Sweet Traditions the World Over (aka Beyond Fruitcake), Part 1

You know it’s beginning to look like Christmas when the fruitcakes start arriving. We’ve come to associate the candied fruit- and nut-studded, liquor-soaked spice cake with the holidays and either eagerly await its advent or dread it like the plague. There is probably no Christmas gift that is more recycled by many a recipient into a present for someone else than fruitcake. Let’s face it, the local liking for it is a bit of an acquired taste and very much reliant on those first encounters with one.

I still recall one Christmas when my cousin Marissa prevented her mom from passing on the fruitcake I’d gifted them with. It was flattering to learn how vigorously she defended the merits of my fruitcake but also sobering to realize that many Filipinos do not really appreciate it. Yet fruitcake was not created for the Yuletide season alone. In other countries, it is also the favored base for wedding cakes, its density able to withstand multiple cake layers and its legendary keeping quality perfect for the bridal tradition of saving a slice for that first anniversary. Nevertheless, around these parts, fruitcake is nearly synonymous with Christmas.

Sweets are the stuff that celebrations are made of. It’s probably the first thing many a diner takes a peek at when scanning a menu or looks for in a buffet spread. And during the holidays, sweets are the likely gift of choice for many people and sometimes the most anticipated part of a Christmas meal.

Not surprisingly, sweets have a definite place in the Yuletide customs of many countries. A number have gone on to become as popular abroad as they are in their countries of origin. What may be surprising are the histories behind their creations or the customs that accompany their appearance on the holiday table.

Take Bûche de Nöel for instance. Created as a tribute to the traditional Yule log, Bûche de Nöel is served during Christmas in France, Belgium and Quebec, Canada. It is a sponge cake roll usually filled and iced with chocolate buttercream though there are many variations. The frosted surface is then scored to resemble tree bark and sprinkled with powdered sugar to simulate fallen snow. An even more elaborate presentation is garnishing the roll with candied cherries and meringue “mushrooms”.

One story behind the creation of this dessert claims that Napoleon Bonaparte decreed that Paris households had to close their chimneys during winter. The edict was based on the belief that cold air caused medical problems. Parisians were thus unable to engage in the Christmas traditions revolving around the hearth. French bakers supposedly invented this dessert as a symbolic replacement so that families would have something around which to gather for story-telling and other holiday merriment in lieu of their fireplaces.

The story might be apocryphal but whatever the truth behind its creation, Bûche de Nöel is a Christmas dessert that is as good to look at as it is to eat.

Another sweet popularly associated with Christmas is gingerbread. Possibly the closest most Filipinos get to this spicy cookie are those fanciful gingerbread houses displayed in sundry hotel lobbies and bakeshop windows. Yes, it is a cookie, not a bread. The name was derived from Old French gingerbras and Latin gingibratum, both of which meant preserved ginger. As is often the case with translations from one language to another, the term made the transition to medieval English in a form that remained close to the original in spelling but not quite in definition. The Germans call their gingerbread Lebkuchen.

Cut into different shapes, gingerbread was a popular treat sold in fairs throughout Europe. The Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, inspired the German hexenhaeusle or “witch's house”. Lebkuchenhaeusle, or gingerbread house, was made with lebkuchen slabs and decorated with candies.

Gingerbread harks back to the days when sugar was a precious commodity and the common sweeteners were molasses or honey. Until the fifteenth century, "gingerbread" referred only to preserved ginger itself—returning Crusaders from the Middle East brought back the spice which was pressed into molds by the Catholic monks to form ginger cakes. But when ginger was found to have preservative qualities, it began to be used in pastries, cakes and cookies. It was also used to preserve meat and helped cover up its strong odor as it aged.

The cookie is thought to have been first brought to the United States by Swiss monks who settled in the Midwest. Aside from giving it to the sick, the monks also produced it for holiday celebrations. Their practice of baking gingerbread cookies and creating gingerbread houses to celebrate the Christmas season spread and eventually became a popular U.S. tradition.

Americans usually sweeten gingerbread with molasses while the British use golden syrup and brown sugar. Germans, on the other hand, prefer honey in their lebkuchen. Aside from ginger, cinnamon is the next most common spice used in gingerbread, followed by cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, and sometimes, anise.

While best known as a Yuletide treat, the consumption of gingerbread is not limited to the holidays. But there are sweets that are baked almost exclusively for the Christmas season. Melomakarona are honey-drenched spice cookies that are a Christmas tradition all over Greece along with the more commonly known Kourabiethes, a sugar cookie. Another Greek sweet is Vasilopita, or New Year Cake. Cut in the early hours of the new year, it is baked with a coin inside to bring good fortune for the year to the lucky recipient. And thanks to favorite specialty food store Santi’s, I became familiar with Stollen.

