Oysters under the stars
Monday, March 24th, 2008It’s probably my most memorable Easter Sunday, having spent the entire day with the person I maybe spending the rest of my life with.
It started out quite the same as any other day… I went to his house early in the morning and shared our morning coffee together. I brought with me a bunch of singkamas (water chestnuts, not sure of the translation) for snacks throughout the day. I was set on having a fairly normal day since our planned trip to the nearby mall was cancelled. There were still some workers who needed to finish up some work in preparation for the next delivery and a buyer was going to drop by to pick up some supplies.
I’ve always wanted to go to the mall and watch a movie with Josua (there was no movie house in Bora), so to sort of make up for that we just went to the town for a little bit of Ukay-ukay shopping and some fastfood burger (something Josua and I crave for all the time when we were stuck in the island).
This little trip added the spice to our day… it almost didn’t happen. As we were about to leave the house he failed to hinge the gate which I reminded him to do, it was a little past 1 and it’s a hot summer day, out of laziness, he argued that it wouldn’t matter if he hinges it or not since our adopted dog Brownie was around. We had walked about 30 steps out of the gate when I just realized that he was just being lazy thus the lengthy argument from him. I said if I could reach the hinge from the outside I would have done it myself. He argued on so I decided to just sit like a frog under the hot sun until he went back and hinged the gate. It didn’t end there because when he got back I was still sour faced because I remember he told me as he was pulling me up that I need to lose weight (which I know I have to, but he didn’t have to tell me every single time.) So I sort of pointed that out but he denies saying what he said and turned everything back to me by saying that I always make a fuss whenever he plans something. As we rode the public little bus heading to town, my fussy mode hasn’t still been pacified. But that entire scene on street was erased by a simple surprise tickle on my thigh.
When we got back, we had coffee. Later on we went through the trash of different kinds of wood to find the nice ones that he hid for some needed furniture in the house. As we were doing this, he said: Baka naman I-blog mo pa to? (You’ll prolly blog this, noh?) I replied: Malamang. (Most likely.) And I’ll entitle it “my boyfriend is better than superman, he’s a handyman.
So we set out to finish the shoe rack that he’s started. (Although I was hoping, we’d start on the table I just designed that morning.) I did the measuring, he did the sawing and the nailing. We were enjoying that moment. Laughing. Being around each other. Doing things together. I was talking a lot and he was listening while we were busy doing things. Half-way through this, my mom arrived with a sack of my request – freshly harvested oysters and with that she brought green mangoes as the side dish for the oysters. Yum yum!
So as Josua was doing his carpentry I was waiting for the water to boil while I was grating the mangoes, cutting up some onions to go with it. Josua set the table outside, under the moonlit sky. With a pot of rice, my mango dip and Josua’s vinegar dip (which he didn’t touch much after tasting the mango dip). And in the tradition of eating oysters in our family, no one will open the shell for you, so eat as much as you can dare open.
So in between cracking oysters shells open and eating them, I looked up and saw the perfect sky. (This may be too cheesy or too gross for others to digest) Then I looked into Josua’s eyes and called him and told him that I love him very much. Still masticating on oysters, grated mangos and rice in our mouths, I bent forward to kiss him. And as I’ve warned of this cheesiness or grossness, I just want to point out that there’s nothing better than having someone who loves you, except for being able to say I love you, and hearing it being said back. It didn’t even worried me that it was probably an unsightly moment with my left hand dirty from the oyster shells, my right hand still filled with mango bits and rice.
