Elena Rivera (1931–2018) was the eldest of four sisters, born in Cebu and married at nineteen. She ran the household on Mabini Street for fifty-one years, and taught every grandchild to cook her pancit whether they asked to learn or not.
Early life
She was born during a typhoon, which she mentioned whenever anyone complained about the weather. Her father kept a hardware shop; her mother sewed. She left school at fourteen to help in the shop and never quite forgave the arithmetic.
Family
She married Tomás Rivera in 1950. They had five children, of whom four are still living. The family gathered every year until 1978, when the reunion became too large for the house and moved to the beach instead.
Later years
She stopped cooking at eighty-four and considered this a personal failure. She kept a notebook of recipes that nobody could read, written in a mixture of Cebuano, Spanish and her own shorthand.
Stories about them
“She would give you food and then watch you eat it. You could not leave until the plate was finished. This was not negotiable.” — her granddaughter Marisol