Two weeks into my post-operation sabbatical in my bucolic barrio of Gulod and I have rediscovered the ultimate joys of being a promdi. Though I have always been a proud promdi at heart, I have been “Manila-nized,†according to my mother. By that she means my sensibilities have been “citified,†“modernized,†“urbanized.†That’s what 19 years of living in Manila has done to me, she says. I always beg to disagree because I always get to go home to Gulod every weekend. But my mother always has her points against me.
For example, I introduced bottled tuyo (dried herring) in olive oil on our dining table instead of the usual halubaybay (another term for tuyo in Gulod) and my mother showed little excitement. She prefers the scaly tuyo she scores from the neighborhood sari-sari store. Once I brought home bottled tinapa (smoked fish) in vegetable oil and I ended up the only one appreciating it. My mother still finds the joy of carefully scrutinizing flesh from tiny bones when she eats her tinapang tunsoy that she gets from the market or from the toothy lady who sells her wares in the paved but narrow street of Gulod.
When I brought my mother for a lunch buffet in a hotel in Makati, she tried dishes that were alien to her but the real joy emanated from her lips and eyes when she burped after feasting on the Filipino food station. When I got her some hazel-nut-chocolate-flavored ice cream on stick (which was then the craze in Manila), she expressed her appreciation of my thoughtfulness but not of the ice cream. “Masyadong matamis. Mas masarap pa rin ang sorbetes sa garaponyera ni Aling Mameng,†she said. I insisted the ice cream brand I brought her was good. She replied with a smile: “Binago na talaga ng Maynila ang panlasa mo.†End of conversation.
Now, two weeks after I “gave birth to a fish,†my mother gladly spoils me at home. From breakfast to dinner, and meriendas in between, my plate and my palate are a smorgasbord of flavors and labors of love. No meal is without matamisin (dessert) — from ginatang bilo-bilo to caramelized camote or sweetened saging na saba.
It feels good to have a mother. It feels good to feel the love of a mother when you most need it. My mother puts it more emphatically: “Kahit anong edad mo o estado sa buhay, hahanapin at hahanapin mo ang Nanay mo. Kahit wala na siya sa mundo.†At almost 70, she tells me that when she is not feeling well or confined in the hospital and cared for by her children, she still wishes she has a mother to take care of her. “Walang papantay sa pagmamahal ng isang ina,†she says.
I have realized that I have been “away†from my family for 19 years. It is too long a time to be away from home. Before this “long vacation,†the longest I stayed home was during the Holy Week break (four days). And on Christmas and New Year’s vacation if the break falls near the weekend.
How I savor waking up to the chirping of birds in Gulod and the cry of the taho and pandesal vendors who roam the street early in the morning. The breeze is cool and sweet, the cure-all to my momentary morning rhinitis I experience in the city. I also get to take my afternoon siesta on my late father’s rocking chair in our terrace. Before I shiver to the almost “wintry†wind — yes, it is still cold in Gulod because of the breeze coming from Laguna de Bay — my mother blankets me with the pashmina I gave her a few years ago. In her vocabulary, the pashmina remains a balabal.
At night, the chimes hanging in the veranda provide my lullaby. I’m beginning to enjoy, too, the “pot-pot†of the siopao vendor who roams the street every night. In the stillness of the night, the aroma of the siopao asado and siopao with mung beans manages to enter my room. The air in Gulod is still clean my olfactory membrane is heightened. Shortly after I clean my surgery wound, I hit the bed. I can only sleep after I take my last med for the day, which my mother gives to me at little before 10 p.m.
I must admit that the first few days of being in Gulod, after my one-week confinement in the hospital, brought me a combined energy of serenity and boredom. Remember that for 19 years, my system had been attuned to the hustle and bustle of the city. Later on, when there was nothing I could do but to walk a short distance from our garden to our backyard, my heart and mind began to see the beautiful things I saw when I was still a child.
