Learning from Luchie
Ana Clarissa Gacis Koch
I took it for granted that there would always be calamansi in my life.
My mother, Luchie, grew one in our backyard in St Clair, a small suburb in Western Sydney, and as far as I could remember, we always had fruit.
My mother's first calamansi plant was brought home in a pot. We were new migrants and were only renting our home, so my mother didn't want to plant it in the ground. Once it started to bear fruit, calamansi started to make its way slowly to our dinner table through marinades for barbecue, or with patis to accompany our sinigang.
A few years later when my parents were able to buy their first home, my mother decided she could finally plant her calamansi in the ground. Alas, it nearly died - but she managed to salvage it by moving it to another spot in the yard, where it started to flourish.
Over the years our calamansi tree bore witness to birthdays, 21sts, engagement parties, and bridal showers. Even when we moved out and visited on the weekends, we would come home with a bag of calamansi from the latest harvest. Our seasons were decorated with the transitions of the tree in bloom, the expectancy as the flowers started to bud into fruit, and then the joy of harvest as the green buds began to grow and change colour to orange. Some seasons, the harvest was so abundant we were giving calamansi to our friends and relatives. Other seasons, we were scouring the tree for fruit.
I will always fondly remember harvest days with my mother as she bravely scaled her ladder and chopped branches off the tree, much to my father's dismay. "We need to cut it back so it will flower more next year." My mother was always matter of fact like that, shedding last season to make room for the next. She always made sure to fertilise that plant, and that it was watered during our summers of drought - even if all our other plants went without. Perhaps it was her dedication to the tree and our afternoons watering and harvesting that made calamansi, for me, more sweet than sour.
Not everyone shared our appreciation for the little burst of sourness. Our neighbours once complained that the fruit was falling on their side of the fence. Despite our efforts to explain to them the fruit's many uses, they remained unconvinced, and the fruit on their side of the fence was unpicked and often discarded. Perhaps that's why my mother was so determined to prune the tree, so only those who would appreciate it would have access to it.
My mother now teaches her grandchildren how to pick calamansi when it's just right, and how to incorporate calamansi into their everyday food.
For me, calamansi reminds me of our family and of our home. We made calamansi ice blocks in the hot Australian summers, calamansi and honey for our sore throats in the winters, drizzled calamansi over our fish and chips - I even started squirting calamansi onto my ice cream.
There are now three calamansi trees from the main tree, each her child. My sister's tree is in her own home now. My brother recently took his tree home. Since I'm too far from home to claim mine, my calamansi tree is now at my cousin's to give her a taste of the familiar, now that she has just migrated to Australia herself.
I search for calamansi now in Adelaide only to find mostly limes, kumquat or lemons, and miss our tree.
I was born in Manila, grew up in Sydney, lived in Singapore, Tokyo and now Adelaide. But whenever I order a calamansi drink, I'm transported back there to St Clair, where my mother planted the calamansi of her homeland, and created the flavour of our home.
Ana Koch is a lawyer, photographer and mother who writes in the middle of the night and is trying to grow her own calamansi tree in Adelaide to give her young son a taste of her heritage and build a sense of home.