Biyag Amak: Biography of My Father

Bird's Nest Soup

It's 1:22am and the story that my father told us some time ago popped in my head. It's his story about watching a show in the television about "pinget" and bird's nest soup being sold in restaurants at the price of gold. The show included hunters getting fortune for selling their game and the nests to restaurants.

From where I come from, someone or maybe a group of people started this slogan: that our town is "Kate-kateg id US" (very much like the US). The English language is more often used than our national language, Filipino. This characteristic of ours traces back to the colonization era. When the Spaniards couldn't infiltrate the highlands, the Americans were able to reach our ancestors and introduced them to Christianity. My father comes from a village concealed by clouds then. But since the Americans were more adventurous, they were able to get to this village. It is called now in reference to the "bagiw" often found in the "paypayeo" (palayan).

As a youth, my father used to have leaves – I can't remember which kind – as their school paper. It is where he and other pupils would write on because they couldn't afford paper back then. That is why even up to this decade, he would be upset if he sees us crumple and throw papers that were barely scribbled on. For instance, I was writing an essay for my high school homework. The paragraphs were only until before the half of the page when I had to correct a misspelled word. I was finalizing this paper and our teacher strictly instructed us to not have any erasure or overwriting. So, I crumpled this piece. Our trash bag (sako bag) is outside and it was already late at night. Too scared to go out, I tossed the crumpled paper to the back of our front door. He got upset. He told us not to waste just because paper is very affordable now. Since then, I would keep these pieces of papers with lots of error writings. I would fold them into paper boats, paper shirts and now that I learned how to fold paper cranes, it's what they get recycled into.

Fast forward, this pandemic happened. I stayed in the province for a year. It was the longest I stayed home since I got into college. There was so much I learned about my father's past. And this included the story of the "pinget" and the bird's nests he hunted under the assumption that we would get a fortune out of.

He told that when we were kids, if we remember back then, he left for days. He filled a sako bag with bird's nests and got to hunt a lot of pinget on his way back home. He excitedly left for the city to sell them. Mind you, the fare costed much back then for transportation was also expensive. Not much people could travel on a return trip.

When he got to the city, he reached out to a well-known restaurant to trade his game. He was offered 3000 pesos for the sako bag of bird's nest and the collection of pinget combined. That was too little. Too less than the "fortune" he was aiming to get for. Since he was already there, he took the money and left, went back home to us.

He said to me that night, he wouldn't have traded the game for 3000 pesos but at that time, the only money he had was his fare to come home and food allowance. Imagine the effort to climb for the nests, the risk to hunt for the birds since he might get mistaken as a communist (even if what he's using is an airgun). He remembered how our mother wasn't even close to fifty percent supportive of the idea of him leaving home for days to hunt pinget and bird's nests. But she said nothing when he came back home fine and - being the happy person he is, smiling.

That very night of last year, I felt that "kurot sa puso" (literally translated: pinch on the heart). Big dreams, small town. I wanted to blame the show he watched for giving him high hopes. The media overhyped their stories, of course, to get viewers to watch their shows. I was so mad at myself for being a stubborn child. The risky things he had to go through because he wanted so much for us...

I couldn't blame my father for believing in a fortune after watching that damned TV show. What were the odds agpayso, noh? Now I'm living in the city, getting to taste the bird's nest soup at different food places. After that night, I decided not to like bird's nest soup. But then, that was some story. When he narrated that part of his life, it felt like he never got to talk about it, maybe out of shame- that people would laugh at his desperate attempt. But of course, being an optimistic person (sometimes), he would laugh at it. What is life without little adventures?

Flashback 2015, when my sister graduated, we went to the most famous restaurant here in Baguio (Good Taste Cafe and Restaurant). He asked for bird's nest soup to be added to our order.

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." ~ Maya Angelou