A bread-like cake from Germany, Stollen is eaten during the Christmas season, most often as Weihnachtsstollen or Christstollen. It is actually a fruitcake made from a yeast dough flavored with citrus peel, dried fruit, almonds and spices such as cinnamon and cardamom. The finished cake is sprinkled with powdered sugar and traditionally weighs about two kilograms. Folded in half before baking, the shape of the cake was supposed to represent the infant Jesus in swaddling clothes. But it reminded German miners of the entrance to a mine tunnel instead, which is the literal meaning of Stollen, and they named it accordingly. Needless to say, the name stuck.

Interestingly enough, the original version was a hard and almost tasteless cake because the season of Advent for which it was intended was once a period of fasting, believe it or not. Though the cake evolved over time and circumstance into a richer, buttery confection, an authentic German Stollen is not as sweet as its counterparts in other countries.

Next: Italy’s trio of “Pans”, celebrating Epiphany the Iberian way and Merry Old England’s quaintly named confections.

A Matter of Taste

Originally published in The Philippine Star

Why is balut so generally abhorred in the west? That it was used in the reality show Fear Factor is evidence of this aversion. And I remember an episode of Lonely Planet where one of the hosts purchased balut in Malate, then talked herself into taking a bite only to spit it out almost immediately and wretch over it. Yet this same host downed a glass of wine in Vietnam to which the raw gall bladder of a snake had been added. Not only did she manage to hold it down, she even made a complimentary remark about it.

I guess that one man’s comfort food can be another man’s reason for a bellyache. The food specialty of a specific culture or region will not always be appetizing to everyone and may even repel some. Especially if a basic ingredient is this side of unappealing or forbidden.

Take another Filipino favorite—Dinuguan. Eaten at face value, it usually passes most westerners’ epicurean standards. But tell those same people that pig’s blood is the base for this stew and chances are they’ll make a beeline for the nearest powder room. Unless they’re from Sweden or Poland. Svartsoppa or Black Soup is made from the blood drippings of the geese the Swedes roast for St. Martin’s Eve. And the Poles have Czernina, a sweet sour soup made from duck or pig’s blood, broth, sugar and vinegar.

Culture and habit have a lot to do with our biases particularly the hard to explain ones.

Some folks balk at eating Sashimi on the grounds that it is raw fish but won’t bat an eyelash at dining on carpaccio, oysters on the half-shell or sea urchin roe, which is seldom if ever cooked. The French and their Escargot may have given snails a better reputation but I’ve seen people screw up their faces at the seafood version of Kare Kare when snails are part of the mix. And it’s one thing to eat frog’s legs which resemble small chicken legs after all; quite another to eat it whole sans head but with limbs still intact and splayed, reminding you that you are about to pop a frog into your mouth. Stuffed relleno-style and deep-fried to a crisp turn, these tiny frogs are a popular dish in some parts of Pampanga.

And then there’s caviar. The ultimate luxury to some, to others it is just salty fish eggs, no more, no less, with only its cachet to recommend it. One of my uncles declared he would take bagoong over caviar any time however costly it is. Clearly even the yen for the world’s gourmet delicacies can be an acquired taste.

Beware prairie oysters, Montana tendergroins, cowboy caviar, swinging beef, Rocky Mountain oysters and calf-fries.These are deceptive euphemisms for bull testicles. There’s even a famous Testicle Festival in the western U.S. state of Montana where the favorite way to eat the stuff is battered and fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce.

But American wranglers are by no means the first or only folk to feast on these “nuts”. Ram testicles were a popular item on fashionable 18^th century French menus. And the ancient Romans dined on gonads to increase their sexual vigor. Ditto for the Chinese who have created a hearty bull testicle soup.

Come to think of it, animal testicles are not the oddest ingredients ever to make their way into a soup, stew or stir-fry.

How about whole boiled lizard in broth and soup starring sheep’s eyeballs? Deep-fried white rat that could pass for amber-hued Peking Duck? Or insects, grubs and worms for lunch or dinner? We have the local Camaro or crisply fried crickets. And those little critters are also staples in many South American locales where they are often the cheapest source of protein. They are sautéed, stewed, fried, roasted and wrapped in tortillas to make a very different kind of taco. They are even eaten raw. I will never look at another garden slug or earthworm the same way after watching one of the indigenous tribesmen on Discovery Channel happily take a bite of a big, fat white grub and show off the gooey, still twitching uneaten half before popping it into his mouth. For some, apparently fresh does not mean raw but alive.

