Father’s Day

I once asked dad, what heaven was like

I was about seven then, still wearing those blue flowery dusters which Mama used to buy us from Divisoria.

He was seated at the kabisera of our old Dining room table.

He said. “Just like this.”

“Mama and Papa, Tatay, and Nanay, your Mom and I would be there. We would all be seated at the dining table and we would be eating the most delicious food you can ever imagine.

We would have lechon and steak and spaghetti, chicken and Mama’s pancit Molo, Turkey, chocolate cake, lamb chops, spinach soufflé, roast pork, dim-sum, prime rib… “

And he just went off on a prolonged journey of enumerating his most favorite foods which he would eat in heaven.

That's what heaven is for Dad.

He just loves food.

Now don’t get me wrong, he’s not all about food. You already know about the singing and the obsession with teaching us to speak in English when we were little. He likes opera on occasion. He was the one to introduce us to the pleasure of watching plays and musicals. He likes golf, war movies, assorted other sports like Basketball and Football, and ok, ok, so also and including looking through Victoria Secret Catalogues. What do you expect? I didn’t say he was a saint you know.

But still, he just loves food. It’s high up there on the list of things that are so much a part of who he is.

I suppose some of this was due to the lack of food during the war.

He once ate Bibingka during the war. Mama used to cook some up for them to eat. They were living in Malolos at the time. After a visit to Manila, Papa took them bibingka that he had purchased there. Dad tasted it and said that they were enormously good. When he asked Mama why Papa’s bibingka was so much better than the ones they had at home, Mama replied because Papa’s had eggs and butter and other goodies in it that weren’t available in abundance during those times and thus were omitted from her recipe.



Once, on Christmas, Dad, Tito Jun and Tito Nonoy were given an egg as their present. They were so happy. I asked why, since getting an egg from Santa didn’t seem like a nice present to get, he said it was because eggs were so scarce during the war, and so were extremely valuable.

All that was available at that time were those dried and powdered eggs which you add water to. I’m not sure but I guess you add water and mix…kind of like powdered milk? Anyway the only things they could be used for was scrambled eggs. I guess you kind of got sick of eating that day in and out.

I’ve been eating brown rice these days. Mainly for the nutrition’s sake…you know, fiber and stuff. Dad saw me eating it and said that they used to have to eat that during the war.
Bad memories I guess. He’ll stick to eating white rice.

His favorite cookie is the ‘Nilla wafers, his favorite chocolate are Butterfingers. Why? Because those were the ones that the American soldiers handed out to the kids at the end of the Second World War.

When we were young, and whenever we got sick, ( Eric had asthma a lot, as did I, or maybe I already had early signs of pulmonary hypertension… my asthma was not the same kind as Eric’s) he would give us a call from the office asking us what we wanted him to bring home for us.

It was generally chocolate. It was so very rare in those days.

Dad would come home with a large bar of chocolate for the sick kid and two smaller bars for the other two (Lynette and Laurie was not in existence yet. ;-) )

It was always the big giant sized Hershey’s chocolate bar… and I think the other two would be Cadbury’s chocolate.

Those lasted a long time…specially when hoarded carefully in the freezer. It was ever so carefully hidden from sight… so no one would sneakily eat it behind our backs.

Still, these days, when someone is sick, Dad comes in bearing chocolates.

Mama’s favorite Turtles (which she used to cut into fours to make them last longer), Whitman’s sampler (which was used by all the teenaged boys during dad’s days to impress the women), Baby Ruth’s (which was mom’s favorite because of all the peanuts) and his own favorite Butterfingers (which is now available as a hot peanut-buttery chocolate drink) and the current flavor of the month Almond Roca (with the newly released Mocha Roca and Cashew Roca) which I still have an abundance of.

(Want some?)

Whenever someone would travel out of the country, Dad would provide us a list of where to eat and what we should order.

Each time he or anyone else goes home, before talking about what we saw or who we met, we talked about what we ate and how good it was.

When we came home from a trip and asked Raymond to transfer our video to VHS tapes, Timmy, his son, stayed to watch with him, and he asked Raymond...”Why are they just eating all the time?” We generally stopped everything to document meal times. Half of a roll of film would be just pictures of our food before and during and after we eat it.

On a trip to Hong Kong, Dad had perused the menu to decide what foods to eat… he ordered this and that and this again. After a few orders, the waiter looked at him and actually said. “No more. That’s enough… No more food for you.” Then he took the menus and left.

I mean really.

And as everyone is currently at President’s at China Town, eating Dad’s ultimate favorite Chinese foods, from his ultimate favorite Chinese restaurant, I sit down just to write and greet him...

Happy Father’s Day Dad!!!

We love you.