Ano ka ba naman, hindi ka na nadala?” said my cousin. (What’s with you? You still haven’t learned?) This was her initial reaction when I asked her to write a short prayer that I could use for our 40th ruby anniversary. She was only teasing me, but it sort of got me thinking those guileless thoughts I had discarded ever since I got into the peril, the pageant and the pun — er, fun — of standing pat in one marriage with the same man.
“If you ask me,” volunteered a friend, “the marriage contract should only be valid (and enforceable) for one decade. After that,” she argued, “the spouse (wife gets the first crack) must be allowed to review the provisions of the contract, revise it, attach an addendum or dissolve it.”
“To me,” another amiga butted in, “I’d grab the chance to pack up and go. One is allowed to make a foolish mistake in one rare fit of madness but darn that misstep if you would plunge into the same boiling cauldron again.”
Amused at their take on lampooning the sacrament of marriage, my original maid-of-honor suddenly showed up to drop a piece of paper on my lap. She said, “Goodness, I can’t think of any prayer, but this might help.”
It was a note written by a veteran priest of countless weddings: “When I talk with people who come to me in preparation for marriage, I often say, ‘Weddings are easy; marriages are difficult.’ The couple wants to plan a wedding; I want to plan a marriage. They want to know where the bridesmaids will stand; I want to develop a plan for forgiveness. They want to discuss the music of the wedding; I want to talk about the emotions of the marriage. I can do a wedding in 20 minutes with my eyes shut. A marriage takes year after year after year of alert, wide-eyed attention.”
When I got married, the popular song at that time was Richard and Karen Carpenter’s We’ve Only Just Begun. It was filled with lovey-dovey sentiments, but the lyrics were true if one considered any young couple’s intent to make something out of their covenant. For me, the words, “I want to grow old with you,” was also a classic kick in the head. It helped that we shared a few things in common but even then, it did not prepare us for so many quirks that slowly unfolded as he got to know the real me and vice-versa. That’s where prayers and novenas worked, to St. Joseph (for a good partner in life), to Mama Mary (for a kind, loving husband like St. Joseph), and my guardian angel (for protecting me from scheming men who were masquerading as perfect husband material).
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” the expression goes, and this was how my yaya’s cooking literally came into the picture: On our wedding day, Yaya Rosita insisted on moving in with us. “I want to make sure that this new husband of yours is the right man for you,” she declared. Rosita kept busy by sorting our wedding gifts by category. For example, there were eight ice buckets and 13 sets of sterling flatware. At that time, there was no such thing as a bridal registry, and you couldn’t return or exchange the goods.
My mother-in-law, wanting to indulge her son, the groom, sent a dozen tall glass jars of his favorite fresh durian from Zamboanga, with the meat carefully removed from the pods. It smelled sweet, almost like custard, creamy and fruity. However, every so often, for a millisecond or so, you would get a whiff of something tart and slightly foul and if you weren’t used to it, it smelled worse than hell. Yaya Rosita wrinkled her nose and with a curt twist of her head asked, “What in the world are these?”
When I asked Rosita to cook the leftover lechon from the wedding festivities, she chirped with excitement. Cooking was her forte and she wanted so much to impress the newest member of our family. My husband was instinctively lured into the kitchen. “Ah, Rosita, what are you cooking?” he asked. “Oh, Letty asked me to cook my famous paksiw na lechon,” she replied. Wrinkling his brow, he went up the stairs but quickly turned around and went back down to the kitchen. “Rosita,” he repeated, “it smells familiar and yet it’s not.” Rosita continued stirring the pot: “I’m making paksiw but Zamboangueños sure have a strange way of preparing the lechon sauce; you keep them in glass jars.”
At that point, my husband didn’t know what hit him. Twelve jars of his precious durian were now swimming in vinegar and peppercorns and bay leaves. “I think I’m going to lie down before I collapse,” he feebly whispered.
Rosita turned pale as thick beads of sweat formed on her forehead. “Did I do something wrong? Ano ba?” she asked. You remember how kids spurn any snags or parental groundings by sleeping it off? I’m convinced that was how my husband coped with the loss of his durian, now “pinaksiw” in a pot.
It was in the month of September, “when dreams were kept beside your pillow,” that this fable occurred. I’ve followed the memory with a full heart, a grateful soul, a smile on my face and the scent of fresh, sweet and creamy durian. Oh, dear, I mean, just a whiff of it.