Salty and Fruity

I would have liked to write something profound to start off this New Year. Reflect on the experiences of 2007 or at least try to the conventional route of stating the resolutions I’m going to break for 2008. Ironically, they won’t be resolutions anymore, but just plain wishful thinking.

Truth is, I have resolved to make changes long before this whole firecracking, superstition-laded occasion. And changes which do not even allow me to have transition periods to ease into. They’re the kind of things that you just have to let go once and for all. Or jump into without hesitations. No residue.

So anyway, what is amusing about New Year celebrations is all the supposedly luck-inducing traditions. Some of which my mother and sister only practiced this year. I swear, they have waaay too much time on their hands and watch waaay too much television.

Just before midnight yesterday, Mae almost stepped into me while I was lying down, reading in my bed. I sleep on a bed mattress on the floor, by the way. Just below the bedroom windows. And the whole reason for my almost broken fibula is that my sister is sprinkling salt all over the house and was trying to throw some out of our window. No kidding. Salt all over the house. Like fresh fish just before they’re fried. And not only that, while she was generously scattering Sodium Chloride in our home, she was loudly saying – and I am quoting this verbatim: “Be away! Be away!”

And of course, I had to ask. I don’t know why I subject myself to further weirdness, but I just had to ask. Be away with what? Evil spirits, she says. Of course. That makes perfect sense. Why didn’t I think of that?

Early this afternoon, dining table talk turned fruity. I mean, literally pertaining to fruits. Mae’s favorite fruit is the banana (“because they’re so friendly”), we know that Kuya’s is Lanzones, while mine is pears. And whenever talk turn to this direction, my mother would always recall the fruit cravings she had when she was conceiving each of us. She craved coconut meat when she had me. Not just any coconut meat, she only liked it when it was scooped from the coconut shell whole, shaped like a small cup of edible white meat. I joked that I should’ve been born with fairer complexion. But I thought that wouldn’t be too fair to my siblings: Washington apple red for my Kuya and mango yellow for Mae. What an unhealthy hepatitis complexion that would have been.

I laugh to myself as I take a piece of kiat-kiat from the fruit basket and wonder if it was one of the dozens that my mother rolled into the floor when the clock struck midnight.