I was planning on getting rid of our old pillows when we shift to our new flat this Thursday when I suddenly remember the time that I was watching my Lola (grandmother) Pansang making pillows out of the cotton tree pods and cloth from an emptied flour when I was a kid.
This is a young kapok fruit pod
This is the matured kapok fruit pod ready for harvest or just let it fall from the tree.
I am fortunate having those kinds of memories. We used to have a cotton tree at the back of our house and it bore many pods. We call it in our dialect "duldol" but upon searching it on the internet, it is commonly called as "kapok". Making pillows from this kapok fruit is very easy as I enjoyed watching Lola making these for our use. These are seeds inside the pods so I was the one getting rid of it and give the cotton to Lola as she stuffed the cloth with these fibers. You will know kapok fruit matures when the green pods become brown and the fiber or cotton burst from the pod. This fiber is the one we use to stuff in our pillows dueing my younger years. It is also flammable that we also used it when we burn the falling leaves and garbage from the trees in our backyard. I couldn't recall how our only duldol tree died but this made me realize its importance.
