Gumulong ang milon sa dyip kanina

Although translatable, this sentence sounds better in Batangas Tagalog. Gumulong is rolled (past tense). The root word is gulong (wheel). Milon is actually melon (the fruit). Here in our province, we usually pronounce the Tagalog words with a heavier stress on the vowels.

I bought two very round melons together with another two plastic bags of wet market goods – (tawilis, hiwas, manok, baboy, pusit, sari-saring gulay, saging, nilagang mais, at kalamay na kakanin). Usually, before I go to the market (now a weekly thing), my mother just tells me to buy fruit. She doesn’t mean buy only fruits, but if I don’t buy them, I can’t say I’ve been to the market. Melons, still too early in its season, cost P20 pesos a piece but after haggling with the smiling teener vendor, I got two pieces for P35.00. I was happy with this price.

The most difficult aspect of my marketing is buying fish. Everytime I come home from the market, my mother would say that I bought either too few or two many of a kind, sometimes she would say they are not fresh, sometimes, she would say I should not buy that kind of fish anymore. I have never pleased my mother about the fish I buy. That’s one thing with going to the wet market. I have to aquaint myself with the faces of the fishes to make sure that they will cook and taste well. (I’m not yet the one cooking. Wait till I cook them myself.)

But if I bring home fruits inay is always obviouly satisfied. Any fruit I buy will be consumed with gusto . Bayabas, atis, rambutan, chico, pina, sinturis, santol, balimbing, langka, lukban, milon, niyog, papaya, mangga, pakwan…my longest minutes in the market are spent checking out the fruits, and it doesn’t matter if I buy only a few pieces as long as I bring home at least three kinds.

This morning, I remembered two more big guavas in the refrigerator so I bought only two kinds of fruits, bananas and melons. My two plastic bags were already heavy and I had a good muscle stretch as I carried one plastic bag on each arm. When I’m at the wet market is the only time that I perspire a lot. I could feel the sun on my face and back once I arrive at the area where vegetables are spread on the street. Walking from shade to shade is not a comfortable task since I do this carrying my loaded plastic bags. But buying vegetables takes a long time since I haggle with every vendor, although at the end of the haggling I’m not even sure if I got a good bargain. I haggle because I had seen my mother do it all the time when she was doing this task. And while she did that, I would always imagine how food in both fastfood and classy restaurants would arrive at their high costs. Sometimes I say to myself, ok, “it’s better to buy the dish I have in mind, already cooked, that is, from the restaurants.” Right now, I'm still trying to muster enough confidence to haggle the way she did, always trying to go for half of the actual price. I'd say that she often had a 60 percent success in getting the goods at the price she wanted.

Once inside the jeepney today, I got really hungry. So I re-arranged the goods and fished out one banana. In so doing, my two melons rolled out of the bags. In a siamese-twin act,gumulong ang dalawang milon na nasa plastik. I screamed. The lady at the opposite seat nearly fell in catching the melons because the jeepney did not stop at once. The jeepney was in the middle of a fast traffic and the twin melons (wrapped inside a smaller plastic bag) opted to stop rolling right at the edge of the jeepney step where I caught them in time before they could roll on the street and get mushed by impatient wheels. I was thankful for the jeepney driver for stopping even if right behind us, the jeepneys and tricyles honked irritably and we got the looks from the drivers who overtook us.

I had a really good adrenalin rush. Why! It seemed like a matter of life and death that I got those melons back!

In my past but recent life, I just ate at restaurants. It was an uncomplicated basic task, a detached just-eat-when-hungry routine. But something different is happening…. I’m beginning to understand what a harried homemaker goes through during such a basic routine as going to the market. Believe it or not, this realization has given me a new view of the domestic life, since I stopped just being single all the time, and lived with my mother.