38 Years and Counting (The Blessings)

On the eve of my 38th birthday I decided to try writing again.  And I would like to write about the 38 nearly random things I am truly grateful for in my life.  I only mentioned "nearly random" because the very first item on the list was that which inspired me to list down all that I am thankful for.  Here they are:

38.  Halo-halo on a sweltering day
37.  A clear and smooth drive through Katipunan at 3 PM.  On a school day
36.  Killer stilletos I can run in
35.  My little girls belly laugh
34.  Dancing in the rain under a John Mayer sky
33.  Bacon
32.  Diamond Peel
31.  Senor Pedro Lechon Manok and Liempo
30.  Being friends with exes
29.  High School reunions
28.  Spanish sardines after a great, big function
27.  Having a laugh with my staff
26.  Coming up with a really cool outfit
25.  Acting my age
24.  NOT acting my age
23.  Macadamia Brittle Ice Cream
22.  Sweet Corn  Sorbetes 

21. My neighborhood Panaderia Pantoja-- for the softest and prettiest Sesame Seed    Bread  (under 60 bucks) that make for the best Ham and Cucumber Tea Sandwiches and for indulging my whimsical demands such as slicing white loaf lengthwise (to roll into Cheese Pimiento Pinwheels)

20.  Bento Boxes

19.  Saizen, Choto Stop, New Hatchin

18.  J.R.R. Tolkien

17.  Our Yaya of 13 years

16.  Our new "Ate" of 6 mos.  (please don't change)

15.  My food being on someones yearly Christmas Table 

14.  Wagyu

13.  Ebi Tempura

12.  The absence of debt

11.  Being part of someone's happy memory

10.  The gift of always being able to do the thing I love-- and making a living out of it!

  9.  Friends who are the same whether you're with them or not

  8.  Brothers who inspire me to see the world through someone else's eyes

  7.  Sisters who are so different from who I am and teach me there's no one perfect way   of being a Mom/Daughter

  6.  Simply the best Dad in the whole wide universe!

  5.  My strange but wonderful family life

  4.  Holding on to the last rays of my boy's "baby-ness"

  3.  Letting go bit by bit, to watch him one day be the best man he could possibly be 

  2. A daughter who massages my head when it hurts and hands me tissues when I cry watching sad movies

  1.  Eating, praying and loving-- at home.  That I only have to light up my stove to be nourished to the soul,  that I only need to close my eyes and feel so small against the will of God, that I only have to reach out my arms to hold the loves of my life--  I am truly, truly thankful.

Kitchen Spirits

There is an old woman crooked with age in the rust colored house overlooking the ocean.  She is standing in front of her trusted stove while the sun is bidding the sea goodbye and the wind whispering distant howls across the lush, rolling green of this place she now calls home.  Even when the light begins to fade and surrenders to the darkness of evening, she takes her time to prepare a warm meal to provide for what would be a chilling, starless night. The shadows have grown long and what used to be mere whispers of the howling wind are now bales of manic laughter dissipating against the imposing rocks of these ancient cliffs.  And yet inside this house the world is entirely different, everything is quiet save for the  gentle sizzling of garlic in olive oil now filling the entire house with its intoxicating perfume.  It is in fact considerably warm with the many candles she had lit in the kitchen and on the dining table which she, for some unknown reason, had grown accustomed to setting for two.  If it hadn't been for the shaking of the windows against the fury of the approaching tempest, you would be tempted to walk out into the courtyard to wish on the first of the twinkling stars.  But we already know there are none.  There will be none for a long, long time.

She turns back to the plump chicken pieces which have been bathing for a while now in the sultry, crimson-colored paprika that have been stone-ground and have journeyed from the deepest valleys of La Vera in Spain to her cupboards now as old as she was.  They are quietly humming in unison with the olive oil and the very salt harvested from the oceans below.  She caresses each piece and gently powders them with flour the way a woman gently powders her nose.  Not too little and not too much, just a little dusting to  protect and prevent the direct contact of skin and fire.  She turns the heat up of the pan where the slivers of garlic have been gently coaxed by the oil into giving up its very essence of existence.   She puts in the pieces of the chicken to brown and with the final dousing of the best Sherry she could afford, the spirits of chicken, garlic and paprika-- united in steam, rise from the cast iron pan to ascend and return to the home of the gods.  The pan exalts in glory  announcing that  this concerto of food, this symphony of sight, smell and sound has officially reached its denouement.

