My grandma, Consolacion, taught me not only how to bake but how to make Rice Krispies treats. After a 6 miler tonight, I had the urge and made some with peanut butter and 70% chocolate chips. Today was her birthday and I knew she was channeling me…
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NANAY by Lizelle Festejo
A you’re adorable, B you’re so beautiful, C you’re a cutie full of charms…
You were beauty, sheathed in a purple and burgundy scarf wound around your thinning hair, threads of silk sticking out from under the fabric that moved like water.
I find myself in your kitchen, a memory that wraps around me in my dreams like the flannel blankets you had swathe me in when I was sick with large, red watery blisters dotted with pink Calamine lotion. In the moments you carefully prepared a bath of Aveeno oatmeal, you passed on your legacy, your love. I was too young understand that this was what love felt like, or that it was contained within the letters of this alphabet song you sung to me to sleep, cradling me in your arms and gently patting my side. The melody reverberated through my body, coaxing me to rest after a day of indulgent bliss with you. B you’re so beautiful…
Like an altruistic drug dealer, you supplied me with frozen Nestles Krunch bars and Otter Pops, Skor toffee bars, made me pitchers of Wylder’s Fruit Punch, handed me Good Humor Fudgesicles, barbecue-flavored potato chips, Planters peanuts. You taught me to sprinkle sugar onto Rice Krispies from the blue Tupperware container, drizzle my Bisquick Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes with rich, sweetened condensed milk. You instilled in me your sweet tooth, and as result, probably a predisposition for adult onset diabetes if I am not careful. You taught me the magic in baking. Like the time I begged you to bake something while you were busy watching afternoon movies on Dialing-for-Dollars and in moment of frustration, you went into a frenzy, throwing flour, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla and chocolate chips into a bowl, whipped up a batch of Toll House cookies. I was in awe, holding the saucer sized soft and chewy chocolate studded discs in my hand, realizing that only twenty minutes prior, I was pleading for you to show me how to bake.
D you’re delightful, E you’re exciting, F you’re a feather in my arms…
My tiny arms would be sore from folding the meringue into the chiffon cake batter. I remember the distinguishing scent of lemon and the thick, sweet pasty taste of it when I snuck a finger through the white mounds, leaving a ribbon through its body that lasted only moments. Sometimes, you would replace the lemon extract with strong coffee concocted from three teaspoons of Folger’s crystals mixed with hot water in the silver aluminum measuring cup. Other times, you would add ube powder to tint the batter into a deep purple. Or was it really just blue and red food coloring? My memory fails me here for all I remember is the house filling up with the warm aroma of freshly baking cake and the sound of the electric mixer softening the butter cream frosting while crystals of sugar scrape the insides of the bowl. I remember the time Rhea burnt the side of her arm trying to take the mixing spoon away from me, as little sisters often try to do. After you had turned the cake over onto a cooling rack, the deep brown crust of the cake lined the insides of the pan like dark, edible velvet. You said, in a little while, it would be ready to frost, in a little while, we could have a slice but to me it was an eternity. In those impatient moments, we would taking turns scraping the brown crumbs from the pan with a spoon, shoveling them into our mouths. That was the best part – until you showed me how to decorate. You taught me to create shells, borders, write my name in red icing, first on a piece of waxed paper. Then, I’d graduate and write on the cake and you’d gently take my arm, guiding me and encouraging me, making each stroke feel momentous and me feel important.
G you’re so good to me, H you’re so heavenly, I you’re the one I idolize…
I wish I saved the recipes you had written for me one summer afternoon when you showed me how to make the cakes that Dad now remembers having every birthday. My first birthday photograph, me in your hands against the picnic table, just enough over its edge, teaching me to form my lips into a circle to blow the single lit candle. Fourteen years later we went to the store together with a simple mission: a bundt cake pan, Softsilk cake flour, various flavorings and a flour sifter- all essentials of my very own to create the perfect delectable cake, your cake. I was eager to learn and you, at times, were impatient at my unwillingness to listen and attempts to do it my way. I learned to make mistakes and ultimately, learned to listen. Together we made your infamous mocha chiffon cake. And together, we ate it too.
J we’re like Jack and Jill, K you’re so kissable…
Our final meals together weren’t meals at all. It was Christmastime when I came home from school, cautiously entered the living room where you were resting. I reached out to gently pull your hand to my forehead. Mano, a simple gesture of revering our elders, one in which is now rarely observed by Filipino-American grandchildren. Your hands were thin, limbs with muscles wrapped so that I can see each movement. I kiss your cheek, the chemicals they pumped into you had robbed you of their blush. I’d kiss the inner part of your wrist after pinching them delicately to see if you have enough hydration while blue and white cans of vanilla-flavored Ensure lay unopened, scattered around your room. As the cancer spread from your colon, crept up your lungs into your throat, you stood fast, stubborn as ever. We spent the days together, taking naps between the grayscale tones of Turner Movie Channel classics. In exchange for taking your medication, you asked if I could smuggle you pieces of fruit beef jerky, the Hong Kong brand in the beautiful gold and red box that was almost too pretty to open. Should anything pass through your system, you would be up all night writhing in pain. You chewed the pieces, spit it out onto the napkin in my hand. What difference does it make? you’d ask. I’m gonna die anyway, why not enjoy life? For you, life was the pleasure of food.
You could have drunk more water, used less patis to make your meals salty, eaten more fresh vegetables and exercised at least 30 minutes, three times a week. If I would have known, I’d ask you to quit smoking earlier, to not eat that last piece of crisp roast pork or sans rival, the dessert that had no rival to its rich daquoise layers of butter, cashews and meringue. But I knew that this food meant something to you and that somehow it throbbed the cartography of your life stories. The high peaks of how you met Tatay through Manang Unor, how you both eloped and only came back home after two years of marriage. I wanted to ask you if it was worth it, was love really all it was cracked up to be. I wanted to ask you if you still loved him, through the hills and valleys of his silence and rage in the arguments waged in the kitchen, the room I loved the most. The room you both fought over who reigns supreme, where passion flavored and caressed every bit and morsel.
I kneel beside you, holding out the Senecot pills and watching you as you struggle to swallow water to help the green spheres slide down your swollen throat. Your esophagus muscles strain to pull the medicine down, ease your body. More and more frequently, I’d squirt drops of clear liquid morphine onto your tongue, the same way you used to drop the pink milkshake medicine into my mouth when I had an ear infection. You were always courageous. I was always afraid.
L is the Lovelight in your eyes…
I’d lay on the couch awake each night, still and straining my eyes in the dark at nothing in particular, waiting to hear you call out my name to help you get to the bathroom. I’d worry when I don’t hear a sound so I would sneak into your room, curl at your foot, careful not to lean too heavy on your fragile ankles, listening and feeling your chest rise and fall while little puffs emerge from your thin, jagged lips. Your eyes were once glistening, now they are sunken in. The eloquent folds on your face holds the weight of bearing and caring for six children, the mourning of two, and the exodus of your family to live in a foreign land with foreign foods you learned to love as much as I.
M, N, O, P . . .
You could go on all day . . .
I wish more than anything to have another day to show you how I’ve turned out, to share my hopes, to draw out those three weeks spent with you that last Christmas that are forever frozen within my heart. I imagine us baking again together while I tell you that now, I am helping others follow their dreams, nurturing bakers the way you had nurtured me. I’d sing to you this lullaby you sang to soothe me to sleep, you folded in my arms and remembering all that you are to me.
One last day would be all I’d need, Nanay.
To tell you what you mean to me.
