Steve is on (to) something

I always look forward to when summer comes around. The young Maria Claras come out to cool themselves in the shade of the lubi. Reclining on their chairs, their bosoms subtly heave as they fan the humid air from their faces. Others prefer to lounge by their windows, mamintana what we call it, and as they lean out to catch the breeze, their breasts strain against the cloth, and then some hapless young man walks right into a lamp post as they giggle in delight.

On Sunday afternoons, we doze off to the distant cheering of the sabungeros, and I know that somewhere, a family is going to have chicken tinola for supper. They say that in Spain, everyone sleeps during siesta because the heat weighs on the eyelids. Somehow, I cannot imagine anything getting hotter than two in the afternoon. Heck, even the flies get sleepy, and manang gleefully swats them with a folded-up copy of yesterday’s tabloid.

I’ve never read any of those, though there is always a copy on her table. Somehow, Hataw, Banat, and other such names manage to dissipate my interest. Not to mention the Bisaya I am unfamiliar with. God knows how conyo we here in the city have become. I try to learn a new word or two whenever lola comes around.

I’d sit by her shoulder as she peeled gabi for her binignit. She never allowed us to do this because while kamote was a piece of cake to pare, gabi oozed and got your hands all sticky and then you’d itch and itch and lola would say ‘I told you so’. Maybe this was what made her binignit extra special. No other was as delicious because no other was prepared while lecturing apos. And lola was one to lecture. She is ‘teaching by example’ incarnate. She’d chide me and my siblings for not cleaning up and of course we’d be guilty because she’d been puttering about since dawn.