Mother's day is coming. I personally felt neutral concerning this highly commercialised event. Its the season when the advertisements cried out for your attention. You need to "have a heart" and BUY flowers, diamonds, bags, shoes, clothes or whatever your mum fancies, from the massage to massage chairs, the delicacy, the health tonic, to the condo or holiday to appreciate her hard work of bringing you up etc.
I personally am more practical. I prefer cds to flowers. In fact, all i need is HELP with the chores and TIME OUT shopping or exercising and i will be filled to the brim with HAPPINESS and PEACE.
I remembered making much effort as a little girl, I drew a card to wish my mum HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY. I cant remember what was it that I had colour penciled very well, with fine continuous strokes, a technique that I taught myself after I chanced upon it on the boxes of colour pencils in the book store. Well, I presented my mum with that card. "Aiya, what's the use of this?" she did not even looked at what i had drawn and dumped it straight in the red old pail that was the kitchen trash bin. Needless to say, I was deeply hurt, wanting much to save what was to me that beautiful effort but yet I was too adverse to picking stuff from the yucky trash bin. I was in primary school at the time of this incident and what i did, the card was actually a suggestion from the school teacher, to show our love and appreciation for our mothers.
Then, there was the ruby ring. I bought her a ruby ring when I started to work as an auditor. I did not earn much $1300 was my gross starting pay. I knew she like jewellery as she often complained she "had nothing to wear". So i saved and bought this $600 cheap ring, thinking she would be so overjoyed at the sight of it. The sales man was praising me for my "filial piety" and I was feeling great. Unfortunately, mum thought it a waste of money. She even said the ring was "Ugly" how am i going to wear it?" She just kept it for a long long time in the cupboard. Maybe that's why i am not a jewellery, real or cosmetic, person. I had long pawned the wedding jewellery for cash, I remembered for Rachel's immunisation when we were in financial difficulty then soon after she was born in 2005 and i left the bank job without the maternity compensation due to pregnancy bleeding.
Contrast that with the church i grew up in Geylang. Well, as a ladies committee leader, I was also prayer committee leader and sunday school teacher. One sunday i bought and made carnation gifts to all mums. Many thanked and hugged me. I had single-handedly prepared the flowers almost 50 of them, over night with little cards to thank and appreciate them, the mums. I did gave my mum one but she prefer lilies she said and soon that "gift" was cast aside and withered.
In the later years, we celebrated mother's day with family dinners and lots of gifts ranging from watches, diamond jewellery to bags. My mother liked it most when everyone could gather for a good family meal. Everyone especially the grand children.
Looking back, I wished my mum was more patient with me. That she would express her love for me physically and verbally. Afterall, being the eldest, I was often beaten up much for disobedience which included becoming a follower of Christ, as well as for the many faults of my siblings. I had to grow up fast and be an efficient helper be it at cooking; fetching 7 year old sister home from a near by primary school, baby sit my siblings who are only slightly younger and helping with the many endless household chores plus my dad's business as in preparing the ingredients or even as a food stall assistant after school. I was raised to be a DOer. Do this and that, checklist this and that. I still live life clearing my endless check lists both on paper and in the mind day and night. I am still learning to REST physically and also to REST in the Lord.
Now that i am a mother, I am definitely a YES mum. With my mum, before you can ask her for anything, the answer is always NO. Soon, I learnt to not ask but update her after what I had done which can be rebellion to her.
So, if I can give in, I WILL always do so to make Rachel HAPPY. I love her. I love being with her and I had taken care of her since day one when she was a helpless but cute and lovely baby. When she is naughty at times i tried not to hit her but sometimes I lose my patience and she get a smack on her still chubby thighs. Still I am a pretty much self controlled and loving mum, much more patient compared to my mother who had 4x the number of children and therefore many more times the stress!)
This Mother's Day, I commit myself to be a wonderful mum as I choose the challenging but rewarding path of home schooling Rachel. Lord I depend on you to coach her well. i believe together with Yan Rachel will be well brought up in love. She will be dearly cherished and highly favoured. Thank you Jesus for the priviledge of being her mother- the one person that will influence her the most in her life. I will do my best and enjoy it.