But as if by the command of an invisible Maestro, a knock was heard on the door.   The old woman was startled. After all this time, she still gets startled. She looked up from where she was standing  and saw the wind blow across her windows what appeared to be a coat of some kind.  She walked unsteadily to the door and opened it ever so slowly like she always does.  All those times this has happened, nobody was ever there.  But tonight was different. There is a man standing outside her very door. She recognizes him but wonders how and why he was there.  She tries to speak but instead of her voice  only tears spoke of all the things she would never find words for.  The old man trembled as he reached one hand to his mouth and the other to touch the  face of the woman he can't believe he was seeing now.  He was crying too.

Thank You For the Music

There is music in the wind that moves and breathes in the spaces of my soul. It is a song that constantly rocks and cradles the skiff of my heart from one shore to another in the many journeys of my life. I would find myself in the midst of the most perplexing labyrinth, and it has always been music that clears my head and keeps me finding my way back to shore .  Its words are the rivers I follow knowing they always unite with the ocean where my boat  patiently awaits--like a tiny dancer frolicking with the waves as if calling me to set sail once more to another journey scheduled by destiny but written by me.   While children will always be the anchor that keep me from drifting where I should not be, it has always been music that keeps me sailing through the most wicked tempest  of the seas.  No.  Music is not just my refuge.  Music is my redemption.

Even when the house is still, as it is right this very moment, there is a musical score  playing in my head.  It is there whatever it is I am doing, wherever I am in my life.  And in the moments where I have no answers to the questions in my head, the volume of that musical score is multiplied by a factor of at least two.  With it I am able to stare at my  demons, my doubts and fears right in the eye.  And through it, I am able to slay them all.  Music makes me muster the courage I never even knew I had and pushes me to conquer things I never even dreamt I could.   It is the magical potion  more intoxicating than any mind altering substance man can ever invent. It can make you feel bigger than you really are faster than you can say Wonderland.  Chemical concoctions may reach the innermost crevices of ones mind, but only Music has the power to break into the deepest, darkest alleys of your soul.  Other things can make you forget, but Music-- Music will make you remember all the things you are. 

In my kitchen, where there is a constant humdrum of action, the fire in the stoves are further fanned by the fire of Music.  Generally though, during prep time, the soundtracks are either as aseptic and crisp as Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor or something as nerve-calming as Astrud Gilberto's haunting affectations.  The music is always the backdrop that frames all elements in its proper places-- ingredients and staff included.  During the actual cooking though, the music is hot, dirty and full of lust.  (No I don't play dirty raps or that idiotic song Birthday Sex).  Think something along the lines of Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis jazz, the kind they play in smoke-filled parlors in some alley in New Orleans.  It's gotta be something with so much feeling and soul because that's what happens food meets fire.  That music and the sizzling, the hissing and the exaltation  from the sacrifice of the spirits of food--these are the only hymns heard throughout the kitchen at cooking time.  Well,  those and my voice telling everyone to shut up and pay attention to the process.  And Music does that to my attention-deficit mind.  It makes me see what I need to see and feel what I need to feel  in order to experience the process more vividly.  It doesn't matter if the experience was happening in the kitchen or in life as it unravels .  It doesn't matter whether the experience was something joyous like the birth of a child or something that makes me feel like jumping of the ledge (my friend).  Music is truly the exclamation point to every emotion I've ever had.  It makes me feel so much more alive.  

When I'm heartbroken, listening to stuff like My Immortal makes the pain so much more painful.  But when I am happy and I'm listening to Come On Eileen, the ride is so much happier and undoubtedly more interesting.  It's as if I am able to enlarge, underline and italicize the font of my life through music.  It makes the highs much higher and the lows so much lower which I realize is what life is,  as it happens-- a series  of beautifully timed ups and downs without which can literally transpose into living a flatlined life.  And if that isn't an oxymoron, then I don't know what is.

Life is not so redundant or scary with Music.  I find that the deeper I am into my story and my personal soundtrack the closer I am to actually finding Me. With its company I find that I am a little bit braver to live, to love.  After all it is in the living , the loving and the music  that I learned and am continuing to learn who I am. So I say Thank you for the Music, (all together now) for giving it to me.

Of Fears and Dreams

Somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness is your heart's truest fears and deepest desires.  If you stay still enough and peaceful enough, you will know what it is you truly want in your life. It is the single moment that can be shared only by you and the voice inside your head.  Some think that that voice is that of a higher being, one that encompasses and orchestrates all that is and is to come.  Others think of it more along the lines of an invisible evil twin,  a mere intellectual discussion or altercation between you and yourself.  But no matter what you believe is to be true, it is an all too important conversation to ignore.

