My father is the best man I ever knew. He was 31 when he met my mother who is 17 that time. They fell in love despite of the fact that they had an age gap of 14 years. After a year of relationship, they decided to finally get married. They had six children, and I, being the second child witnessed all the journey of them being together. Growing up, I noticed that he was the one who cooks our food. On Saturdays, market day in our province, he is the one who mostly go to market to buy our supplies though sometimes, my mother went to do so. Father loves to cook pork adobo in big cuts then he’ll place it in a glass jar, if you want to eat adobo, you can get some in that jar, it lasts for a week or two. Another one of his favorites are ginataang laing with kuhol, ginataang langka with sardines, and the best is his native chicken adobo sa gata with green papaya and sili leaves. I love those foods, they are my father’s trademark in our neighborhood. Even when there is an occasion, he is the one who cooks the food. I remember that during New Year’s Eve, he always cook sotanghon guisado coz he doesn’t want to eat spaghetti. I asked him why and he just answered it’s kinda sour.
He is a very responsible person. He faced so many hardships in life. He has no stable job, but he grabbed any opportunity of having money and earn for his family. He is sometimes a handicraft man, he sometimes transports coco lumber from far place to the main road, he sells ready to wear dresses and many other things he does for the sake of earnings. He is a very good man. He finds time in helping my mother with the laundry, he is very fond of taking care of my little siblings. He loved his family so much. We are the love of his life. But another thing that gives satisfaction and contentment to him is his another love, planting. He is so much into planting, he love to plant eggplants, sweet potato, peanuts and cassava. It gave so much happiness to him. The best part of it is it helped us in our living. He had a big space to plant. I just want to share to you that during my elementary days, I woke up early to pick some eggplants and sell it to the neighborhood for my allowance. We frequently cook eggplants for our viand. Pritong talong, tortang talong, ginisang talong, adobong talong, lahat na yata ng pwedeng gawin sa talong natikman ko na hehe. Likewise, when my father harvested his other crops, I used to go to my neighbors to ask if they are going to buy. I went to their house one by one taking their orders of how many kilos of each crop, the I delivers it and get their payment. The payment that we received is used in buying rice and other necessities in the house. We often had our snacks of boiled sweet potato, camote que, sweetened camote with tapioca pearls, sweet cassava, and boiled peanuts. By the way, the place where my father is planting is near a river, he gets water there for the plants and when he allowed us to go there with him, we ask our friends to go with us and swim on that river. We brought rice and cooked it there then we’ll get camote tops for the viand. We had so much joy, we swim and swim while father plant his crops. He loves it and we let him do the things he loves to do.
