Upside Down Baked Macaroni
"Good morning, Sir! Ito ba ang anak mo?"
"Oo, ito si Fatima. Fatima, ito si Ate Vangie. Sandali lang, ha. Bili muna ako ng Baked Macaroni."
This conversation occurred in what seems like a lifetime ago. At 1998, the entire world was thrust into a financial crisis, Fidel V. Ramos was nearing the end of his presidential term, Joseph Estrada was about to assume office, the Ateneo still had the Cervini Pool, but most importantly, the Live and Learn Pre-school in Katipunan Avenue was within walking distance of Shoppersville. At 1 pm nearly sixteen years ago, Papa picked me up from a morning filled with story telling, finger painting, and building blocks carrying a second-choice lunch for a little girl who's first set of teeth had just finished growing.Â
Later that year, my grandfather from Negros passed away. Before I had even turned four years old, we left the fast-paced city life for the provincial quiet of Bacolod City. I began kindergarten at Creative Beginners with other kids who spoke to me in a strange sing-song intonation and slowly developed the typical Negrense sweet tooth. Weekends at the farm were filled with homemade chocolate from grandmother's cacao tree and small tubo Papa would pick from the harvest, while school lunches at the St. Scholastica's Academy canteen were always Chicken Inasal.
However, summers were not spent in Bacolod. The moment classes would end, my parents and I would rejoin the Nisperos family in Metro Manila where I would have to adjust once more to smog-filled skies, eight-lane highways, and two-hour traffic. No summer was ever the same, and every break was landmarked with a different life event. There was the first summer back in Manila right after I had moved to Negros when I was four. Then there was the year I became an official "Ate" to my baby cousin Francis, who fondly called me "Ate Mima" because he couldn't pronounce "Fatima." Three summers after that, my aunt went through a bad annulment and my cousins had to move in with my grandmother. Right before my Senior year at high school, I was an Ateneo ArtsWork Creative Writing participant and spent my month-long stay in Manila around what I hoped would soon be my college campus, and I spent the next summer enrolling in the Ateneo as a full student.Â
We always stayed at the Nisperos ancestral home in Loyola Heights, a mere five minutes away from Shoppersville's Baked Mac. No summer was ever complete without that childhood meal, and for sixteen years there was only one way I would eat it: upside down. The Baked Mac was a square block of soft elbow pasta cooked in a spicy tomato sauce with baloney slices topped with melted cheese and served with a small toasted bread roll. The cheese was my favorite part of the Baked Mac, so in the interest of delayed gratification, I would flip the block of pasta upside down so I could savor the warm cheesy goodness. The eleven month, eleven minute wait somehow made the cheese taste all the better. This was how I punctuated every summer vacation.
My entire life has revolved around a hybrid dynamic between my Tagalog father and his family in fast-paced, industrialized Metro Manila and my Illongga mother and her home in small town, ever-predictable Bacolod City. I studied in the province and spent the break in the big city; Manila was always changing while Bacolod stayed the same, and it was this way for the longest time. But the moment I became a college Freshman, my long held best-of-both-worlds routine made a sharp 180 degree turn as I spent the school year in the city and returned to the province every school holiday. Suddenly, the numbered school days, scheduled examinations, and traffic rush hours became my source of routine and stability, while I returned to Bacolod to see that all my old teachers had retired, my high school friends suddenly had boyfriends and girlfriends, and my parents had lost an astonishing amount of hair. One year at the Ateneo had me unlearning many of my fundamental principles and beliefs, well beyond English and Theology. At seventeen, I realized I had always been just a visitor to Manila, and now I had become a stranger to Bacolod.Â
It is now 2014 and Live and Learn Pre-school is now Pizza Hut and Dairy Queen and the cacao tree at the farm house has long since died, but despite the Rustan's Grocery and SM SaveMore along Katipunan, Shoppersville has remained almost completely unchanged, save for a new sign and paint job. Vangie still works there, and never fails to greet me every time I visit and buy Baked Mac I always eat upside down. I don’t think I know how to eat it any other way.