Else why do Sashimi restaurants that specialize in cutting their fillets from live fish do such brisk business in Japan? Another version of Sashimi is a live shrimp that is quickly beheaded and shelled and handed over to the diner while still wriggling. The object is to swallow the poor thing in one bite so you can feel it “dance” in your throat as it goes down. The Koreans go one step further. Imagine fishing a small live octopus out of a bowl of water, dipping it in sauce then eating it whole while its tentacles frantically cling every which way to your lips, chin and cheeks.

And lest you believe only uncommon foodstuffs lend themselves to the strange and exotic, well, think again.

The common egg becomes a specialty gourmet item when salted or aged. Hence, our local itlog maalat (especially delectable when teamed with chopped tomatoes, diced green mangoes and a dollop of bagoong) and the exaggeratedly named century eggs with their slightly ammoniac flavor and brownish whites and green yolks.

Or how about rich, dark chocolate? Traditionally a dessert ingredient or a sweet in its own right, it is a main ingredient in the spicy Mexican poblano mole. Dried chili peppers, ground nuts and spices and charred avocado leaves also go into this very popular savory sauce.

And then there’s coffee. The customary way of taking it is either black or with cream or milk. Sweetness depends on where you are in the world though diabetics would be advised to keep in mind that in some countries close to half a cup of sugar is not deemed too much of a good thing. For the more adventurous, the various coffee bars have come up with a plethora of concoctions to satisfy the near universal hankering for beverages based on this aromatic bean. But I very much doubt they will ever do as the Lapplanders do and dunk butter in their cups of steaming coffee for a fortifying hot drink.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but our aesthetic proclivities are shaped by the various cultural forces at work on us at any given time and place. The same goes for food and our taste buds. Frankly, I think we are all discriminating diners, our ingrained loves and hates in the gustatory arena dictating what we consider simply to die for, not bad at all, just barely palatable or fit to toss into the garbage bin with nary a second thought or an experimental bite.

True Colors

The excessive partiality for fair skin displayed by certain of my relations is a constant source of amusement and exasperation to me. How excessive? One of the first things the senior ladies of the clan tend to check out with newborn babies is their coloring. Take my mom. When my youngest son was born, she declared that he was darker than his brothers. How much darker? About the difference between milk and cream.

In a country where the majority of the citizens are either moreno or kayumanggi, it’s an attitude that’s as out of place as Spaghetti alla Puttanesca and Oeufs à la Neige on the same menu as sinigang, daing na bangus and green mangoes with bagoong.

It isn’t as if we belong to that minority that looks as if they just came over from the Iberian Peninsula. We’re mostly fair-complexioned but we would never be mistaken for westerners. Yet one of the worst things anyone can say about an addition to the clan is to describe him or her as dusky. The exception seemed to be my father who didn’t care if a person is black, white or multi-colored. I guess to a doctor, skin is, well, skin.

My eldest son was very fair at birth. But within a few weeks, Bryan’s skin turned ruddy. His pediatrician assured us that many newborns undergo this change and that my son’s color would eventually return to its original hue. But weeks passed and there was no discernable change. Needless to say, my mother became very concerned.

During a party, a family friend asked to see the new baby. So Bryan was brought out to be examined and admired. The friend, who had an emphatic, singsong way of speaking, happily warbled, “What a daaarling baby!” Unfortunately, she paused for breath between the syllables “dar” and “ling” and thereby gave Mom an awful fright. She thought her friend was about to say, “What a daaark baby!”

It’s funny but also tiresome. I remember going to the beach as a kid and we girls being garbed in long-sleeved, turtleneck tops and old stretch pants whenever we ventured into the sea. (In fact, it’s still the beachwear of choice for some of my aunts who have since added wide-brimmed hats, umbrellas and scarves to their seaside ensembles.) Sunblock was not enough as far as our respective mothers were concerned.

Can you imagine trying to frolic in waterlogged garments? Or attempting to look cool walking along the shore while dressed for a mountain hike? Only when we entered our late teens were we able to assert ourselves and wear what we pleased. We must have been the only teenagers who rebelled by wearing appropriate apparel.

Woe to anyone who adopted the tanned look. Our ever-vigilant guardians were horrified that anyone would deliberately tarnish the fairness one was so fortunate to be born with. And if any of the guys brought home a girlfriend who was born on the wrong end of the color scale, he never heard the end of it. They were a little more lenient about boyfriends however. Maybe that had to do with the “tall, dark and handsome” cliché.

I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this is a country where a good number of people mourned the closure of U.S. military bases for reasons that had nothing to do with national interest, skin-whitening products abound and flourish and gluthathione is now part of the national vocabulary.

Yet for all the poor attempts at pseudo-American twangs and western manners of speech, many stubbornly retain their Filipino-ness on the inside, old habits and traditions included, both the good and the appalling.

