03/01/2026
TITLE: THE TASTE OF UBE HALAYA
Lila grew up in a small barangay in Batangas, where her days started and ended with the scent of steamed kakanin from her mother’s kitchen, and the rumble of her father’s tricycle as he left before dawn to drive passengers around town. As a child, she thought this was just how life was: her hands sticky with coconut milk as she helped roll p**o before school, her father’s calloused fingers fixing her broken bike late at night even after a 12-hour shift.
But when she turned 16, she began to see their lives as small. Her classmates had parents who bought them new phones and took them to malls on weekends; Lila’s mother could barely afford to buy her new school shoes, and her father often came home too tired to talk. She started avoiding bringing friends over, embarrassed by their modest home and the constant smell of food that clung to her clothes. When her mother stayed up all night making ube halaya for her to sell at school to save up for her college tuition, Lila snapped: “Can’t you just give me cash like everyone else’s parents?” Her mother’s hands stilled on the wooden mixing bowl, but she only nodded and said, “I’m sorry I can’t do more.”
Lila left for Manila for college, and then work, and for years she was too busy building her life to look back. She got a good job in an office, bought the phone she’d always wanted, and lived in a small apartment where she never had to wake up before 7 a.m. She called her parents once a month, giving them quick updates and brushing off their questions about whether she was eating enough or getting enough rest. She thought she’d outgrown their small, simple world.
Then, when she was 28, she got very sick with dengue. She was alone in her apartment, feverish and too weak to get out of bed, when she heard a knock on the door. There stood her parents: her mother carrying a bag of clothes and a container of ube halaya, her father looking exhausted from the 4-hour bus ride. They’d gotten her text saying she wasn’t feeling well and had left immediately, her father borrowing money from a neighbor to pay for the fare.
For the next week, her mother slept on the floor beside her bed, wiping her forehead and feeding her warm porridge. Her father took over her chores, and even asked the building security guard if he could do small errands for other tenants to earn a little money to help with her medical bills. One night, when she was feeling better, she found her father sitting on the fire escape, his hands rubbing his tired legs. “I wish I could give you more,” he said, just like her mother had years before.
In that moment, Lila cried. She thought of all the nights her mother had stayed up making kakanin so she could have pocket money, all the times her father had skipped meals to save money for her school supplies, all the love they’d given her even when she’d pushed them away. The ube halaya her mother had brought tasted sweeter than any she’d ever had—she finally understood it wasn’t just food; it was made with every bit of her mother’s care.
Now, Lila visits her parents every weekend. She helps her mother mix the ube halaya and sell it at the market, and she rides with her father in his tricycle, greeting the passengers he’s known for decades. Every night, she tells them exactly how much she loves them, and how grateful she is for the life they built for her, one small, selfless act at a time.
She never again mistakes “small” for “unimportant.”
