Memories of ‘Nanay’
Alumni of the University of Santo Tomas and perhaps of other University Belt schools from the 1960s to the 1970s should remember Placida Santos Evangelista. Perhaps they better remember her as “Nanay” Ciding, the proprietress and mother hen of a nameless eatery in her family’s apartment on Dapitan Street in Sampaloc, where she served lunch family-style to all comers.
I met Nanay even before I met her daughter Peachy Yamsuan, who became my editor in chief at the Varsitarian, the UST’s student paper, a colleague, and now a dear friend. Some classmates had told me about the eatery and what I found was a small space filled with long tables and chairs and occupied by hungry students. Meals were served family-style: Rice and viands were placed at the center of the table and diners were free to get as much as they wanted. But Nanay made exceptions, including one or two male classmates who were barred from the premises because of their enormous appetites. But when Nanay took a fancy to you, as she did to me, she would serve her “specials,” including homemade tocino the flavor of which I have yet to encounter again.
But it wasn’t just the food that made me return time and again to Dapitan. It was Nanay, who would greet her young guests heartily and usher them to vacant seats, commenting on their weight gain (or loss), dishing out advice, making astute political observations. Even if we were paying customers, she made us feel like family—her family—and her warm, boisterous presence was such a comfort in the midst of the stressful U-Belt environment.
Peachy is the fourth of five children of Nanay Ciding and her husband Florentino. The eldest, Yoly (“Ateng” to the family), was an engineer who built a career in the United States and passed away in 2014. She was followed by Perla, married to O.V. Roy; Ernesto or Nestor, married to Myrna Belgica; Peachy, who lost her husband Noli last year; Chona, married to Ronald Pazcoguin; and Edwin, married to Josephine Samonte.
The Evangelista siblings gave their parents 16 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, with more on the way.
The eatery of my college memories closed in 1978 after Nanay and her husband migrated to the United States to join Yoly in Pittsburgh. In 1989, they moved to Daly City in California, to join their other children (Perla and Peachy opted to stay behind in the Philippines) and look after their growing brood of grandchildren.
We, Peachy’s friends, made it a point to visit Nanay whenever we happened to be in the San Francisco area; we were welcomed like long-lost relatives and regaled each time with stories and jokes and sometimes challenged by her sharp observations and probing questions. Great was our envy when our friends Maloy (living in San Francisco) and
Emma (Los Angeles) reported their visits with Nanay, wishing we, too, could visit more often. I’m told her hospitality and vibrant personality were also generously enjoyed by the friends of her other children, as well as the doctors and nurses she would meet during her hospital visits, who would tell her that they, too, had been faithful customers of her eatery.
Nanay’s family members say that she remained active and interested in current affairs even in her old age. Her TV set, they say, was always tuned to Fox News and public affairs shows, and I have no doubt that she had a few choice words aimed at Donald Trump!
Failing health led to several bouts of hospitalization, and after Nanay’s last confinement in February, doctors deemed it the wise course to confine her at the Burlingame long-term nursing home. She passed away peacefully with her family at her side last June 10. She was 93 years old.
Nanay’s ashes will be brought to the Philippines for inurnment by her children Perla, Nestor and Chona. The wake will be held at a capilla at the Santuario de San Antonio in Makati, beginning with a Mass by His Eminence Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow, June 24.
Happy trails, Nanay, and may your laughter and your bluster echo through Heaven!