When my sister and I went on our first trip to Europe, we were often sorely tempted to throttle our tour companions. They kept complaining that they wanted sinangag with tapa or longganisa in lieu of the continental breakfasts that were the norm. Never mind that it was next to impossible to find Filipino foodstuffs in the European capitals, let alone the countryside. Or that one of the ways to appreciate a foreign culture is to partake of what it offers, including the pertinent cuisine.

Of course, there’s also the illogical human trait of wanting what one doesn’t have. Like the impulse to curl straight hair and straighten curly locks. Or snub-nosed folks having nose jobs to make themselves appear more “patrician,” small-breasted women allowing implants in their bodies in order to look bustier and fair-complexioned people risking skin cancer every summer trying to burn themselves into the color a good many Filipinos already possess.

That last habit is one my mom and aunts find incomprehensible even when its effectiveness as bait for the opposite sex is proved time and again. This was clearly demonstrated when a good friend and her older sister went on a tour of continental Europe.

Our friend’s sister tans fabulously and she had just spent a week in Boracay before embarking on the tour. Guess who garnered the lion’s share of male attention? It puzzled the clan matriarchs when they learned that French hunks and Italian studs avidly ogled her while her übermestiza sister, who always caught everyone’s eyes back home, was largely ignored. It was the golden girl, not the porcelain doll, who came home glowing from a surfeit of masculine adulation.

To be fair, this propensity for white western complexions does not extend to white western lifestyles. Most of my relations live in eclectically designed homes with both our local heritage and foreign influences reflected in the architecture and décor. For daily food fare, they will choose local over foreign more often than not. Ditto for language usage, familial relationships and the observance of local customs.

Still, they continue to admire white skin and they will probably do so for the foreseeable future. But time has a way of mellowing perceptions and they’ve begun to tone down that admiration a bit. Thankfully, their use of derogatory labels to describe dark-skinned people is on the decline. Whether this is from a sense of shame or simply because their children keep correcting them, I don’t know. But it is a welcome change and perhaps things will continue to improve. The occasional stings of backlashes to their biases don’t hurt either. But it does seem take them a fair amount of time to learn. Decades, in fact.

One summer in the sixties, my parents and some of my mom’s cousins traveled together to the United States on business. Naturally they also toured the country whenever possible. They even managed to visit the Deep South. At the time, segregation was still in place with whites and blacks occupying widely different niches in society.

At one point, they had to travel by Greyhound. The bus driver was delighted to have them on board. Why? Because he had the perfect buffer between the white passengers who sat in the front of the bus and the blacks who occupied the back. The Filipino group was placed in the center of the bus to keep the two groups nicely separated. That was an object lesson in how far racial prejudice can be taken. And it wasn’t the only one. Unfortunately, they didn’t take them to heart at the time.

My parents recounted a stopover they made at a small town along the way. As soon as they got off the bus, they headed for the restrooms. Imagine their consternation when they were confronted with signs that said “White” and “Colored.”

Where did they belong? Strictly speaking, they weren’t white. Did that mean that they would have to use the, shudder, “Colored” restroom? In the end, they chose to use the “White” facilities rather than admit the inadmissible. But that could have landed them in a most unwelcome predicament.

One of my uncles could not be deemed fair by any stretch of the imagination. Had there been someone present to enforce the law, he would have been compelled to use the “Colored” restroom. The rest would have had to follow suit to spare him the embarrassment of being singled out.

Now that would have been poetic justice.

One Man’s Shake is Another Man’s Frappe

Whenever we go to Starbucks, Bryan, Niccolo and Jonathan order the frapuccinos. Invariably, I wish they hadn’t become so fond of these expensive concoctions that are little more than glorified milkshakes. Particularly when I can whip them up at home at less cost and with fresh ingredients.

Smoothie, frappe, velvet, frosted shake, malt, cabinet and batido are all one and the same—a milkshake going by another name depending on region or country and what goes into the recipe. But basically, a milkshake is a cold beverage made from milk, ice cream or other similar dairy products and flavorings ranging from fruit syrups to chocolate sauce. It’s generally meant to be drank but there are recipes where the shake is so thick a spoon is more useful than a straw. In the 1950s in the United States, such a shake was aptly called a concrete and was handed to the customer upside down to demonstrate its drip-proof consistency. So does that make the Dairy Queen Blizzard a concrete treat?

Interestingly enough, the milkshake originated in the U.S. as an alcoholic whiskey drink. The name first appeared in print in 1885 and was similar to eggnog. And just like its soda fountain compatriot Coca Cola, it was positioned as a health tonic. By 1900, however, the name referred to dairy-based drinks made with chocolate, strawberry or vanilla syrup. It was solely made with milk and shaken or whipped until foamy. Hence the term milkshake. (Talk about taking names literally.) Anyway, within a few years, people wanted ice cream in the new drink as well and the basic shake in its current incarnation appeared.