I, myself, try very hard not to think of my fears right when I'm about to sleep for the obvious reason that that will keep me awake the entire night.  But when I do think about them, I realize that I have very few fears and most of them are of the tangible or inanimate kind.  I have no fear of dying, though I do worry about those I will leave behind.  I do not  fear growing old or growing old alone, I've been that way most of my life (alone that is--not old, though am certainly getting there).   I have no fear of getting  sick or terminally ill because frankly, I would immensely prefer that as opposed to dying instantaneously because at least then, I could get things in order, ask for forgiveness from those I've hurt, and say my fare-thee-wells accordingly.  I have no fear of being forgotten because I know that those who matter won't , and those who will forget me, in the end, don't matter.  

On a much lighter but freaky note, I do have a fear so tangible and real it is multi-sensory.  It's the fear of cockroaches scientifically known as Katsaridaphobia.  I can smell them when they are in the room and I especially let out a shrilly scream at the sight of flying ones.  Our Yaya does a very accurate and irritating impression of it which is usually followed by her thundering, mocking laughter.  I  imagine their prickly little, brittle legs and instantly my skin crawls and there... I did the shrilly scream again.  I hear the fluttering of their amber, translucent wings and I  could bolt from lying to running position in all of 2 seconds like an animal whose predator it can sense miles away.   In fact, my idea of hell is a room full of cockroaches of every permutation, color and size and me strapped on a bed right in the middle with a spotlight slowly fading into absolute darkness as the creatures begin to crawl and fly towards me. Vivid, I know.  If I'm to sleep in a room other than my own and the windows are open and there is no screen, I will ask that the windows be shut tight like heaven's gate for Ted Bundy. Never mind if I die of suffocation.  Anyway, I think I would die faster with the thought of cockroaches in the dark, hovering above my head.  

On the other side of the monochromatic rainbow of fear, I do have fears that involve my children, like them being rejected or having their hearts broken to a million pieces. But I am trying my darndest to train myself to own these fears (as in they are MINE and not THEIRS) because I know that if I don't do that, I will end up forcing them  to live their lives from my perspective instead of  a fresh one such as their own.  I don't know how to explain it but it's  much more difficult for mothers to let go.  Maybe it's because there's nothing quite like the bond between mother and child which is probably why it's not easy to even theoretically watch our children jump off a cliff not knowing what the landing looks like.  But as my kids grow I know that I should let them have their own dreams, fears and visions and not just replicate my own by letting them make decisions based on MY experiences to avoid the mistakes I'VE made and the pitfalls I'VE fallen into. Surely I don't want a duplicate of my life, I wish for a better one for them.  I wish to share the wisdom of the years to them, however,  I've learned  that in this life this much is true: Wisdom is nothing we can pass on to our children. It just  all comes with time and shoving the truths down their throats only make them resent us.   Sure we can try.  But they'll never learn it anyway and I know because I never learned it until I made the mistakes myself.  

Obviously, everything here must be taken with the context of time.  I mean, I wouldn't let my twelve year old write the story of his life on his own as of yet.  But eventually, the pen will be his for the taking.  After all, to live a scripted life, written, produced and edited by Mum, is not living after all.

My dreams too have all been connected to my children. Perhaps, the only dreams I  really have for myself are to someday put up Le Pirouette, the cafe and eventually write my recipes and memories in a cookbook. Other than that, everything else is connected one way or another to them.  But like my fears, I acknowledge them as mine and mine alone.  They are not necessarily the same dreams of the kids.   I may suggest, but certainly I will try my very best not to force it upon them.   I dream that one day, not too soon I hope, I will prepare the wedding dinner of the kids.   Or breakfast. Just whatever theme they want, wherever in the world they wish to have it. I'll be there for them.  I dream of long tables filled with endless stories and even more endless laughter. Of barbecues and picnics in the summer, and soup and hide and seek when it rains.  I dream that the kids will find the one thing they are truly passionate about and build a life around it.  I dream a life of sky-blazing fireworks, strolls into sunsets and walks under starlit skies.  I know theirs will probably  be a life less than perfect but I wish for them a life less-ordinary just the same.  It is my most hopeful dream and  most fervent prayer that they will find their happily ever after in this lifetime.  But should clouds gather anywhere along their journey to find it, I will be in my kitchen waiting to hear their stories, cooking up a storm and egging them to carry back on.

