Rain, food, books and work

Today's weather was not an improvement on yesterday's. We woke up to ceaseless wind, rain and fog. At least, I did wake up ahead of everyone else in our small household; Rolly, who is usually an early riser, got up reluctantly at 9:30 a.m.

Nobody was in the mood to cook although we were all famished and wished for hot soup, arroz caldo, fried rice and tuyo--you know, rainy weather fare. But who was gonna prepare them?

Not I, said this housewife who has never gotten the hang of running a house. I had too much writing and editing work, chief of which was a book manuscript, on my plate, and deadlines were a pitiless lot.

So I said, I'm treating everyone to lunch at HOY (short for House of Yolo Yogurt) on Marcos Highway, a few minutes drive away from our place. Rolly couldn't be parted from his bed and blanket so Kimi, Kai and I dressed warmly and each carried an umbrella to the car.

I told Kimi to drive carefully through the zero-visibility fog, fearing she might bump into a stray dog or a human. We reached HOY without incident. Hardly had we sat, then the place began to fill up despite it being way past the lunch hour. Then we realized today was a holiday--Eid Mubarak!

Hot choco for my grandchild Kai

Daing na bangus with red mountain rice and fried eggs

Booboo Babeth looking ghostly amid the thick fog. Photo by Kai

Kai back in the warmth of Rolly Fernandez's room/library. Photo by Babeth

I settled for my favorite daing na bangus with mountain rice and two well-done fried eggs. Kimi had the bulalo which was for sharing. Kai had a little of my viand and her mother's, paired with a cup of rice and another cup of hot choco.

While Kimi was driving home through the zigzag road, I told her to slow down because I had a very full tummy and didn't want to throw up.

We brought home takeaway food (sirloin tapa with rice and sunny side up eggs) for Rolly. In all, it was a blessed day, the weather notwithstanding.

April showers, finally

Image sent by Carmencita Sipin Aspiras

In the part of Baguio where we live (15 minutes away from the central business district without traffic), we have been experiencing daily afternoon rains, including one heck of a thunderstorm, since April 15. We, the home-bound family members, could almost hear the plants and trees going glug glug glug as they soak in and store the water. The rains last, like the trip to our neighborhood to and from town, 15 minutes tops, enough to cool the air for Baguio has also been feeling the stifling humid air that lowlanders complain about.

I received a lot of encouraging feedback from blog readers about my April 12 entry here about watching our grandchild and the garden grow. Psychologist Yoya Bulatao, who I finally met at a Fully Booked writing workshop that Neni Sta. Romana Cruz and daugher Aina organized over a year ago, cited my grandchild Kai as "the most interesting flower of all."

Pianist Carmencita Sipin Aspiras wrote from far California, which has not been spared of drought, and shared the above photo that warms me to the tip of my toes as I like to write with feet unshod. She wrote: "What a refreshing topic! And so apt for Spring. Lucky Kai will blossom into a beautiful person as she is nourished by your and Rolly's love in the form of a lovely garden." The image she sent me looks like an illustrated cross-stitched quotation.

Thank you, Heavenly Gardener, for listening to our pleas for rain.

Watching them grow

These days, our Not So Wee One Anymore, a.k.a. Kai, often refuses to smile for or look at the camera. "That is not polite," she says with an accompanying "Hmmmph!" And then she stomps her foot like a Baguio version of the Queen of Hearts, and I can almost hear her imaginary soldiers marching towards me to take off my head.

On my visits to Baguio, I like taking pictures of how my husband Rolly's garden, dedicated to our grandchild, is developing. Yes, developing like the person to whom it is being tended for. Scanning my files, I saw how they (Kai, Rolly and the once secret garden) have grown, too, in years. It's the spot of paradise we are proud of in our home where the grandpa can be found as soon as the sun is up, picking up dried leaves or snipping branches here and there with his pruning scissors or bare hands (careful there!). Grandchild offers to water the plants or just walk around, acting as my spotter and telling me what closeup pictures to take.

I'm posting these since we are approaching Earth Day which is observed worldwide on April 22. Gardens may be a luxury during this time of El Niño when farmers and their families are making their parched voices and grumbling stomachs heard, often to indifferent government officials. Now, don't get me started. I don't want to meander just yet to another subject as hot as the sweltering summer sun is.

Meanwhile, how green was our garden then. I used the past tense there with hopes that The Heavenly Gardener (Our Father in heaven) would send some refreshing rain soon.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

The rain's small hands

Let the rains fall in drops heavy enough to look like cataracts of angel tears. Too much water can mean rice fields drowning, clogged canals and rivers awash with plastic debris overflowing, wrathful Nature retrieving what humans and corporations had seized from her.

But sometimes rain is welcome even if it means appointments and errands cancelled or reset for a bright and dry day. While I got rained in yesterday, I found it a good excuse to cocoon in the safety of a welcoming home. When the rainfall petered out, there were these "sparklies" dotting and cramming all sides of the ceiling windows. ("Sparkly" is a word I learned from my granddaughter whose new nickname is "Curly Tops", having graduated from "Butones" to "The Wee One" after a summer's growth spurt.)

When I look at them again, I wonder which came first? The pictures or the sudden remembrance of an e.e. cummings verse: "i do not know what it is about you that closes / and opens; only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses / nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands." Or did they simultaneously arrive?

The elements, be they in the form of rain, gust of wind or mud cakes that once were shoes, remind me of how utterly small, helpless, flawed, insecure, solitary we are or I am. It's an "I" I am tempted to strike down so the personal pronoun is reduced to a smaller case. The choice left? To be compassionate to oneself, to others to solidify the broken parts of our human selves.

There is Something out there stirring, taking its time like a gathering storm. ("Is it an earthquake or is it a shock?" as Cole Porter would write it.) Is the fault line in this Ring of Fire about to move in our lifetime? Will there be another Great Deluge more serious than getting drenched during an unexpected downpour? What is there for those who will survive?

Challenge for the offering: make the best of what we have, including the eyes that still enable us to see the "sparklies" strewn on windows, on petals from a rare flowering of a succulent in a pot and on the intensified greenness of damp moss. The senses of sight and possible insight may just fortify the capacities for survival, endurance and prevailing against all odds while keeping the beauty of smallness.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

The odd mango

The rains have come. I wonder how long will the season's sweetest mango harvest last. The long dry spell for the lowland farms with cracked earth meant more flowers for the mango trees, thus more of the juicy, fibrous fruit, higher blood sugar content and deeper pleasures of the palate.

But one day, among the basket of fruits that Rolly brought home (this may have gone unnoticed when he bought them), my family came upon this sight. We didnt' know whether to laugh at its strangeness or to consider it a freak of Nature. I imagined that someone must have left a yellow rubber ducky or something close to its shape high up a mango tree branch, and the fruit morphed into this.



The little odd mango had staying power. We left it where it was until it started to look slightly bruised to indicate a ripening. I took that cue to peel it gently until it was in its full yellow orange naked glory. I proceeded to relish--yes, yum dee dee yum yum. It had all the stickiness of summer in it. Then I got to the tip or the head of the fruit. It turned out to be a second seed attached to the bigger one. Yes, almost like a baby mango with the same texture and flavor, only smaller.

Odd-looking,yes, but it was good. Nothing like a Philippine mango. Wherever you travel, wherever you roam, be glad, be happy we have these mangoes at home.

Thank you, summer of 2015. You have been odd but as good as a mango ripened by an unusually long drought.


And look, there's a second one! Photos by Babeth Lolarga