What differentiates a milkshake from a frappe or smoothie? Well, in the first place, even milkshakes are not born equal. While the most common version consists of milk, ice cream and a flavoring, in the New England states and some Commonwealth nations, they adhere a bit more to tradition and there is no ice cream in the shake, only iced milk.

By and large, the variations in name have to do with its region of origin or with the changes or additions in the basic recipe. For example, a frosted shake is a milkshake to which ice cream has been added. In the 1930s, the newspapers used the term ‘frosted’ for any beverage that had ice cream added to it. Even hot coffee with ice cream added to it was called a frosted coffee.

Now take away the ice cream and substitute yogurt, crushed ice and fresh fruit and you have the health buff’s favorite treat, the smoothie. Add malted milk to the basic shake and you’ll wind up with a classic malted milkshake or simply a malt. An extra thick milkshake came to be called a velvet or frappe (pronounced ‘frap’) in northern New England and Canada. The term frappe comes from French frapper, meaning ‘to ice’. In Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, locals are fond of their coffee frappe shake. (When I read this, the frapuccino began to make sense.) By the way, once you add ice cream to a milkshake in this particular region it becomes peculiarly enough, a cabinet, probably named after the square wooden cabinet in which the mixer used to be encased.

The concept of milkshakes also migrated south of the border. Add fruit to a milkshake and you have the batido, which is very popular in Latin America and among Miami’s extensive Cuban expatriate community. Nicaraguans even coined their own name—they call their milkshake leche malteada.

In the 1940s and 50s, soda fountains were favorite hangouts in the U.S. and milkshakes often formed the base of their ice cream menus. Soda fountain staff, or jerks as they were called, had their own jargon for these milky concoctions, some nicely descriptive, others quite bizzare and incomprehensible. A “White Cow” was a vanilla milkshake while a “Burn One All the Way” was a chocolate malted with chocolate ice cream. The whimsically named “Shake One in the Hay” was a simple strawberry shake. But the “Twist It, Choke It and Make It Cackle” needs a bit of circular reasoning to connect it to what the shake was: a chocolate malted with an egg.

In the Philippines, milkshakes are often bought as a dessert or a cold treat to sip while strolling around on a warm day. But in North America, it was discovered that nearly half of all milkshakes are bought in the early morning and are usually the only items purchased per customer. The reason? It makes an ideal breakfast product for the commute from home to work or school because it can be consumed with just one hand and there is little risk of spillage on clothes or soiling the hands, as is the case with sandwiches or pastries.

Nowadays, the plethora of milkshake variations can be bewildering. Everything from the basic milk and ice cream version to fruit- or candy-studded, spiked and gourmet concoctions are on hand. Anything from M&Ms, peanut butter and jelly, Hostess Twinkies, melted caramels and crushed Oreos to crème de menthe and Kahlúa liqueur, whiskey and vodka to macerated strawberries, Valrhona chocolate, saffron-rose water and taro root have found their way into today’s shakes. Going by this, I suppose even the once ubiquitous pearl drinks can pass as milkshakes.

I once used leftover ice cream to make milkshakes for my three sons. I followed the most popular recipe—cold milk, ice cream and a flavoring, chocolate syrup in this case. I got the thumbs up from all three with Bryan claiming there’s nothing like homemade, Jonathan stating that it was the best milkshake he’d ever tasted and Niccolo simply and enthusiastically saying “Delicious!” and asking for a second serving.

Hmmm, maybe if I do this often enough, their clamor for costly commercial shakes will go the way of the dodo. Well, I can dream, can’t I?

Wrapped Around Her Little Paw

Originally Published in the Philippine Star

A warning to all you parents out there who give in to their kid’s pleas for a pet: think first about who’s going to own who. Because, as sure as the sun rises in the east, it’s not you who’s going to do the owning. Mark my word.

It all started when my sons decided they wanted a Shih Tzu just like their cousins’. Admittedly adorable creatures, they awakened the whole ‘a boy and his dog’ longing in my children’s hearts. And dog lover that their father is, he gave in without much of a struggle. I wasn’t as certain but when my husband and sons decide on such a rarity as a common course of action, who am I to object?

She came to us at two months of age, a ball of white fur with a light brown band across her lower back and so small that you could hold her in the cup of two hands (or one if you’ve got large mitts). We knew we were in trouble when first PV began calling her our only daughter and then Bryan introduced her to everyone as his little sister. When I was referred to as her ‘mommy’, that clinched her place in our family.

Two years later she holds us in the palm of her furry paw. Problem is, she knows it. And has no qualms about using it to her advantage either.

