Dreaming of buko (coconuts)

I grew up on buko juice. We had three coconut trees growing beside my grandparents’ house and it was only a matter of having someone climb up to pluck the buko when we wanted buko juice. Actually, there’s a story behind the coconut trees.

My father had a basketball court constructed on an empty portion of the property beside my grandparents’ house which was next to ours. That was where my brother and I learned the rudiments of basketball, volleyball and badminton. When I was in the third grade, or somewhere thereabouts, someone told my grandmother about a strain called “dwarf coconuts”. Supposedly, they would only reach a maximum height of six feet or so. My grandmother bought three and, over my father’s objections, had holes dug into the concrete court to accommodate her dwarf coconuts. Needless to say, the newly-planted and very young trees would get hit every time my brother and I played ball. My grandmother would scream from the second floor veranda of their house, calling out to my mother to make us to stop playing ball. I remember that, one time, I was so upset that I tried to pull out the coconut trees from the soil—with my bare hands. I hurt my hands, naturally, and my mother had to drag me, literally—kicking, screaming and in tears—back to the house.

Fast forward to… ummmm, around two decades later. I was a mother of two young girls and, from my in-laws house in Quezon City, we moved to my old family home which offered more space and lots of grounds for the kids to run around and ride their bikes in. The three “dwarf coconuts” were about 15 feet high. But the buko had remained as it was when I was a kid—smaller than the ones you’d find in the markets but with the sweetest juice. There was no need to add sugar at all. In short, it was the buko itself that was the dwarf, not the blasted tree. My daughters loved those coconuts—meat and juice. They learned to scoop out the meat from the husk and drink the juice with it.

About two or three years later, as my daughters spent more and more time playing outdoors, and as we found it more and more difficult to get somebody to climb up to pluck the coconuts from the trees, my grandmother had them cut down fearing that the unplucked mature coconuts would fall down and hit my kids. I kinda thought that it was just the irrational fear that old people are often prone to but they were her trees and it was her decision.

That was long ago. My daughters are 14 and 12 (almost 13, actually)^* and we live today in a suburb where there are more pine trees than coconut trees. When we want buko juice, we have to buy fresh coconuts from the market. When we eat out and the restaurant offers fresh buko juice—in husks, not in glasses—we almost always take advantage of the opportunity.

If we ever get the chance to buy another house with grounds for a larger garden, perhaps, I’ll plant my own coconut trees. I will remember, however, that the term “dwarf” refers to the fruit rather than the tree. And I will not ruin my kids’ playground to give way to my trees.

^*Notes: This article was written in January 12, 2007. My daughters are now 16 and 15, we have moved to a larger house with a larger garden but we still don’t have coconut trees. Instead, we have a huge mango tree. I love mangoes as much as I love coconuts but that’s another story.

See also a visual guide that illustrates How young or mature a coconut is determines how it is best eaten and its uses in cooking.