If there is one person in the world who abhors eating, that would be my mother dearest. She is the only person I know who loses appetite in front of a table with colorful varieties of food. Her lifelong dream was for a scientist to develop a serum that would enable her to refrain from eating for 1 whole year while maintaining her strength and stamina.
So unlike her only daughter. My passion was, is, and will always be food! My stomach has the ability to expand itself to unlimited capacity when served with various sumptuous dishes.
People in Pampanga compared Nanay’s eating to a bird. They swear a bird eats more than her! Pampanga is famous for its gastronomic delicacies but Ima (Kapampangan word for mother) would rather eat alugbati (malabar spinach), saluyot (jute leaves) and labong (young bamboo shoot).
But indeed, people change. 2-3 years ago, she told us she didn’t want to eat veggies anymore! So we gave her meat instead. However, she would just chew the meat and extract the juice, not swallowing the piece. Nowadays, she would just eat fish and Henlin siomai.
She was never fond of sweets. Eating dessert was a mystery to her. Puzzled, she would ask “how can you still eat something after eating a meal?” I would bluntly tell her that the word dessert appears in the dictionary for a reason heheheh . . .
But surprise of all surprises, Nanay started eating a domino-like portion of Snickers after lunch just before the pandemic. She only stopped doing this around 3 months ago.
She used to eat 1/2 cup of rice but this was slowly reduced through the years. It is already a great miracle if she could finish 5 half-filled spoons of rice now.
Nanay weighed 99 lbs when she was transferred from South Cotabato to Pampanga. She was 110 lbs when she retired. Now she weighs 85 lbs—my weight when I turned 15. I was 90 lbs when I graduated from college (average increase of 1 lb every year). After only a month with Coca-Cola, my weight ballooned to 105 lbs! (Gaining an average of 1 lb every 2 days!)
Our greatest challenge now is how to coax Nanay to eat. She would always tell us that she is not hungry. It takes a lot of patience and persistence to convince her that it is only in her mind that she is full but in reality, she has not eaten yet. One time she told me: “Ayaw ko ng kumain. Ikaw, kahit na sa pagtanda mo, malakas ka pa din kumain.” (I don’t like to eat anymore. Unlike you, you will always eat a lot even when you grow old.”)
Well, no argument in that!
To be continued . . .