We could not bear the thought of so tiny a puppy being by herself in the dark at night. So we agreed that we would keep her in our bedroom for the first month or so after her arrival. Well, when I eventually broached the question of whether we could move her downstairs, I received glares of disbelief and indignant protests in return. Needless to say, the idea has been shelved and will likely never see the light of day.

Parents of infants know whereof I speak when I mention the foibles of toilet training. Strangely enough, complaints from PV about our sons’ erratic potty habits started way before we could reasonably expect them to truly comprehend the need to go the bathroom to relieve themselves. Not so with his “little girl”. Mop or pick up after her we all did until she was mature enough to be properly trained but not a single bit of grousing did I hear from him about her accidents.

And my sons are hopeless at disciplining her. The very thought of raising our voices to scold her or taking a hand to her backside horrifies them, turns Bryan my supposedly sensible college-age son, into an empathetic puddle of useless goo and is guaranteed to reduce my doting nine-year-old Jonathan to tears of commiseration. Yet none of them have misgivings about one brother or the other being ripped a new one for misbehaving. Double standard anyone?

Not that PV is any less maudlin when it comes to her. Whereas we carefully count our centavos with regard to our grooming needs, he readily shells out cash to ensure that she always looks as pretty as a picture. We spend five hundred bucks for her regular shampoo, haircut and blow-dry. Okay, the fee includes a pedicure, brushing her teeth and a generous spritz of breath spray as well. Nonetheless, that’s comparable to what I pay when I visit a salon for the same amount of service (minus the teeth brushing and breath spray, of course). But while I worry about the cost of each trip to the parlor, he happily forks over money for her beauty treatment. So now our Shih Tzu is more fashionably coiffed than I am. Not to mention sports the latest in doggie scents—he bought her cologne, too, let me add.

I should get annoyed with all the attention and allowance she’s given by my menfolk. But I don’t; I can’t. Not when she cheerfully plops down on her belly so we can brush her coat and remains still even when we have to work out a stubborn tangle. Not when she comes scrambling out of wherever she’s settled herself or parks herself at the door at the mere sound of my voice. And certainly not when she follows me just about everywhere and shows one and all whose company she prefers the most.

She hops, not runs. Yips, not barks. And she will attack an inanimate object with all the ferocity of a lion cub, an effect somewhat ruined by her endearing stuffed toy appearance. Scratch or rub a particular area of her stomach and one hind foot or the other or both will do an imitation of Thumper the rabbit in the Disney classic Bambi. And, dear me, but she knows how to use her eyes. It’s unfair. Dogs shouldn’t be able to gaze soulfully at their humans and entice them into doing stuff against their feeble wills. Especially not dogs with long-lashed button eyes and pert little noses to match. My sons claim she looks like a baby Ewok, that teddy bear-like creature of Star Wars fame.

My husband sent pictures of her along with his latest email to a cousin currently residing in Texas in the USA. Said cousin, a bank executive, showed the pictures to his colleagues, all senior bank officers, and the reaction was one and the same: “Is she for real?” followed by “Aaawww, she’s adorable” and sundry versions thereof.

It’s a good thing Chibi can’t read else all the praise would further boost her already inflated ego. As it is, she already has us thoroughly dog-whipped and she hasn’t even had her first litter. Quite an impressive feat for a four-footed, non-verbal fur ball little more than half the size of my son’s gym bag.

Monday's Child

Birth Days
Monday's Child is fair of face
Tuesday's Child is full of grace
Wednesday's Child is full of woe
Thursday's Child has far to go
Friday's Child is loving and giving
Saturday's Child works hard for a living
But the Child that is born on the Sabbath Day
Is witty and wise and good and gay!

“Mommy, Mommy, can we go back to Hong Kong Disneyland?”

My second child Niccolo is aglow with excitement. Ever since we brought him to neighboring Hong Kong’s Disneyland, it has become his regular mantra to ask if we’ll be returning.

“Of course we can,” I say. “What do you want to do when we get there?”

“I want to see Mickey Mouse and Donald and Goofy,” he gaily informs me.

Born on a Monday, Niccolo is indeed fair of face. But nineteen years ago, he was diagnosed with autism, a life-long disorder that affects his communication, adaptation and social skills. A person with autism has been likened to an alien from another planet crash-landing on Earth. Most cannot cope with their surroundings. Many retreat into a world of their own where they feel safe and they know the rules of existence because it is they who made them.

No parent is ever prepared to receive such news. PV and I certainly were not. But after crying over it, we set ourselves to doing what we could to help our son. Considering the severity of Niccolo’s problems and the acute lack of special schools and services geared specifically towards children with autism in this country, we had our work cut out for us.

