On All Souls’ Day we decided to scatter Dad’s ashes, heretofore in an urn beside our son Bey’s, in a stand-up “tabernacle” outside Crescent Moon Café. Dad’s ashes were to be set free to mingle with the earth around the oldest mango tree by the gate.
Dad’s urn had been made by potter Lanelle, our daughter-in-law. Time was when she wasn’t making any funeral urns. But a woman came by one day, insisting on buying one. The visitor wouldn’t stop badgering her until the exasperated Lanelle went to her storeroom and emerged with “an urn,” actually a four-sided cookie jar. Here, she said. The lady bought the “urn” with profuse thanks. And that’s how Lanelle’s newest addition to her studio pottery line began.
Dad’s urn turned out to be very heavy. The ashes inside were in a big plastic bag—they were white and pulverized like seashells, and just as weighty. We put lighted candles around the roots of the mango tree, which had been there practically forever. Then we sent Dad our prayers and good wishes.
The ceremony ended up in “Dad’s bahay kubo,” a structure separated by a stretch of garden from Roy and Wendy’s abode. The hut was all bamboo inside, with slanting window seats, bamboo furniture and a kitchenette. The bathroom is unique in that it is minus one wall and looks out on a small enclosed and very lush garden.
The next compartment has a big bathtub equipped with a hot and cold water Jacuzzi. When the bathtub was being delivered to Wendy’s place, the road to which is narrow and bordered with informal settlers, the delivery man couldn’t locate it. It stands at the end of that road which considerably widens and ends up by a subdivision.
Hollering
The exasperated delivery man started hollering loudly in the narrow lane, “Sino ba sa inyong mga squatter ang nag-order ng Jacuzzi?” And forthwith he was directed to the correct place.
Arcus and family were still in Kyoto. Every one of the four families, including me, however, had brought a special dish for the lunch. But we all ended up eating mostly Roy Regalado’s cooking—very delicious gindara that he had wood-smoked all the day before, and also tender, well-marinated beef ribs. What was left over was quickly wrapped up by everyone for “take home.”
The adjacent property is Crescent Moon Café. Under Lanelle’s stewardship it has survived for at least 20 years. Before Bey died at 42 years old of a lingering kidney disease, he kept scribbling in a notebook in the hospital. I thought he was writing deep thoughts on mortality. Actually he was sketching a floor plan for a restaurant he and Lanelle would build! He and his brother Mol were planning its menu. Bey wanted so to live.
They would serve Thai food, which was then hardly known in Manila yet. By far the better cook, Mol had learned the exotic cuisine from Wit, a Thai friend who liked to drink with him and cook all kinds of Thai food in his small pad. By the time the foreigner had to go back home, Mol had learned practically all the dishes.
As a last hurrah, Bey and Mol invited Wit to do a Valentine cookfest in the yard in front of the still unfinished café. Wendy strung up bedspreads and printed clothes on the branches of the trees to provide the shade for the tables. The Thai cook directed the operations in the hut with Mol as his assistant. There were lots of live mudfish swimming in a tub and all the ingredients for tom yum soup, pad Thai noodles, fried catfish with mango salad, Thai-style pata tim.
Lanelle, whom we called “the cultural center of Antipolo,” had sold the tickets, and practically the whole town turned up. We were so scared the food would run out. It didn’t. The cookfest laid the foundation for Crescent Moon Café’s success.
Food adventure
Its Sunday lunches in the new structure were always full. Many of the diners came all the way from Manila, eager to try the exotic, hot new dishes. It was a food adventure.
Every one of the family pitched in: Dad and the driver directing the parking; Wendy growing and providing the alagaw leaves for the pica-pica, seeing to the décor and filling the tables with flowers; Roy plating and checking the dishes as they came out of the kitchen; Mol (who was not yet married to Lilli-Ann), of course, cooking; and me helping Bey in entertaining the diners. Lanelle was managing the waiters and the cash register and selling a lot of pottery on the side.
But when Bey died of a prolonged illness, things changed. Lanelle told the family she would no longer need their voluntary services. She said she wanted to stop all the special Sunday lunches because the stock for it would always have to wait in the freezer from Monday until the following Sunday when Mol had no work, and could come.
She wanted to run the café her own way, serving only country dishes so that the café could make some money. Everyone was stunned. They had been fired!
That’s when maternal authority steps in. Bey is dead, I told them, seriously, the next day. The café is now solely Lanelle’s. It’s her right to do what she wants with it and no one has the right to interfere. Finally, everyone understood and accepted it. The family soon bounced back. It has remained as intact and loving as ever.
With so many soulful memories, I just can’t imagine everything, everything, eventually just turning into dust.