When I was a little boy, about 4 or 5 years old, an interesting object on the terrace caught my eye one early morning. It was a saucer that contained salt, about two cloves of garlic, and half a piece of an onion. That curious concoction seemed like the basic ingredients of adobo; nevertheless, I still asked my Lola what it was for. She patiently answered me that it was for our “visitor.”
“Para sa bisita natin yan, apo,” were her exact words. I remember my Lola to be kind and loving, but she has always been the mysterious type.
Years later, when I was in high school, that memory randomly popped into my mind. Afraid that I would forget about it, I recalled the story to my father and asked him what it was all about. Without hesitation, he told me that the practice of leaving a saucer of salt, garlic, and onion had been my Lola’s nightly routine since an aunt became pregnant with my eldest cousin.
Specifically, it was to protect the mom and the baby from pregnancy until birth. And the visitor that my Lola referred to was a mysterious flying animal that they heard every night if there was someone pregnant in the house. As a matter of fact, when my mother was also pregnant with me, that protective salt mix also appeared each night on the terrace.
“Narinig mo ba yung lumilipad?” I asked my father. “Oo,” he confirmed. I asked him to describe it, and it was a loud flapping sound.
“Hindi kaya ibon?” I further inquired. “Hindi, masyadong malakas yung pagaspas para maging ibon,” my father explained to me. “Tsaka kung san ang kwarto ng buntis, doon tatapat,” he added.
I asked him if he ever got curious when he heard it, and he said yes. “Hindi mo sinilip?” I asked. He said that he felt it was too risky to do that. The loud flaps at night usually kept him awake until the wee hours.
Still, my father wanted a logical explanation for the experience. This province was located in the north, where giant fruit bats, or bayakan, abound. We had a chico tree inside the lot, and the fruits might have attracted them.
Still, my Lola often wondered why they only visited the house when there were pregnant women in the family. It’s a mystery that has remained unknown in our family.
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