When he was first diagnosed, Niccolo didn’t speak, was extremely picky about his food, hated loud sounds of any kind, was frightened by certain colors, and couldn’t stand certain sensations on his skin. For instance the water from the shower would make him scream in pain and fear. He would refuse some foods simply because their colors or textures offended him yet obsessively ate certain dishes almost to the exclusion of others. Because he could not verbally tell us if there was something wrong, we couldn’t always understand him and that would in turn lead to tantrums galore. He also could not endure being among a lot of people.

Imagine what bringing him to a birthday party or family reunion was like. We would often retreat with him to one corner of the room lest the noises, colors and guests agitated him.

Mercifully, we were able to teach him certain basic functions much sooner than we expected. Such as toilet training and bathing and dressing himself. And eating without scattering half his food on the floor around him. And managing to cope with crowds. And becoming desensitized to the sounds, colors and sensations that used to traumatize him.

Several years and various doctors and special education schools, teachers and therapists later, he is a different child from the one who turned our world upside-down-side. And I don’t mean because he’s older.

He still cannot relate normally to other people—he has neither the communication nor social skills to do so. He continues to bear some of the quirky mannerisms that mark him as a person with autism. He cannot be mainstreamed—that is, go to a regular school—but must be tutored on an individual basis.

But on the other hand, he is an openly affectionate boy who enjoys being loved in turn. This is a blessing to us for many of his peers cannot stand to be embraced even by their own parents. He is fond of babies and small children and is very protective of Jonathan and their younger cousins. He can tell us what he needs or wants and can even converse with us albeit in his own limited way. He’s a whiz at many computer games, particularly those that demand good memory, quick reflexes and precise use of the mouse.

We can bring him just about anywhere—church, the movies, parties, out-of-town vacations and even trips abroad. We once brought him to Hong Kong in August, the height of the tourist influx from the mainland, and he endured hour-long waits in lines with minimal fuss. And he always sticks to us when we are in an unfamiliar place, which is especially reassuring when one reads horror stories about other children with autism wandering off seldom to be seen again.

What else? Oh yes, he now eats anything and everything. Not bad for a child who was once limited to fried chicken, spaghetti, chocolate and sinigang soup.

Big deal, some people might think. But to those who have watched him grow and develop, each forward step he takes is reason for rejoicing. And when he makes a hop—children with autism seldom improve by leaps and bounds—we deem it a miracle of the highest order.

He’ll probably need our care and support for the rest of his life. We’ve accepted that it is unlikely he’ll ever be able to live independently. Bryan and Jonathan have already promised to take care of him when the responsibility falls to them.

On the other hand, the chances of his childlike innocence completely vanishing are minimal. He may learn how to curse by copying someone else but he won’t comprehend the meaning or malice behind it. Bryan likes to say that Niccolo is already assured of a place in Heaven because he knows no evil.

“Mommy, can we go back to Hong Kong Disneyland?” he asks on yet another day.

Niccolo will not tire of repeating this question until we actually take him back there.

“How about if we go to Disney World in the States?” I suggest.

“Yeah!” he says elatedly.

“And what will you do there?”

“I want to see Woody and Buzz Lightyear! I want to ride the Pirates of the Carribean!”

Would we exchange him for a ‘normal’ child, well-meaning people sometimes ask.

We look at Niccolo. He is aglow with excitement and the sweetest smile creases his mouth. No, we always answer.

He’s our son and we love him. And what's more, he loves us. In a world so woefully short of love, that is the most precious gift of all.

It's Not the Scenery, It's the Attitude by Monette

The shrimps were as sweet and succulent as only fresh shrimp can be. The grilled squid was unbelievably tender and the labahita? Heaven on a plate—firm, juicy and still tasting of the sea. Someone mentioned its texture reminded him of crab meat, at which point the real crabs were remembered, brought out and demolished as happily and rapidly as everything that came before. Even the simple cucumber salad was scrumptious and the perfect foil to all that seafood. Only thing is we noticed that the dipping sauces were increasing rather than diminishing. That's when we realized the thatched roof of our hut was open right down its middle—narrow enough to keep the sun out but wide enough to let the rain in and onto us and our feast. So did we stop eating, pack up and look for another hut? Nope.

PV and I flew to Palawan two weeks ago to attend a meeting for the BCBP (that's our Catholic renewal community, the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals) Chapter Heads of our region. It was my first trip to Palawan and, to my surprise, PV's as well. I'd thought he'd already visited every nook and cranny of the country (with exception of Batanes for obvious reasons) during his days with McCann-Erickson and the Coca-Cola account. So since we were both first-timers, we tried to experience as much of Palawan as was possible in the span of our three-day stay. That meant island-hopping around Honda Bay and taking a pre-dawn drive to Sabang Beach on the way to the much raved about Underground River. That also entailed travelling by boat more often than I was comfortable with. But, hey, such adventures may not come one's way again (or at least in the foreseeable future) so I steeled myself, made certain I'd properly secured my life vest and breathed a prayer whenever the boatman slowed the boat in order to smoothly ride out large waves.

