Direct Mail: Long Overdue
For two years late in his life, my dad was a commenting fiend at Market Manila, a famed Filipino food blog run by the mysterious gastronome known as “Marketman.” When Anthony Bourdain visited the island of Cebu for an episode of No Reservations, it was Marketman (his face was never revealed) who prepared the incredible roast pig luncheon.
Market Manila made my dad happy and he, in turn, appeared to provide quite a bit of entertainment for the community. Health issues put an end to his Internet shenanigans in 2010, but I just discovered that even four years after typing his last post—a post I’m sure he could barely see—some Market Manila readers were wondering what had happened to him. One of them donned a super sleuth cap in 2014 and, despite not knowing Dad’s real name, ascertained that he had, in fact, died the previous year.
I decided it was time to write to Marketman. I sent this to him a few hours ago. “Lolo,” by the way, is the Tagalog word for grandfather.
Dear Marketman,
Hello! My name is Veronica Montes, and I’m the daughter of the late, great Norman Delfino Montes or, as he was known on your blog, “Silly Lolo.” This message is long overdue; I’ve started to write it many times in my head, but getting to the keyboard was another matter altogether. It is now more than 2 years since Dad passed away, but my heart is still cracked wide open, and tears spring to my eyes at the smallest provocation. I’m typing through them now.
Dad was hilarious, as you well know, and today for some reason I was especially missing his hijinks and kooky sense of humor. I was thinking of how infuriated he would be that California’s crab season has been ruined by some horrible thing in the water (an acid of some sort, I believe), and of the long conversations we would have had about it. I once found him outside our house racing live crabs down our garden path as my then 3-year-old twins screamed with delight. Then, of course, he came inside to cook the crabs, and the screams were no longer ones of delight! He thought that was pretty funny.
I know that Dad’s “voice” has been just a Google search away — all I had to do, after all, was type in “silly lolo” + “market manila” — but until today I hadn’t been able to bring myself to actually look. I’m so happy I did. When I finished reading through all of the comments he made on your blog (was he not the most insane person ever?!) and all of the responses to his comments, I knew I couldn’t put off writing to you any longer.
Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful Market Manila and for indulging my sweet, peculiar father and his ribald sense of humor. You may have surmised by now that his appearance at Market Manila coincided with the beginning of his often quite painful end. He lived vicariously through your photographs and writing (increased to jumbo size on his computer, of course), and was thrilled by the online camaraderie supplied by you, Betty Q, Connie, Lee, Artisan Chocolatier, and the others. I think you all increased the length of his life by at least a year with your invitation to an epic feast in Cebu. He was SO excited. He planned in earnest and fantasized quite a bit before he gave in to the reality of his failing health. In a more perfect world, I would have brought him myself, and I think I may even have let him eat what he wanted! My mother, though, requires my daily care, so it just wasn’t possible.
In case you’re curious, I’ll tell you just a little about Dad: he was smart and kind, generous and wise — truly the best father and lolo anyone could ask for. He loved my mother, Frank Sinatra, food, and family. He was a fisherman, a maker of model airplanes, and a builder of boats and cars. He had impeccable penmanship. He watched the nightly news, football, the Indy 500, and the Tour de France. He was addicted to shoes, outerwear, and magazines — addictions that he passed on to his three children. Also, he was a big fan of M&M’s.
My best to you and your readers,
Veronica
p.s. I enclose one of my favorite pictures.
Update: Marketman has posted my note, along with an official good-bye to Silly Lolo here. My dad is thrilled, wherever he may be. And I know exactly what he’d say to me if he could. He’d say, “What a kick in the pants, Toots. What a kick in the pants!”
Veronica Montes is a writer with a soft spot for fiction about the
Filipino-American experience + productive rants about…many things.
So many things. You should follow her.
