Ang Pasko ay Sumapit!

Pinoy Christmas songs were already playing in the house that Thursday, 9 a.m.

- BÜM D. TENORIO, JR.

There was excitement in my youngest brother Rod’s face as he put to full blast the volume of the Bluetooth speaker he recently received as an early gift from his US-based best friend Fe.

Always jolly Rod, a public high school teacher, was prancing to Ang Pasko ay Sumapit in the kitchen as he layered the bottom of the clay pot with banana leaves. Then one by one, he filled the pot with the fresh tulingan (skipjack tuna) he bought from the market early that day. Sinaing na tulingan, the recipe of which he learned from Candida, was what we would eat for dinner. Yes, dinner. Our late mother only served sinaing na tulingan if it was cooked for eight hours. Malambot pati tinik.

The fresh tulingan actually came with a little image of Padre Pio in another container. Food and faith were together in the bag. The former is nourishment for the body; the latter is all-around sustenance. Faith, after all is the food of the soul that knows “worrying is worthless,” to quote Fr. Dave Concepcion in one of his inspiring homilies. Rod, faithful and hopeful, woke up early that day to hear Mass at the Monastery of St. Clare in Cabuyao. He gifted me with the blessed image of Padre Pio. When he handed the image to me at home, I was replaying in my mind how Fr. Dave once quoted Padre Pio that worrying robs us of our joy. Fr. Dave said, “Worrying is like sitting on a rocking chair. It keeps you busy. It brings you nowhere.”

That morning, however, Rod cracked me up and brought me somewhere when he continued to dance in the kitchen as he gingerly piled the fish in the pot like a work of art. He learned it from our late mother: cooking is an art and music, whether sung or heard from the radio, is a reason a dish also becomes delicious. The dancing was something he learned from our mother, too.