‘Pandesal’ and other cravings

There are memories ever so vivid that, no matter how our brains are prone to forgetting, could be remembered by associating them with certain scents, food, music, and places. Humans tend to have it in their nature to inevitably attach an element to another, mostly a fleeting thing to an enduring one, to cope with its loss and transience. Perhaps, this is also why whenever I say “I miss pandesal,” there’s a peculiar ache in me.

In our clan’s compound back then, the sound of the pandesal vendor’s “potpot” would echo over the barks of dogs. We never learned each other’s names except for exchanges of “Kuya, bente pesos po na pandesal” and “Ito, ‘neng,” accompanied by a swift exchange of coins and smiles.

Slow mornings were spent together with my parents, dipping the newly bought pandesal into a mug of instant coffee. Even when just its aroma could reach my taste buds, I’d never get enough of how the pandesal, simply made of flour, blends with the hot liquid, where the coffee was supposed to wash its savory taste away, it only complements it.

It was life in its simplicity, contentment found in loving all things soft and tender—flour molded from grains to make into one fluffy bread. Sometimes, we’d even go to the next barangay’s bakery and wait in line for some malunggay pandesal. Accompanied by adobong kangkong, tortang talong, and sinangag, breakfast was always complete.

And so, the thought that my breakfasts when I was younger were complete makes me miss whatever it is that I lack now.

I never heard Kuya Manong’s potpot again ever since the pandemic. Now, whenever I say “I crave pandesal,” there’s an underlying association to it. Maybe it’s how we say we crave a certain food or that we miss a song or place because we do not know how to voice out that we miss a time spent with people we no longer meet. Unequivocally, “I crave pandesal” translates to the longing for the buoyancy of youth, the ease of childhood, and the hope for a new day. “I want fish ball” is missing after-dismissal food trips to the stalls in front of my old high school. “I crave shawarma rice” is missing the canteen with the echoes of laughter from my friends that did not reunite again. Sometimes, “I crave this certain fast food” is missing the specific crisp and joy of its chicken, the precise aroma of its burger, or when prices have not yet inflated. And so many more “I crave” sentiments I could no longer fathom.

At this point, I get the sentiments of the food critic in “Ratatouille.” I tried to find what I miss in every other local bakery, just to fend off this knot in my stomach for that pandesal. It is like a twist of the famous line going around these days, “You’ll never meet the same person twice, even in the same person.” Because we’ll never eat the same food twice in the same way. Until we savor the last bite, we come to the gut-wrenching realization that the only constant thing in this world is change.

Summer’s over just before I can have it. It’s raining now, a cup of coffee and pandesal would be nice. True enough as weather alters itself briskly just as times have changed, growing older into girlhood makes it harder to accept aging, makes celebrating birthdays a little too sentimental, with the food I ate growing up, with the hairpin I had since I was 12, and with the bag I had since seventh grade.

So what if we make homes out of the mundanity of things? It’s such a fascination how, in the pursuit to outlive time, we get attached to things and house them through keepsakes—a meal receipt or a dried flower petal. Of course, other people had also eaten pandesal before, someone might have visited the same place with me at the same time, and curated a similar playlist like mine, but what makes mine mine and something else theirs is how we encapsulate a particular memory within it. So a simple song to someone is the song that kept me standing tall until now. A movie, a picture, my whole coming-of-age. This pandesal and other cravings, my childhood, my courage, my hope.

We weave ourselves into threads of a sentiment until it’s hard to untangle our limbs from it. We build and build memories, knowing we could plaster them to some poster, to some song we’d hear on the radio in the years to come. It’s how we keep time from running out so we could leave a fraction of our soul and save some room in our hearts.

I find myself craving some food once more. Vigan empanada. Pandesal, again. Sisig. Sentimentality is everything we’ve lost and try to recover in time. After all, what are these cravings, if not all the loss we try to have again?

Yen Valencia, 16, is an incoming Grade 12 science, technology, engineering, and math student from Bugallon, Pangasinan. She has a profound appreciation for literature.