The avocado tree my elder brother Gadie planted in the mid-‘70s is still standing proud, robust and budding with young fruits now. My Kuya Ronnie’s roosters, ducks and geese and our Aspins (asong Pinoy) in the backyard live harmoniously, the way I remember how my father took care of his own feathered friends and four-legged pals when I was a child. While I was resting on the hammock under the himbaba-o tree, a flock of blue-bar pigeons gathered before me. Where did they come from? I never knew we had them at our backyard. I almost forgot that my brothers have a penchant for breeding doves.
Every day — and I mean every single day — a friendly neighbor visits me at home bearing a casserole of food. My Kumareng Lucy sends me sinuam na biya (goby fish cooked in gingerly broth with malunggay), ginataang kuhol, tokwa’t baboy and hamonado. Her husband, my Kumpareng Edong, cooks for me sinigang sa bayabas na kanduli that is plump and heavy with roe. Ate Raquel, my elementary classmate, drops a kilo of the very hard to find big ayungin in my house. My mother cooks it sinalab (grilled) style.
Tita Lucy and her daughter and my first cousin May make for me the best adobadong tarapilya that is slightly sweet and slightly salty. (I go super easy on it.) Ate Servie serves me with her yummy niluyahang dumalagang manok. In our barrio, the term we use for tinola is niluyahan. Dumalagang manok is a free-rage native chicken that is a few weeks shy from laying its first eggs.
My Manila-based friend Jan, who also goes home to Cabuyao almost every weekend, sends me a basket of fruits and buco picked from their trees. My friend Mye gives me the best-tasting corned beef with fried garlic on the side. Mr. Uy, a teacher in a nearby public school, drops by with a kaserola of arroz caldo with ginseng and quail eggs.
Glenn, my inaanak sa kasal, and Charice, my inaanak sa binyag, come to the house to feed me home-baked brownies and sing for me my favorite songs.
Every morning, I find freshly harvested vegetables in our kitchen — kalabasa, sitaw, kangkong, kalamismis, kamatis, bawang na mura, patani, bataw, upo, patola among other vegetables in the song Bahay Kubo. They come not from the market. Neighbors give them for free with well wishes for my swift and sweet recovery.
Every day, my friends from the neighborhood visit me, many of whom I have not seen for so long even if we live in the same barrio. No appointments needed unlike in Manila. They just pop in the house and knock on our green gate. We are sincerely happy to see each other. Last Thursday, the Talyadaz (a small group of young gays in Gulod) visited me. They brought me so much joy as they staged an impromptu beauty contest in our garden to entertain me!
On days when I feel the discomfort, my mother’s BFFs Ate Oma, Inang Deleng and Inang Patring keep me company, too, in our humble home. Those three ladies and my mother form a senior citizens group called Quatro Marias. They regale me with their own love stories and other stories of yesteryears. They are very funny, too. But I cannot laugh that much with them for fear that my stitches will be unhinged. Our pealing laughter is pierced by the unique sound produced from a horn blown by the binatog vendor who plies the street at 3 p.m. every day. Binatog is a dish of boiled corn kernels garnished with young shredded young coconut and dashed with a gentle sprinkle of iodized salt. The Quatro Marias and I will have a picnic of binatog in our terrace. The narra tree, whose branches dance to the whiff of the wind in our garden and the happy chimes hanging below the ceiling celebrate with us. It helps that the pedicabs rolling past our house boom with songs like Bikining Itim, Pusong Bato, Pitong Gatang, Roar, Wrecking Ball and Pyramid.
Every day is a happy day for me in Gulod. Every day is a healing day. Finally, I have learned to take it slow.
In two weeks I will go back to Manila. I will go back to the concrete jungle — which is also home to me — with a renewed spirit. I am excited and thankful because the laid-back life Gulod fills me with every day for two weeks now has strengthened my resolute will to get up soon and do the grind again.
I am ready.
(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. I am also on Twitter @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)