The Christmas table

During the holidays I’m the cook and baker in the family. Among my most requested dishes and desserts are callos, paella, lengua con setas, chicken salad, fruit salad, cathedral window jelly, lemon torte and food for the gods.

Pre-COVID pandemic I prepared meals for Noche Buena and then Christmas lunch for up to 40 people, mostly relatives.

The lengua was mainly for my partner, who ate it for Noche Buena and then hoarded the remaining slices for himself alone, to be slowly consumed throughout the week until New Year, when he would eat anything I prepared – usually Chinese dishes like pata tim and glass noodles with Chinese-style stewed pork leg, for good luck and long life.

He liked ox tongue that’s tender but with some bite left in it – a balance I had perfected through proper boiling time. The best tongue used to come from New Zealand, but these days Tagaytay produces high-quality beef and ox tongue.

Apart from the slices of ox tongue, my partner would sneak a few pieces of food for the gods into a bag that he would hang in his closet, away from my sight lest I remind him of his blood sugar level and confiscate the sweets.

His contribution to the holiday spread were most of the 13 types of round fruits that my mother put in a bilao or winnowing basket for the New Year.

For Noche Buena, my mother was content to have just the chicken potato salad, which I learned to make from her. It’s insanely good, along with the one for the equally delectable fruit salad, which I also learned from her. But I can’t share an exact recipe because I put everything together mainly based on my recollection of the flavors of my childhood.

I’m luckier in this regard. Mama and her siblings say their mother was a terrific cook (most Chinese are), even making her own chocolate by hand. But she didn’t like a noisy kitchen and shooed away her children, so they never learned the secrets of her cooking.

This year, for just the second time in my life, I didn’t have Noche Buena. My partner left this world at the height of the pandemic, and my mother falls asleep at around 8 p.m. For decades I shared Noche Buena with the two of them. Now that this is no longer possible, I have no one with which to share Christmas Eve meal. My household companions always have their Christmas Eve party in another house where they can enjoy karaoke at full volume.

My mother still has a good appetite and sampled my five-cheese lasagna at Christmas lunch yesterday – she loves cheese, like me. But she is now wheelchair-bound and calls me “mommy,” and she thinks we’re teasing her when we tell her she’s 90 years old. She still knows her full name including her maiden name, but she no longer remembers how many children she has.

Just a year ago, she could still enjoy hot pot at Haidilao and join the waiters as they sang and danced to a lively Happy Birthday.

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This is also the second year that I’m forgoing the offering of 13 fruits for the New Year. I lost faith in good luck traditions and charms after my partner died while I was wearing what I believed was my luckiest housedress featuring dragons, in hopes that it would contribute to his survival. The housedress promptly went into the trashcan.

But I still made chicken salad for yesterday’s Christmas lunch, because my mother and relatives enjoy it. The lunch crowd itself has dwindled in recent years, with relatives gone for good, incapacitated, resettled abroad or no longer interested in extended family gatherings. The lechon has become oversized for the much-reduced crowd, but that didn’t stop us from pigging out.

Despite the permanent absence of my partner and the absence of the full consciousness of my mother, the house is still decked out in Christmas décor, with a Christmas tree nearly up to the ceiling and dancing lights and lanterns outdoors.

The Christmas tree was decorated by my house companions and two of the three children of my mom’s caregiver, aged three months, two and four years.

Christmas is truly for children; the kids oohed as the lights were switched on around the Christmas tree and outdoors, and they aahed as they tore into the wrapping of their gifts, from me and the rest of the household. They loved the ice cream but not the adult dishes.

They fill the emptiness left by the dearly departed and those who have lost their memories in this season of joy.

Someday when they’re all grown up, and possibly even earlier, they will also go their own way. Will there be others who will take their place in bringing Christmas cheer?

Life goes on. Too often, we cherish the simple moments of togetherness only when all we have left of our loved ones are memories.

One day my mother will regain hers. Soon after, we will be together again, and she will recognize me, and remember how she taught me how to make decadent chicken and fruit salads.