Bread of Stories

It was the early days of October. Classes suspended, I sat idling in front of the dining table. The radio blared the loud reporter's voices as they talked about the start of the monsoon season. One or three storms more to come this month, they say. 

With eyes half open, I watched as the table filled up with dishes of all sorts. A bowl of yellow chicken noodles with a poached egg on top glared over me as I looked about the kitchen. Sausages and fried eggs, fried rice and hotdogs -- oh, but who could forget the steaming bread in the middle of them all? Coupled with the aroma of grandpa's bitter black coffee brewed by hand, the yeasty, almost sweet-smelling scent of the famous pan de sal filled my cool, rainy morning with warmth.

He told me to eat up, his still youthful face brimming with delight as he handed me one with an egg in between. It was the best thing about pan de sal, its versatility: may it be filled with peanut butter, dunked in milk, or turned as a breakfast burger -- they were all delicious, my grandpa said. But his favorite was dipping it in his signature black coffee.

Grandpa talked about how in the province, they made all sorts of bread by themselves. The child that he was back then, sweltering in sweat as he waited for the bread to bake in front of the pugon, a brick oven to have the first bite! It did not matter whether it was still too hot for him, he chuckled. It was worth it to have a sniff of the yeasty, sweet-like aroma that fully woke him up after getting up before 4 AM. That, along with the scent of the barako -- the coffee which he was having right now -- from the kitchen, everyone immediately knew that the small town bakery was open.

He also talked about all the other mischiefs that he caused in the bakery. I laughed at the idea of learning that my grandpa was also a naughty child like me. He had also told me about the other kinds of bread that they made throughout the day. But none was more passionately explained than how he talked about pan de sal.

That rainy morning, he walked me through the wonders of bread making, but most especially his love for pan de sal.

Time flew by. Quickly, it was the hot summer of April. Finally, summer vacation has started. The blistering heat of the afternoon made my whole body sweat. My eyes could not stand to look at the empty streets as the gleaming rays hurt them whenever I tried to reach out for a rare cool breeze between the humid winds. My grandpa, however, was enjoying his time. Both of us were seated beneath the shades of the sturdy acacia tree, with I bathing in sweat. He too was, but I cannot figure out how he could stand the heat -- all while drinking a warm cup of black coffee and a hot pan de sal in his hands.

He told me that he grew accustomed to it. They grew up with it. Coming home from school, he always saw the adults drinking coffee outside their house. They would offer him a pan de sal with peanut butter, sometimes cheese in between. But they preferred to dunk the soft yet toasty -- they would call it tostado -- bread in their drinks. And even on the hottest of summers, when I craved the ice cream sold by the sorbetero, they feasted with newly baked pan de sal and the bittersweet coffee. And somehow, they never get enough of those.

He had tears in his sullen eyes from all his chuckling. Was it from the fun stories he had of his youth? Or was it of the old memories that flooded his head? But that hot afternoon, with his coffee surprisingly gone cold, he passed down to me his great love for pan de sal.

Then, years and years had it been, and it was now the evening of December. That child that once grew up with their grandfather, now estranged from their home. Life was different from what I grew up living in. It was slow cellular data instead of WiFi, ground coffee beans instead of a to-order grande latte, and that pan de sal -- still ever-present even in the saucy platters of pasta, colorful fruit salads, and marbling Christmas ham on the dining table.

My grandpa said he barely recognized me. I barely did as well with him. It had been a decade since I left, flying around the world to pursue my studies and my great passion for bread. Whenever I called home, my grandpa and I would spend all the time from the littlest details about bread to the biggest of stories if I had found a special someone already.

Hah, silly grandpa, I said. His frame shook as he merrily laughed. He was now frail and small; he was unlike the grandpa that used to have coffee with me under the acacia tree. He handed me a piece of pan de sal, and after a bite, it was as if I was back to the Christmas of my youth.

That festive evening, he rekindled the sweet memories that I dearly missed for ten years. I had all those bread around the world, but none were close to bringing me back to the warmth of home but a pan de sal.

That was just a few weeks ago. It was now one of the coldest midnights of January. I stood empty in front of the window. The stars twinkled brightly in the black curtains of the sky, the milky stardust complementing the third black coffee I had for the night. The yellowish moon widely smiled at me, just like how grandpa used to when he tells me his stories, especially pan de sal.

That cold midnight, I looked up at the night sky as I fought back the warm tears rolling down my cheeks. I looked back at my desk. There was none of the pan de sal -- and no one to tell me more of the stories of his youth.