Food vs. Fashion

If it weren't for the infernal nagging of my logical brain, I would have again succumbed to the temptation of buying a new exercise machine. I have a spinning bike you see.  One of those humongous contraptions that spoke to me with a vow of returning my now mythical  as a chimera waistline which is by the way still below 30.  I mentioned 30 because a 30 inch waistline  for a woman my height (or lack thereof--5 feet flat) in my opinion, should be the breaking point of tolerance and the beginning of suicidal ideation-- well maybe suicidal ideation is a bit much.  But if it happens to me, this is the part where I dispose of all things that reflect my likeness, buy loads of clothes from Gap Maternity and generally live a life of recluse.  Away from obnoxious, uncouth and utterly rude people who manage to wag their fingers at you saying "Ang taba mo ngayon."  Well f*ck you. Pardon me for my irreverence but people who tell you that you look either fat or tired  without you asking them truly deserve that invective.  And then some. 

The thing that used to screw up my mind was not an existing wrong sense of security or self-imaging.   I have never been anorexic nor bulimic in my entire life and my tiff with weight gain was nothing that can be traced back to my childhood which was pretty crazy, I admit, but relatively normal just the same. It was the prevailing fact that other than food, the only other worldly thing I am obsessed about is fashion.  And we both know that food and fashion are not exactly the best of friends.  Now Photoshop and fashion, that, lads and ladies, is a match made in  sartorial heaven. 

Imagine Agyness Deyn, or Natalia Vodianova having a conversation with a Double-Double In and Out Burger.  "Oh dahlin' it's absolutely lovely to have seen you again. Every moment without you is like a moment without air.  You... complete me."  Of course, a conversation like that would only transpire in a parallel universe but here on the third planet, the conversation would most likely be like this, in between bites and barfs... "I hate you Mr. Burger. (Bite)  You are so good but so evil for me.  (Barf) Why can't I resist you?  (Bite) Why must you cause me to be eternally damned with cellulite? (Barf)  Damn you Mr. Burger!  (Bite) Damn you!" then proceeds to hurl the entire contents of her stomach at the nearest latrine.  Okaaaay.  Agyness, and Natalia might not have this actual conversation with food, but you do get my point.  Food and Fashion are frenemies!   And at a certain age, they are just plain old enemies.

On the runway, clothes just lift models somewhere beyond clouds, to a place closer to the feet of gods.  They float on the catwalk literally towering above everyone splitting the  great, big sea of lesser beings.  However, most of those clothes do no such thing to less than perfect, meaning not reed thin bodies.  If anything, it just emphasizes further how human we are and how human models are not-- strictly in the sartorial sense, that is.  It's just a fact we will all have to live with, clothes fall more naturally  and beautifully on mannequins, live ones or not.  It helps to begin with good genetics and a body that metabolizes food as quickly as Britney Spears' first marriage.  At a certain age though, somewhere after 19, metabolism catches up on them and they have to, just like us, work on maintaining model physique. This fact is  probably why in the modelling world, 25 above is considered "Lola" and only Lolitas get primo bookings. 

If you ask me, models truly deserve to be elevated in a class of their own not only because of their beauty but also because of how hard they work to maintain their figures.  What with their cigarette-coffee-granola-bar or egg-white-omelet breakfasts, matchbox -sized meat portion and a side salad with vinaigrette lunches (which COULD be omitted if there is a shoot), and the fish cooked in "no-shit-I-can't-believe -it's -butter " dinner.  I just can't do that stuff.  For me it would all taste like "no-shit-I-can't-believe-that's-food."  And that is why I have this body and not theirs.  Egg-white omelets?  Come on.  Last Sunday, my breakfast comprised of a freshly (and quite perfectly, if I may say so myself) poached egg with freshly made Hollandaise on top of crispy-edged back bacon sitting smugly atop  an English muffin.  Alas, I could never betray my Eggs Benedict for egg-white omelets .  Not for a million Alber Elbaz for Lanvin single-shoulder, sequin-covered play suits. Alright, maybe just one.  

Here's the deal.  I respect fashion and admire models.  I look at them and I see absolutes and possibilities-- as in absolutely not going to work or possibly a red-carpet moment for me.  As I've grown older, I learned to intersect these two parallel lines of real food and  real fashion that will never meet on an ordinary plane.  I know my body and I've learned that not all that is fashionable is fashionable for me.  Goddamit it is not tres chic to be wearing an Herve Ledger bandage dress if my tummy would be "nakatuck-out" in it. That would just be plain revolting. I also would not wear bunny ear rabbit head bands even if Marc Jacobs told me in the flesh to wear them for him.  Not even on Easter.  And it would be the end of life on earth as we know it, if you ever catch me donning  a micro-mini skirt with knee high socks and sandals even if it was seen all over fashion shows from Alexander Wang's to Timbuktu.  

