Tuesday, September 09, 2008
I remember vividly around fifteen years ago, when I was still an ignorant four year old kid, I was waiting with my parents, inside my family’s car, to fetch my maternal grandma. At that point of time, I thought to myself, ‘Who is she? Is she nice? Will she eat me?’ All sort of silly thoughts came to my mind and I waited with a heavy heart. A few moments later, I saw a lady, dressed in traditional Chinese clothing, walking to our car and was carrying a very big smile on her face. Once she reached the car, my mother immediately open the passengers’ door and let her sat beside me. My grandma was from Guangdong, China, and she had come to Singapore at a very young age with her mother, which is my great grandmother. Cantonese was the only dialect/language that she could speak and Chinese and English were the only two languages that exist in my world at that point of time. Thus, on the way to my home, I could only converse with my grandma in Chinese and she would nod in agreement. Frankly speaking, till now, I really do not know does she understand what I was saying at that time as I remembered one thing that I have said was ‘po po, ni kan. You shu leh!’ which mean, ‘grandma, look. Got trees!’
Ever since my grandma moved into my house, my life changes entirely. As I had not lived with an elderly before, I was at loss when I had to live with my grandma. Communication was one of the problems as my grandma does not understand me and neither do I understand her. I recalled once when my dad was at the doorstep, I rushed to the door and open the door for him. However, I do not know that at the same time, my grandma had slipped and fell in the kitchen. Thus, my dad gave me a good scolding and asked me to carry my grandma up. However, my grandma does not blame me at all and that really makes me guilty.
As my parents are working as a hawker, thus, the task of taking care of the four children lies upon my grandma. However, as my younger sister and I were very young, my mom would normally bring my elder sister and elder brother to stall whenever they are not studying the next day. Therefore, every morning, my younger sister and I would accompany my grandma to the coffee-shop, located at the ground floor of my house. My grandma always called it as ‘ lou ha’ (Cantonese way of saying downstairs) and we soon followed her style. Chee cheong fun was her favourite breakfast and chui kueh is what we will eat. Occasional treats of roasted pork, BBQ pork and braised chicken are part of the dishes that she will take us to it. As I had followed her since young, some of my eating habits now are inherited from her. For instance, I cannot eat rice without making it ‘wet’. Wet, as in, using soup or gravy and pour it over the rice making it easy to chew and swallow. I also loved to eat ‘kai see fatt’ (directly translated as chicken backside) as she would normally ask the seller to put some in her plate and I will steal it and eat it.
Although I am the apple of my grandma’s eyes, she was never lenient with me. Once, I was playing fire with my younger sister in the living room while my grandma was sleeping. Suddenly, she woke up and shouted, ‘why is the room so smoky?!’ Frightened by her shouts, my sister and I quickly took a blanket and cover the fire before running to the master bedroom’s toilet and hid ourselves. Needless to say, my younger sister, which we fondly called her ah mei, and I was in for a treat of ‘char kway teow’ ( it was a term for caning) by our grandma. We were caned so badly that the bruises were there for days.
‘po po, lei yak deng you tai tou ngoh di kit fen’ (grandma, you must see us getting married) was what we used to tell her when we were young and was sleeping side by side with her and what she would normally replied is that she might not see it and we would just brush it aside with ‘choy choy choy’ (touchwood). When ah mei and I were alone with my grandma, the time was not boring and lifeless. Instead, it was normally fun and interesting as my grandma would let us go lou ha and played with other kids while she will stay at home to watch tv. When we reached home, she would bathed us and watched hong kong movies, wong fei hong and yin yang lu, that were screened over channel 8, 10.30pm on every Saturday. During commercial breaks, we would play blackjack (yes, my grandma is a hip lady despite being 70 going 80 year old when she first stay with us).
Those were part of my childhood memories that I had with my grandma. Sometime, I wonder without her, what kind of childhood I will have. Without her love, will I be what I am today? Without her hopes and expectation, will I get to the point where I am today? But one thing I am sure is that, I would not get to hear her voice again. For she passed away on 4th September 2008, 1310hr
P.S: Hey, guys. No need to console me. I had gotten over with the loss but just wanna let out my feeling. (=
fuck you x=
9/09/2008 08:19:00 PM
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