would first sauté and brown mortar-pounded garlic. The oil, I remember her telling me, holds the imprint of the first thing you fry in it—so you toss in first whichever it is you’d want to be dominant in taste. Once light-toasted brown in color, the garlic is removed and set aside. Then the ginger and onions are sautéed until their smell starts filling your kitchen. For my special pospas, Tita Loleng minced the ginger so I wouldn’t have to maneuver my way around or end up biting large chunks of the bitter root. Then the chicken parts, in my case my beloved chicken ass, are tossed in. The patis comes soon after. The next step is another cooking tip Tita Loleng has passed on to me. This involves covering the pot and allowing the chicken juice (or langsa) to ooze out. She calls this process sangkutsa and this is done so that the gamy taste is removed from the chicken. Once done with sangkutsa, the juices should be allowed to dry out, but not completely or your chicken will burn and stick to the bottom of the pot. Add the malagkit or short-grain, sticky rice, water and chicken broth. Once the rice is cooked, season with salt and pepper and when the pospas has reached the preferred consistency, it is ready to serve. Most people like pospas with calamansi, toyo, and a bit more of patis but I like mine with nothing else but the set-aside toasted garlic and lots of chopped spring onions.

I remember one time when it was Tita Loleng’s turn to get sick. I was in high school then, and was not yet adept in the kitchen since I spent most of my spare time reading historical romances and watching TV. My cousins and I decided to make something for Tita Loleng and I suggested pospas, but made with halaan or clams. We had a grand time of it, even had a skirmish between two cousins that involved two sandoks being wielded as dangerous weapons. In the end, it was probably the proverbial “too many cooks spoiling the broth” but the clams were overcooked and tough, the lugaw had the faint taste of being burnt since someone forgot to stir, and someone else dumped in too much pepper. Shame-faced, we presented our group culinary effort to Tita Loleng who gamely ate a bowlful and asked for another helping. When she was done eating, she lay down on her propped-up pillows and gave us a smile. That smile made me understand why she has always found her happiness in serving us the best food though it meant slaving away for hours in a hot kitchen. It was a smile of appreciation for a good meal, and of joy in knowing that you are loved.