tête-à-tête

Saturday, July 18, 2009

childhood stories: the recipe

My mom finished a degree in a university but typical of many country folks, she had lots of superstitious beliefs. For example, she wouldn't let us sweep dirt out when it was past six in the evening. The explanation: it would mean tossing blessings out of the house. So whenever she tidied the kitchen after dinner, she would whisk everything into a corner until morning. Not seeing any rational basis to it, I would often ignore this custom and get rid of every morsel of dirt that would go under the broom. Things would go a little crazy, messy, and scanty but I actually thought we were still much better off than most families. There's one superstition, though, that had always tickled my sense of reason.

Back in elementary, my classmates and I had to compete in a jingle contest. I was the team leader so, much was expected of me. On the day of the competition, my mom prepared two hard-boiled eggs, a hotdog, fried rice, and a glass of milk. I ate just one of the eggs but my mom said I had to eat both. Inquisitive as a kid, I asked why it had to be two. She explained that the hotdog meant 1 and two eggs were two zeros that, side by side, all form 100 for a perfect score. And the fried rice? In case everything else wouldn't work. Funny and illogical as I thought it was, it actually worked! We shouted the loudest, jumped the highest, and smiled the widest all the way to the top spot. We performed really amazingly at that time. Could it have been a simple coincidence? I had heard stories like that of a woman's passing a board exam because she wore the same shirt that her mom was in during her own exam and a guy winning the lotto twice because he bet in the same outlet. But they were not enough to make me believe such rituals really worked. On the other hand, I couldn't dismiss the possibility because my mom's "lucky recipe" worked over and over.

Before I graduated from elementary and high school, my classmates and I had to take two assessment exams called the National Elementary Achievement Test (NEAT) and the National Secondary Achievement Test (NSAT) respectively. For those two exams, I had the "right" ratio of eggs and hotdogs and a glass of milk at breakfast. I topped both tests. But NSAT was more rewarding because it added three more medals on my neck on graduation day for getting the highest scores in English, Science, and Filipino. Then there was winning a regional news writing contest which was my ticket to the historic Manila Hotel. Just hours after arriving from Manila, I took the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT) and passed.

What I really loved about those achievements was that, my mom never credited them to her "lucky recipe." She would always tell me that they were the fruits of rightfully using my knowledge to my advantage. I think what she really meant was, she was proud of me. And if there's any "recipe" that really helped me become the best, it was the combination of her and dad's unchanging love and prayers for me and my siblings.

Copyright © 2009 by DenniSinned2. All rights reserved.

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posted by dennisinned2 at 7/18/2009 02:55:00 PM 0 comments