My Dad the Upo Whisperer

This phenomenon began in the 70s, when I was five or six years old. That first spring, Dad grew his maiden crop from seeds he’d brought back from a recent visit to the Philippines. The upo didn’t grow any longer than a foot or two, but they were wide and fat. The next year, my uncle gave Dad some upo seeds that an Italian neighbor had given him. Dad was a bit skeptical, thinking that maybe the Italian guy had misunderstood the Filipino word for the plant. But my uncle insisted that there had been no confusion and that nothing had been lost in the translation from Italian to English to Tagalog. So Dad planted the Italian seeds alongside seeds saved from the previous year’s Filipino upo. My uncle had been right—his Italian neighbor had indeed given him upo seeds. The “Italian” upo were skinny and very, very long. A few years later, thanks to cross-pollination and tender loving care, Dad’s upo were growing to an average of four feet in length and four inches in diameter.

I have many memories of sitting under the shady vines and running around our piece of the concrete jungle—bobbing and weaving through the hanging upo. When I was in grade school, I would invite my friends to play in my backyard. As soon as they saw the garden, they would stare openmouthed. When I brought my soon-to-be husband to my parents’ house for the first time, the first thing he wanted to see was the backyard, since I’d talked about it so much, he felt he had to see it with his own eyes immediately. Dad’s upo garden never disappointed.

Each year my Dad would select one huge upo and save its seeds for the next year’s crop. Until I was about ten years old, that one huge upo was consistently taller and heavier than me. This “mega” upo was usually about four-and-a-half feet tall and weighed about sixty-five pounds. It was very intimidating and gave me a complex. Dad would have to find some safe corner of the house for it; I was afraid it would accidentally fall on me and crush the tender bones in my body.