Her food was a vessel of her legacy
There is a small comoda (cabinet) that sits in the living room of our ancestral house filled with table linens. Tucked among the inabel (hand-loomed fabrics) is a precious memory: Mama on the antique rocking chair, agim-imarit bulong parya (stripping the leaves of bitter gourd), an oasis of calm.
This is how I picture my mother Eleanor, content in her simplicity. Still, in her own way, she showered us with subtle sophistication. It was in the gauzy woven fabric draped casually on curtain rods or the single catmon flower floating serenely in a thrifted ceramic bowl filled with water. Even farm produce from the Sunday market arranged in a nalaga nga labba (woven basket) looked extravagant. But her true mark was what she put on our table.
Even years after she passed away, friends still remember her garlic shrimp served at countless family birthdays. Former high school classmates who dined at our table said they missed the home-cooked meals of my mama. There were countless unforgettable summers when the whole family was packed inside a rented jeepney together with containers of food. The table of a beach hut would then be laden with pakbet a bawang (tomato-stewed young garlic shoots), paksiw nga malaga (vinegar-stewed rabbitfish or samaral), steamed kusimay (red frog crab or curacha), and chunks of cut-up ripe watermelon, complete with sukang Iloco (cane vinegar). To her, there was always a good reason to fill the table with a feast.
I realize now that this “ordinary” magic of hers simmered into the idea of a charcuterie business that my sister and I manage, and is also the reason why my sisters and I are all somehow wrapped up in the realm of food.
It was only when she was gone that I understood how her food was actually a vessel of her legacy. Her love was an offering, not only of sustenance but of compassion. I believe that my sisters and I will lovingly serve these morsels of memory to our children, now that we ourselves are mothers. And that I hope our Mama Ely is now creating a beautiful mess in God’s kitchen.
January Lhily Juan Suguitan is a charcuterie caterer.
