Tuesday, February 06, 2007 Lyrical Lifestyle memories By Zac Faelnar-Camar
IN 1932, my grandfather, the late Atty. Vicente “Tingting” L. Faelnar, built his home on a corner of Gorordo Avenue in Cebu City.
In those gentle days, my prominent but unassuming grandfather chose not a house of palatial proportions, but one which to the insistence of my grandmother, Rosario Gerona, was all at once stately and yet modest, enough to be called “home”, surrounded by fields that crossed the nearby brook and stretched towards the mountains.
In that elegant home, designed by a British architect, my father, Manuel Lino, grew up with his siblings. During the Japanese Invasion in World War II, their family voyaged on foot to as far south as Carcar, leaving their beautiful house behind. The house fell victim to Japanese occupants who, I have been told, used it as their headquarters, and was later bombed during the Liberation. Upon their return after the war, they rebuilt the house in a rather different fashion, leaving out many of the embellishments that once adorned it.
Due to these significant historical world events, my memory has automatically segregated into ‘pre-war’ and ‘post-war’ in the same manner that we have ‘early childhood’, ‘teenage’ and ‘college’ memories. In my case, ‘pre-war’ refers to the family memories that I long to have had myself, while ‘post-war’ refers to those I also wish to have had myself up to the time I could remember anything at all! The reason for this is that there is something so magically fascinating about the stories of old that fills the void in anyone’s personal history in an indescribably enriching way.
The post-war version of my ancestral home retained its high ceilings, elegant wooden flooring and large front lawn, although the verdant fields that once enveloped it were replaced by bustling streets and, much later, commercial centers. This is the first home I knew after being born. By the age of two, I moved to faraway Manila where I grew up and still somewhat reluctantly reside today. Unlike most Manileños who’d spend endless summers and chilly Christmas days in Baguio, I relished every vacation spent in Cebu in what was known to our family as “Mamá’s House” or to us little kids as “The Big House”.
Mamá’s House was, for the most part of my childhood memory, a busy place with the comings and goings of family members, relatives and friends from here and abroad. Still clear in my head are the buzzing sounds of grown-up conversation, laughter and piano tunes; the appetizing scents of soups, stews and sizzling dishes; the harmonious sight of gatherings around the large pre-war formal dining table where Mamá Sayong and Papá Tingting sat with all the grown-ups while we, the grandchildren, dined al fresco at the azotea fronting the garden.
I can still hear my grandmother call out to our noisy bunch to keep it down or read out from her treasured Reader’s Digest collection. I can still see my grandfather, silent and observant, on his armchair at the foyer. I can still taste my childhood favorites from Mamá’s kitchen – pork chops, pochero and fruit salad, none of which I can seem to replicate.
I have listened to my dad; titas and titos recount busier days at The Big House. Most recently at this year’s Escaño Reunion where my family and I were guests, Tito Cheling Sala told me of fond days of his youth spent crossing the street from his mother’s house, “Battig”, to my grandmother’s house – “to eat!” It’s funny to note that it’s exactly one reason my dad had often crossed the street as well. Those days wouldn’t have been much different from the time I enjoyed my turn inviting college friends over.
Mamá’s House, “The Big House”, was a home full of memories. Although it sits silently in its corner, almost unnoticeable behind the thickets of half-a-century-old trees, I often long to enter those iron gates that lock out the world and bring me to that magical and genteel pre-war age I have often heard about.
In the recently launched, scrumptious coffee-table book, Memories of Philippine Kitchens, New York’s celebrated restaurateurs, Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan have fantastically managed to enrich our personal memories of what Filipino food is all about. Not only do they share their broad culinary knowledge, but reminisce from stories of old as well, complemented by ancestral portraits and the fresh photographs of Neal Oshima.
Notable for us Cebuanos is the section dedicated to the Visayas for The Freshest Seafood in the Philippines, and pages of The Escaño Recipe Collection of Cebu, provided by Tita Tina Unchuan, from which began the author’s “quest to collect family recipes.”
Amy Besa begins her first chapter with memories of her maternal grandmother, Carmen Oliva Camara, fondly known as Nanay. The stories are narrated with the help of the siblings Dr. Solita Camara-Besa (Amy’s mother), Dr. Augusto Camara (my husband’s father), and Isabel Camara-Garcia. As one carefully digests page after page, it becomes evident how a home full of memories is a treasure to savor and share rather than to silently tuck away.
Outweighing sentimentality, bringing a home full of memories back to life through stories re-told is a journey of discovery; a quest that enables us to better know who we are. In her dedication, to Martin and I, Amy wrote, “What a lovely opportunity to celebrate the story of the Camaras and then get to know my cousins more. This is the best gift that the book gave.”
