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Sunday, January 08, 2006
Gil: The grand holiday scheme!
By Sandy Gil
Sunday Dunes
I JUST got back from Manila from a chaotic and riotous holiday bedlam with my children and the rest of my big family! And I have a million and one happy and crazy stories to tell... that is, I have a collection of interesting anecdotes for the next couple of Sunday Dunes columns. But allow me to share these with you one by one so that together, we can savor the true meaning of life (?).
-o0o-
One of the first people whom I encountered when I stepped into our Manila home was my second child, 18-year-old Diego. What fascinated me to the hilt was that Diego, a 5 foot 9 inch hunk of a boy and man, had taken over the role that his older sister, Ella, who is now a working girl, had been in charge of for the past ten Christmas holidays. Funded by his father, Diego had done -- all by his lonesome self -- the entire Christmas gift shopping as well as the Christmas groceries for the holiday menu that he himself had organized.
Buying gifts for some 70 relatives of various ages and genders, likes and phases, is no joke. But Diego did it. Easy, he told me. Worse, he said, was doing the groceries. Ella and 13-year-old Toni needed feminine stuff like panty liners and napkins, etc. And Diego was at a complete loss in the grocery. He had thought about asking assistance from the promo ladies in the supermarket, but decided to call her sisters on his mobile phone instead. Still, he managed to buy the wrong stuff.
-o0o-
By the time I arrived, I caught Diego baking chocolate chip cookies. Duh? A really messy albeit happy scene in the kitchen greeted me, mind you. He tried to hug me with hands and arms full of flour and remnants of eggshells. I offered my cheeks for a kiss instead, totally unaware that he had chocolate stains all over his mouth. Oh well... too late.
I asked him what the cookies were for. Diego sat and explained to me that he decided to bake cookies and pack these up in batches as Christmas gifts for the uncle and aunt couples on both sides of the families. In total, there were about 15 couples to bake cookies for -- and I silently thought, there goes our LPG supply for the holidays!
The problem was that, as Diego waited for the second batch of cookies to bake, he kept mindlessly popping the first batch of baked cookies into his mouth. There goes the Christmas gift for the uncles and aunts! Slowly, it dawned on Diego and me that his idea about chocolate cookies was not going to work.
With Christmas just six days away, a grand scheme had to be plotted!
-o0o-
So off we went to a supermarket near the house. We secretly decided to re-pack in colorful Japanese paper those delicious polvoron from Goldilocks Bakeshop, and claim their making for our own! It was a great plot, cheaper and easier too -- although Diego was apprehensive about his skills in wrapping up those delicate polvoron pieces.
We had to be quick in cutting the Japanese paper, unwrapping and re-wrapping the polvoron so that no one in the family would catch us in our devious plan. It was fortunate that Toni was staying over at her classmate's home. I had wanted to let Toni in the plan, but Diego warned me that Toni posts all our stories in her Friendster and Google accounts on the internet. It was also good that Ella was still at work, and that their father was not coming home for dinner either. So only our yaya, Ate Grace, was in on the grand scheme. And she helped in re-packing most of the polvoron!
As we merrily went about the tedious task of lovingly wrapping each polvoron, Diego expressed his anxiety that if uncle/aunt couples enjoyed the polvoron, and then asked him for more, what would he do? Or, what if they wanted to provide him with the capital to establish a polvoron business to compete with Goldilocks? We'll cross the bridge when we get there, anak, I said. After all, I will be back in Davao by then, and you will be left in Manila to deal with such interesting possibilities.
-o0o-
And so... Christmas went by, and no one in the family ever found out about our grand scheme. Of course, everyone raved about the gift packs of delicious polvoron. I gave Diego all the credit. And Diego said I had helped too.
Thank God for those wonderful polvoron from Goldilocks Bakeshop! Diego and I had the most scheming merry holidays! And a whole lot of chocolate cookies to spare!
(January 8, 2006 issue)
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