To table and to bed, come as bid
THIS WEEK’S WINNER
MANILA, Philippines - Rosario Patino-Yap, 39, teaches high school English. She recently won second place in the 111th Philippine Civil Service Anniversary (PCSA) Essay Writing contest sponsored by the Civil Service Commission. Reading and writing are her comfort zones.
Love, food and magic all mixed together — elements in a paperback that beckon me to drop everything, curl up, and read. The bookworm in me itches to just immerse myself in my pocket wonderland and let go of cares and worries. But why read paperbacks? Why not enjoy the multi-media feast that a movie offers?
My love affair with books started when I was five years old. I recall how our house smelled of imported books and PX goods. My father had befriended a Peace Corps volunteer who chose to stay with us. Who could forget how “uncle” Douglas Hotchkiss would bring out books — The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, among others — and sit by the window and read his afternoons away. Wanting to impress him, I would get a book and pretend to read. To my chagrin, I was lured into the wonderful world of letters. What started as a game of mimicry soon blossomed into a lifelong love affair with anything printed. There, the love of reading started.
I would read anything my little hands could hold. Every time I was not playing with the kids on the block, my mamang would know where to fish me out. She would find me cocooned inside the folds of a hanging muskitero (as we called mosquito nets then) with a book stuck in my face. Or at times, she would see me with my feet wrapped in that much-loved muskitero with a book in front of me.
With each paperback, there was always something salient and worth remembering. Like lost loves that pass through our lives at one time or another, each book leaves behind something that beckons to me each time I need to write an essay or an oration. It pains me whenever I have to let go of a paperback in order to make space for another one. It’s like saying “so long” to a dear friend who held your hands in the dark.
The long weekend recently gave me ample time to compute my students’ grades, take care of and pamper my love, and catch up on my reading. The respite gave me time to put my feet up — gone is my muskitero of yesteryear — and lose myself as I got reacquainted with Tita, Pedro, Rosaura, and John. Holding the paperback Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel was like being embraced by a long-lost friend.
I first read Esquivel’s novel when I was in college. Back then, I was very idealistic about love and life, thus Like Water for Chocolate was like an istampita that I kept in my schoolbag. And why not? Being able to feel the emotions and pain of Tita, the main character, was balm to my innocent and unloved femininity. I was living vicariously the life of Tita, I was curious about the life and the angst that go with unrequited love. Plus, the novel put together love, food, tradition and a sprinkling of fantasy and magic — sure ingredients for a cannot-put-down paperback.
Reading the novel again opened several doors in the past that I had already relegated to the dustbin of yesteryear. Memories, both happy and painful, came rushing like stemmed water. Just like Tita who concocted sumptuous dishes for her family, every milestone and trial in my family was punctuated by a special dish. How could I forget the first time I cooked dinengdeng ng saluyot leaves and bamboo shoot? The memory of that fateful night remains till now — and it still crushes me. My mother suffered cardiac arrest and was rushed to the hospital and passed away shortly after that.
Just like Tita, I had to learn the ropes of life vis-à-vis the sudden loss. Barely 13, I had to grow up fast. And growing up fast meant learning the ropes in the kitchen and feeding my siblings. Whereas Tita cooked Christmas rolls for her beloved Pedro, I had to experiment on my embutido for my family. Whereas she prepared champandongo for a niece’s baptism, I had to do pacham a la almondigas or “pachambang almondigas.” Her “beans with Chile Tezcucana-style” found a counterpart in my bituelas with pork pata. Her cream fritters were my banana fritters.
Just like Tita, who was submissive and did not know any better but gradually became courageous in expressing her inner fire, I, too, freed myself from the shackles of submissiveness and domestic violence. Like the proverbial Phoenix, I rose from the ashes and picked up the pieces of my life. And I turned over a new leaf, which meant loving myself more, knowing the real me, searching deep within me for the fire that kept me aflame during the hard, hungry years.
“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we cannot strike them all by ourselves. We need oxygen and a candle to help ignite it. The oxygen would come from the breath of a person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights the matches. For a moment, we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live.”
John, one of the book’s characters, succinctly worded the hope and rekindling of the flame that seemed to fade away in Tita’s lonely life. He also gave me one of life’s universal truths: We all have to discover what will set off the fire in us — the explosions in order to live — since the combustion occurs only when the right person ignites it and this person nourishes our soul. If we do not find out in the nick of time what will ignite the powder keg in us, we lose all reason to live. Just like a box of matches that dampens with disuse, not a single match will ever be lighted. The fire in me is lighted — the fire to keep on learning in order to be a more effective teacher, the fire to be more loving to my better half, and the fire to be a better sibling. I guess I am luckier than Tita because I have found the one who ignited my fire without extinguishing my life.