It was during the Honda Bay outing that we—eight couples, two kids and one BCBP mission director turned tourist guide—experienced the joys and hilarity of eating in the rain. It's rainy down yonder these days so both the sky and the sea were varying shades of gray when we set out for Snake Island and our seaside picnic. We weren't at all surprised when it started to rain in the middle of lunch. It was that nice long hole in the roof that caught us flat-footed. Yet all that water seeping down on everything didn't deter us from finishing our lunch. In fact, we were more concerned about the food getting wet than ourselves. 

We actually held our umbrellas over the dishes while we got thoroughly soaked without yet having taken a dip in the sea. But it was fun and funny if a little surreal. No one cared about our bedraggled appearances or the fact that we were devouring everything in sight with as much gusto as lumberjacks after a long day's work. And there was one unexpected benefit. We didn't have to wash the plates and utensils; we just let the rain dripping in from above do the job for us! And we still wound up with satisfied palates and pleasantly full stomachs, which was more than can be said for a large family of Badjaos that wandered into our vicinity. 

 It was quite heartbreaking when the family patriarch came to us and begged for our leftover rice. Their obvious hunger made us wish we had more than cold rice, the remnants of the cucumber salad and a few bananas to give them. As we left Snake Island and headed off to Pandan Island, we saw them eating what we'd managed to spare them with an urgency born of deprivation. It made us realize all the more how blessed we all are, a rained on picnic lunch notwithstanding.

The trip to the Underground River the following day had its own unique charm. We left our bed-and-breakfast at a-dark-as-night 5:30 in the morning accompanied by a very pregnant and very loquacious tour guide. With four of us, PV and myself included, scheduled to fly back to Manila in the early afternoon, we decided to play it safe and try to be the first in line for the river tour so that we could get back in time to shower and head for the airport. During peak season, people have to line up for hours at a time for a boat and a boatman cum guide. We'd also been tipped off that the second half of a several hundreds strong contingent from Luzon was scheduled to take the tour the same day. We only hoped that it wouldn't rain that morning because a heavy downpour raises the water level of the river and makes the entrance impassable. Luck was with us however and I have to confess that was one of the most memorable tours I've ever taken. 

We all came out of it more humbled than ever by the power and creativity of God. I say creativity because the natural limestone "sculptures" we saw within have to be seen to be believed. They are simply incredible. Add to that the fact that it takes hundreds of years for stalactites and stalagmites to finally meet and join in the middle to become towering limestone pillars and millennia for the biggest and most intricate forms to grow—well, if that doesn't make one feel like a very small speck in the vastness of time and space I don't know what will. 

By the way, did I mention the bats and swallows? They were everywhere. The swallows dove and swerved and glided every which way while the slumbering bats clung to the walls in such numbers it was sometimes hard to see the cave walls for the bats. By the way, the Underground River swallows are of the same species whose saliva is the glue that holds their nests together and is the primary ingredient in "Bird's Nest Soup". For those of you who didn't know you were ingesting gelled bird spit when you dined on this famous Chinese soup, go ahead and gag. It kind of gives new meaning to the old saw "What you don't know won't hurt you", doesn't it? Anyway, I was relieved to learn that the bird nests inside the cave can't be harvested for culinary purposes, commercial or otherwise. I rather like the idea of those swallows and bats living relatively unbothered by humans in their subterranean haven. 

The river tours end in late afternoon leaving the cave denizens in peace for a good part of the day. We returned to Sabang Beach and had a really early lunch at 10:30. Some of the men including my hubby decided to try out tamilok, a supposed delicacy a girl was hawking nearby. She said it was a kind of marine worm. It looked like a glutinous mound of clumped together grayish squid tentacles to me! Dipped in spicy vinegar and eaten raw, the vendor claimed it tastes better than oysters on the half shell. The guys enthusiastically concurred but I decided to take their word for it. I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to food but I have my limits and doing an Extreme Cuisine demonstration with something that unappetizing in name and appearance is way beyond those limits. 

Looking back, I realize it wasn't merely the new sights and sounds that made our visit to Palawan so enjoyable. It was the company we kept and the positive attitude of that company that ensured our trip would be a happy and memorable one. It's something to always keep in mind when embarking on something new whether it's a place, a venture of some kind or an experiment in one's life—better to see one's glass as half full rather than half empty. And it won't hurt to imagine champagne in that glass either—or an extra thick double chocolate milk shake—whatever floats your boat. If you consistently look for the silver lining, you may not even notice the accompanying cloud.