Like I said, I respect fashion.  But I respect myself, what my body can do and all those people who I may bequeath excruciating pain upon seeing me in an outfit revealing what must be hidden in the secrecy of the Pentagon.   I know too that, I ought to get back on the saddle of my spinning bike and maybe one day soon, I will.  But it will not be so that I can steal my youth and retrieve my once 23- inch waistline because frankly, I know I am more than my physical self which I  have come to love and be quite happy with.  After all, it is this body that bore two beautiful children and has gone through many life stories both of love and war with scars to show too.  It has come to survive many summers and storms and has acquired what I'd like to believe is a certain je ne sais quoi that is ultimately mine and mine alone.

I will get back on the saddle so I will not have an all too sudden heart attack and leave my children motherless.  I will do it for health.  And of course...of course... the hedonist that I am, I will do it so that I can have the pleasure of eating Eggs Benedict any day of the week.  And twice on Sundays.


*Photo from Style.Com

Baby's Got The Blues

Loneliness is the tight-lipped bitch waiting for me when I get home. She saunters to and fro on the second floor of my house in her stilettos walking to a hypnotic beat making her presence undoubtedly known. She sits at the end of the dinner table tapping her long painted nails on her wrist, signaling and impatiently waiting for me to finish the "insipid" talk. She lies long, languid and lithe on my bed moving as slowly and as lazy as honey as if saying I have nowhere else to go. Even as children fill my home with laughter and noise, she tiptoes in the shadows of happiness to constantly and quite relentlessly remind me that devoid of an equal, I am in fact alone. Often times, I wish and convince myself that she is nothing but a figment of my imagination, a product of my vivid and aging mind. But I know she isn't. And the older I get, the more real she becomes.

She has a twin sister this bitch, Loneliness. Her name is Longing. She comes in unannounced in the strangest places like in the middle of a crowded room, where a band is attempting to drown everyone with decibels not fit for human consumption, or while driving and listening to the radio as the rain goes vertically mad on the pavement. You know that feeling when you are in a room full of people and everyone is laughing and then something crumples your ticker it feels "sour"? When your chest cavity is flooded with the feeling that something so rightfully yours has been taken away from you? That is Longing--the most unwelcome guest of my heart.

When I get the feeling that my unwanted guests (Loneliness and Longing in case you haven't been paying attention) are home, I find myself making Spaghetti alla Carbonara. I think that maybe, all of the world's problems can be solved with bacon. There's just something about the way simple, earthy ingredients are transformed into something rich, ethereal and soothing to heart, soul and tummy. It's what I'd like to call a gustatory blanket, something equivalent to a human hug. For me it's not just the eating part that is comforting but the whole ritual of making it.

First of all, I boil a big pot of water. In my interpretation of this dish, I use slab bacon. None of those thinly, machine sliced excuses for bacon. Traditionally, one uses pancetta or guanciale (from the jowls of the pig) but I like the smokiness of bacon which both pancetta and guanciale lack as they are not smoked. I then proceed to cut the slab into thick rectangular slices and render the fat over low heat. While waiting for the water to boil and the bacon to give off its ambrosial and deliriously sinful fat, I separate 3 egg yolks, which I mix with a cup of cream and half a cup of freshly grated parmiggiano-reggiano. Once the pasta is al dente, I throw it in the pan of the now lightly-browned bacon, turn off the heat and pour in the trinity of egg-cream-cheese and toss it all around until everything is locked in heavenly embrace. I put it in a bowl and begin to eat while reading a pocket book mostly of the mystery, horror, sci-fi kind. Think Stephen King, Robert Ludlum. Pointless to search for the comfort of food if you end up in masochism hell reading The Bridge Across Forever or Love in The Time of Cholera, right? So it's either a pocket book or a film such as Zombieland to blur the images of loneliness. Better to sleep with the memories of Zombies than stuff that only exist in fairy tales.

In the beginning, I said to myself that this path that will eventually lead to a solitary life is good. After all, everyone leaves whether it be a geographical, physical departure or a spiritual dissipation into the cosmos or vast unknown. Everyone leaves. Eventually, everyone becomes alone. However, is there really a point in preempting a definite ending? Loneliness and Longing, one day we three will have tea. I will have to live with them as the most ironic housemates in all of the earth. But right here, right now I really can do without them. I have a choice. And I choose to not be lonely anymore.