The shrinking eggs benedict

As if change happens without warning, like the blinding brightness of an April sun, which had hit our table on the first celebration since those cooped-up, cold gray days, at a restaurant in our Vancouver neighborhood. When small comforts get compromised, even the shifting sky that in a seeming sleight of hand spotlights the paltry, turns into a culprit. 

In the haze of a just-ended winter, I suppose none of us in a party of four would have noticed the shrunken eggs benedict on Debbie’s plate. Not until our plates came did we pause slightly stunned, when Debbie picked up one of her benedicts snugly with her thumb and forefinger—palm-sized once, she used to slice it, even shared the second in a pair with anyone willing to have it.

Michael’s bowl of mushroom soup with salmon flakes looked a tad smaller, too. My omelet seemed to not only float like a wan half moon on one side of my plate, when I cut a sliver of it, an unexpected rubbery resistance replaced the tenderness it once had. While Shawn’s plate with the maple honey toast looked the biggest of our servings, the turkey sausages drew a sad sigh from us, about their having turned into old people’s skinny fingers.

Still, amid one letdown after the other in matters of food size, we carried on, unrolling each other’s share of what’s new about this and that. While I focused on Michael’s move to a rental apartment half the size of his former house, I had also wondered if it had something do with Tish’s passing, his only companion—the black feline’s absence must have left echoes in every corner of his rather roomy home.

Already a week later, Debbie still fell sullen as she talked of having taken only three days off a whole week in her spring break this year to hie away somewhere. One reason why such a cut in this de-stressing must for her, which she mentioned in passing, had to do with added tutoring schedules.

We had managed to evade the proverbial elephant in the room until Shawn talked of thinner lines to the cashier in supermarkets, or if at all, fewer rings in the register. I had expected to dominate the conversation on this one and I did, revealing how in the rare times I go to the supermarket, like most Asians but especially Filipinos, it’s to browse through discounted goods, especially meat, take note of the sale expiration date and schedule a menu plan around what would be available. Periodic 50 percent off items like rice—even milk—strongly draws me in.

Had Michael not glanced at the time on his phone, which prompted us to leave, I would have laid out my real buying practices gained from years of elastic income and money-value in Manila: at the Asian produce store, my first stop would be at the bin of bagged, slightly bruised fruits and vegetables, always checking out papaya and cantaloupe for a week’s supply.

On to the frozen seafood shelf, I might find un-celebrated fish like smelt selling for only a toonie (CAD2 coin) and two quarters—if cooked as pangat sa kamatis, it tastes close to a river catch in my childhood. Here, as well, I often pick up a bag of chicken bones leftover from fillet for tinola and pork neck bones for sinigang also tagged at a toonie each—most cuts cost five times at least. Salmon fish trim (head, neck and bones) also for sinigang hardly stays in shelves—Pinoys grab it.

When we left the restaurant, the “elephant” trailed us, of course. Fascinating, indeed, how the mind wraps around reality, especially that which degrades the quality and size of things and keeps pushing into the haze like what’s behind the shrinking servings at that post-Easter brunch—the falling value of the Canadian dollar.