Waxing nostalgic

Certain smells make me nostalgic. This morning I was walking around Camalig and Daraga in Albay and there were smells in the air that reminded me so much of those days I spent in my grandmother’s house in a little barrio in Camarines Sur.

The smell of firewood burning reminds me of my grandmother’s kitchen where she cooked food that as a child I wouldn’t eat because everything she cooks seems to taste of smoke. I remember being six years old and wrinkling my nose while I’m telling my mother that the food tastes of smoke. My mother responds by saying that I was just imagining that it tasted like smoke. She would eat some and say, “It doesn’t taste like smoke at all. See, I’m eating it.” But, I was a stubborn child. I would pout and sulk till they go scampering around for anything that I could eat that doesn’t taste like smoke.

To make matters worse, I wouldn’t drink because the water that my grandmother keeps in her earthen jar “tastes of kalawang (rust)”. She draws her water from the pump and yes, it does have a faint taste, which they claim disappears when the water is stored in an earthen jar. Well, my six year old taste buds cannot be easily fooled. I am after all used to drinking chlorinated water from a faucet in the city. So, off my cousins would go to get me some buko (young coconut) so I could drink the coconut water. I could have survived on coconut water and the meat of the young coconut if my mother didn’t force me to eat proper food.

I also didn’t want to eat off the usual plates that my grandmother uses – the kind made of the same material from which old chamber pots (arinola) are made of (for the life of me, I can’t remember now what that material is called). So, my grandmother would open her baul (wooden chest) filled with naphthalene balls to get her ceramic plates, her glasses and her spoons and forks because little six year old me wouldn’t eat with bare hands using the usual plates nor would she drink from my grandmother’s daod.

What is a daod you ask? This is how I remember it: it is a circular earthen bowl that is as black as night, which my grandmother fills with water from her earthen jar using a water dipper made of a coconut shell with wooden handle. Filled with water, the daod is then placed at the table as a communal drinking vessel. Everyone drinks from it except for me. Little six year old me complains that she can’t drink from it because she can’t see anything when she drinks from it (it is black and scary). I told my mother that it is probably dirty because it is black and because everyone drinks from it. So, my mother explains that it is black because the way it is cleaned is by putting rice husks inside it and burning the husks, then rinsed and left to dry. This process makes the water that is put there taste a bit smoky, which my mother affirms makes the water delicious. I didn’t believe her of course. I would rather have buko juice than drink from a communal black bowl that has never been cleaned with detergent.

I was a fastidious child. No wonder my older brother was my grandmother’s favourite. I bet my grandmother has told my mother countless of times never to bring me to her house. Still, my mother left me to her care during one summer vacation when I was around 8 years old.

And, yes… I tormented my poor grandmother. She had to send my cousin to the next barrio to buy blocks of ice, cut them up into smaller pieces and put them in a water jug so I could have cold water to drink. There was no electricity at that time in her barrio so she didn’t have a refrigerator. Once the cold water runs out, I’m back to drinking buko juice until another cousin is sent again to buy ice.

Eventually, I did learn to drink water drawn from her earthen jar even without ice (but never drank from the daod) and I did learn to eat food that tastes of smoke, and she did finally find a viand that I would gladly eat aside from fried fish and fried chicken (from her coop). I learned to eat pinangat (small shrimps and young coconut chopped and wrapped in gabi leaves and cooked in coconut milk) and laing (gabi leaves cooked in coconut milk), and didn’t mind eating this every single day.

I guess she somewhat started liking me then. She cried when I finally had to go home. Oh wait… perhaps those were tears of happiness… for finally getting rid of me.

This morning I was walking around Camalig and Daraga, and I suddenly missed my mother and my grandmother, and those wonderful times I spent with them in the province. Funny how the simple smell of burning firewood has brought back all these childhood memories.