Tender

You were held hostage by me this weekend, and I’m pretty sure that you like it. You like television, the simplicity of home-cooked meals, warmth.

Saturday at Butter Diner

It is every Saturday that I feel most pampered by the universe. After five days of backbreaking office work (although one would be really suspicious of the “toil” done in air-conditioned cubicles), I’m in the best shape to eat, sleep, take on light reads, and laugh with the kids.

Yesterday wasn’t an exception: J and I went on a little Cubao trip and sampled some goodies.

A short background, though, is in order.

Two years ago, I was still a scrawny 21-year-old girl who told a new friend about this small diner I loved. “We should try the pancakes,” I said, not so self-assured. I still didn’t know that to him, food was a means to survive, not something to indulge one’s self with.

He wasn’t too crazy about sweets, but was too cordial to tell me. “Oo, lalabas talaga tayo.”

So we mapped out a plan for a friendly date. Things didn’t really push through; for some forgotten reason, we opted to have mediocre food and One More Chance (those John Lloyd lines still have a little party in my head) at Galleria. While laboring over soggy angel-hair pasta and charbroiled chicken, I was still dreaming about blueberry pancakes sloshing through maple syrup.

A handful of dates later, we got “cozy” and made things official. Even after many months, shared joys and tragedies, and food trips,  I still hadn’t forgotten that small promise to bring him to that hole in the wall.

On a rainy Saturday, I finally brought J to Butter Diner.

See? Some things don’t change. Same cartoon-adorned walls, vintage records and framed photos (think Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe), heartwarming food, and old-place smell. We ordered bread and butter sampler (strawberry, choco chip and BBQ butter flavors), shrimp gambas with risotto, and Louisiana chops. We had the place to ourselves: it was early morning, and there was quite a downpour out in the streets. In that part of Araneta Center, Butter Diner looked nondescript from the outside.

The taste of the food precluded the idea of me putting down my utensils and taking more photos.

I was glad to see J fulfilled in the stomach and not hyperventilate upon seeing the bill (only P380+ including service charge). I was taken over by this silly wave of nostalgia: I seriously considered the first things to say, the first intimate details to divulge in between neat pancake cuts. Will I be a decent date? Will my hangnail-biting addiction be TMI? I honestly didn’t expect us to go beyond universal topics like food.

I’m blessed to have Saturdays and 2 1/2 years to make good on a promise.

P.S. I forgot to order pancakes.

P.P.S. I didn’t forget, just thought of reserving them for dessert. Fro-yo at Gateway just turned out to be the unanimous decision.

Being and becoming

I’d rather not be sentimental. We are moving in a world that has too much sentiments but with a severe lack in the action department. I’d rather not pollute it with further sentimentality, but with the things going on in my head these days I’d like to thank you for your soothing presence last Friday. Thank you for enveloping me with warmth, candid and humanly, distracting me from the negativities of the moment, of the recurring moments. Because of you I read up on what I was supposed to be reading up on, did something with the “blank wall” I was facing. Simply because you hugged me tight all night, I came to know that fear and cold and disquietude are not all there is to being here.