Baao, my Love

bernadette de los santos
1 Sept 1996

Like with old beaus, I littered my life with mementos from my favorite places. But it wasn’t the souvenirs that bring Baao back to me, it was the mental promptings from my everyday life.

Once an annual ritual, my pilgrimages to Baao have been reduced to the occasional sojourn. Work and family have squatter’s rights to my free time now, but I pine for that place everyday. Like an old love, my relationship with Baao is sustained by well-worn memories and the occasional brief encounter. And just like with old beaus, I’ve littered my house and my person with its mementos – albums of pictures of my highschool days, newsletters about the place, a T-shirt with Baao boldly printed – to keep the place with me. Little did I know when I carried all those things home, hoping that I could bring with me Baao, that what would stay with me longest were the remembrances of things seen and savored.

Taste is the quickest conveyor of Baao. It’s as if there is a direct neuron path from the palate to the mind’s memory. When I eat a plate of nasi goreng in Kuala Lumpur, a bowl of kuew teoy in Singapore, the faint, familiar taste of “sili” brings the place back to me. A slice of shepherd’s pie in London, a bite of the famous Pizza in Chicago or a big chunk of hamburger from the Jack in the Box in Texas, bring back to my mind the “puto’, “linubak” and “biniribid” that I have for snacks in Baao.

When I visited the United Center in Illinois, or the Rose Bowl in California, I can only recall the Basketball Tournaments at the “munisipyo” where I usually cheered until I croaked, and the “agui-agui” along the paths of the “Ha-ha-ha” park.

But the things that validates my mental passport quicker than anything else is flowers. Particularly when I went to see the flowers of Holland. They bring to mind the “flores de mayo” I used to attend as a child, swaddled in white cotton dress, carrying a basket of hand-picked flowers to be offered to “Ina”, and awaiting the “ginalpong” after the Mass.

My collection of stamps, photographs and coffee mugs, may trigger the names of places I have visited around the world, but it’s the details of my life that beckon back the sights and spirits of Baao. A solitary flower, a sweet extract, a whimsical pastry grant mental wanderings to that vivid, fragrant, flavorful and unforgettable place called Baao, my love.