Tapok

i.

THE HUSBAND and I have more differences than commonalities. One of those that has endured the years is our split over space.

The persnickety housekeeper in the family will clear space. I, on the other hand, fill space.

Our dining table is a favorite arena of contentions. The husband can spot a rumor of mold blighting the mahogany through the clear sheet of glass placed on top of the table. He will move aside the glass and obliterate every dingy spot before this blooms and levels up into Household 101 disaster.

Soap, water, baking soda, and vinegar. Any or a combination of these home staples can dissolve fungi without harming wood or the person cleaning.  Besides, the husband contends that it is not molds that he is up against; it is me.

To move aside a heavy and fragile sheet of glass, we first remove everything on the counter. I am sure the husband exaggerates when he points out that after he has cleared clutter, he only has to turn his back for me to leave on the cleared surface one or two items, which, given enough time, multiply exponentially.

“Exponentially” is a hyperbole (and not just because it is a mathematical term I need to look up and refresh for its exact meaning). Some folks love to look at sleeping babies, fresh bedsheets, grooming cats, and empty space. I like the last two.

Space is a blank sheet for doodling. A clearing on the dining table invites an interesting rock found in the garden, a water bottle, a book. Then I differentiate: an insulated water bottle to hold hot liquids, another in glass for the pretty water beading iced drinks make, a plastic one I can bring upstairs and not break. 

Books are even more exponential. I dig out and dust off a book that has a section I need to cite. Then I see another book while rummaging.  This fellow joins the first one on the table. Soon enough, on the space the husband cleared on the table, I have gathered a “tapok,” a pajama party, a fiesta.

Space cries out to be filled. Fill my cup.

 

ii.

In the 1980s, when the husband and I were development workers hoping to find fish to cook for dinner at the Badian Poblacion wet market, we often were too late or too plebian to compete with the tourists for the bigger, meatier fish. We ended up drifting towards the section where shellfish and small fish were sold by the “tapok,” meaning “heap” or “group” in Cebuano. 

At the end of the day, dinner was a meal that gathered all of us, field workers and the farmer and his family that adopted us. So while we inhaled in our imaginations the charbroiled perfection of fillets of “tangigue” (which never reached the Poblacion market as premium fish catch was diverted often to island resorts in Badian and neighboring Moalboal, diving capital in the south of Cebu), we brought home for sharing a few “tapok” of small fish or shellfish, which Mama Lomer fried, stewed or sauteed with kangkong grown on their land and shared with the pigs raised for the market. 

The “tapok” that looked so scanty on the wet tiled stalls of the market was more than enough to warm our stomachs as we ate and talked, washed up and talked, and talked some more as the men rolled and puffed dried “lomboy (duhat)” leaves wrapped around a small strip of tobacco leaf for the “likin (handrolled native cigarettes)” that suffused the hours until the murmurs fell quiet at midnight or early dawn.

Turn over and over the moment until it makes a small roll. Slot into the intimate spaces of memory and take out when hungry.  

iii.

On the first Sunday of Advent this year, I cleared our supper from the table for the lighting of the Advent wreath. The one table fixture the husband and I don’t disagree over is a small resin figurine of the Batang Balaan (Holy Child) in the crib, which stays on the table the whole year.

Since the counter was last cleared for mold extrication, a jumble of household objects has risen around the infant lying on the crib lined with half of a mahogany seed pod picked up one morning while sweeping the street. We intended to put the Child in the Manger at the center of our lives but inadvertently hemmed Him in with our clutter, distractions, routines.

In a household where cats nonchalantly crisscross or slumber on the table, it’s a wonder no canister has toppled and broken the Batang Balaan’s beatific smile and arms opened wide.

For the second year, my sister, niece, and I read every night during Advent one chapter from The Gospel According to Luke. Luke’s account covers the trajectory of the birth foretold of “a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger” (2:12) to the last meal when He gathered His disciples and quieted their fears and doubts by showing them “his hands and his feet” (24:40).

Luke organized his account into 24 chapters. By starting to read one chapter a night on Dec. 1, we reach the last chapter on the evening of the 24th of December, the eve of the birth in the manger.

According to Luke, shepherds were watching over their flocks sleeping under the night sky when an angel came into their midst. The shepherds later banded together to seek in Bethlehem what the angel augured: “a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2: 12).  

With every candle lit in the wreath, with every story read in the Bible, the distance dissipates between my sister and niece, and I.  We turn separate pages but retrace in unison the steps taken by the shepherds: believe, gather, seek.

Tapok, in Cebuano, also means to flock and gather around One who will never sleep on His watch over us.