Monday, 5 May 2008
Remembering Mum Part I
Sigh...been wanting to blog but the PC, the terrible PC was down. Then there was the whole long episode of my mum being very gravely ill and eventually she left. Sigh. Then there was the whole phase of everything reminded me of her, yes, even onions. Sigh.
Well, I was making English Onion Soup. I did a lot of chopping and slicing and cutting after my gastromic idol Jamie Oliver (Oh how he had aged!! and expanded much???). Well Jamie cried cutting onions on the DVD, Jamie at Home but not me. Afterall, I remembered preparing loads of onions, kilos of it, with my mum, for my dad's noodle stall business. My mum would tear much even putting on the auntie brown shades, for me, perhaps the contact lenses which i wear daily (I feel naked without them not to mention almost blind), well the faithful lenses protected my eyes from the sulphur compounds emitted that triggered the tears.
Then i remembered i was often asked to run emergency errands while mum was cooking. Unlike me, I am much more organised, she would realised while cooking that she had forgotten this crucial ingredient or that "must have" condiment and rushed me to grab them from the provision shops below our flats in Sims drive. So I literally drop everything to get them for her before the cooking was done. Its usually the corn starch, the dark soya sauce or the canned mushrooms.
I think i pretty much learnt cooking not from watching Jamie though I find his programmes and cookbooks an entertaining godsend. I had afterall, watched over many a pot and wok in action while I was asked to prepare the ingredients. My favourite was the motar and pestle thingy and i remembered crushing the Jacob's biscuits so mum could coat the chickens and prawns for deep frying. Her cooking idol was Fang Tai, Mrs Fang? Mrs Square (iliterally. HAHAHA) she learnt much especially the spring rolls and ngoh hiang ( miss it badly) and the "golden money bags" made from deep frying filled turned out Tau Poks.
As my father's business improved over the decades, we turned to food processors and ready made ingredients like fish meat to prepare the fish balls. When i was in primary school, each morning i would carefully trod through the whole kitchen floor full of stinky fish, yellow fins and another carp like one. My parents would remove the entails, gross, very gross, bloody and yucky stuff and descale the many kilos of fish. They would prepare the fish, to obtain the fish meat as early as 5 am while we get ready to go to school by walking of course, in the eerily dark with the super heavy school bags and thick and uncomfortable shirt and pinafore for the stupid assembly by 645am.
Well, I was making English Onion Soup. I did a lot of chopping and slicing and cutting after my gastromic idol Jamie Oliver (Oh how he had aged!! and expanded much???). Well Jamie cried cutting onions on the DVD, Jamie at Home but not me. Afterall, I remembered preparing loads of onions, kilos of it, with my mum, for my dad's noodle stall business. My mum would tear much even putting on the auntie brown shades, for me, perhaps the contact lenses which i wear daily (I feel naked without them not to mention almost blind), well the faithful lenses protected my eyes from the sulphur compounds emitted that triggered the tears.
Then i remembered i was often asked to run emergency errands while mum was cooking. Unlike me, I am much more organised, she would realised while cooking that she had forgotten this crucial ingredient or that "must have" condiment and rushed me to grab them from the provision shops below our flats in Sims drive. So I literally drop everything to get them for her before the cooking was done. Its usually the corn starch, the dark soya sauce or the canned mushrooms.
I think i pretty much learnt cooking not from watching Jamie though I find his programmes and cookbooks an entertaining godsend. I had afterall, watched over many a pot and wok in action while I was asked to prepare the ingredients. My favourite was the motar and pestle thingy and i remembered crushing the Jacob's biscuits so mum could coat the chickens and prawns for deep frying. Her cooking idol was Fang Tai, Mrs Fang? Mrs Square (iliterally. HAHAHA) she learnt much especially the spring rolls and ngoh hiang ( miss it badly) and the "golden money bags" made from deep frying filled turned out Tau Poks.
As my father's business improved over the decades, we turned to food processors and ready made ingredients like fish meat to prepare the fish balls. When i was in primary school, each morning i would carefully trod through the whole kitchen floor full of stinky fish, yellow fins and another carp like one. My parents would remove the entails, gross, very gross, bloody and yucky stuff and descale the many kilos of fish. They would prepare the fish, to obtain the fish meat as early as 5 am while we get ready to go to school by walking of course, in the eerily dark with the super heavy school bags and thick and uncomfortable shirt and pinafore for the stupid assembly by 645am.
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