Grandma

It’s Chinese New Years’ Eve, and as it approaches the final hour where the Mouse welcomes the Ox, I find myself pondering my writings of the past year. There have been varied poems, stories and other telling of the many small and loveable events that adorn the lives of my friends as well as myself – but more often than not I find myself talking about love, or the lack of it.

Perhaps it’s due to one of those adolescent phases that I’m due to go through on my path to adulthood. Or perhaps it’s because of the fact that everyone’s going through this phase too. Whichever it is, I’ve decided to take a break from the recounting of the above experiences to tell of a different kind of love.

Just past Saturday we were enjoying the spread at my maternal Grandmother’s flat – a modest and moderate three-room affair which has become this side of the family’s abode every Saturday evening. Holing up in our usual spot on the couch, my cousin and I were planning for next week’s Chinese New Year dinner at his house.

We struck on the idea of having a mini Karaoke festival – where he and I would accompany our uncles and aunties (and yes, Dads and Moms!) as they belted out the Golden Oldies of their teenage years. Maybe they too would recall the heady growing-up years they had and pass on some of that yesteryear passion to us in their singing; at the same time bridging the yawning gap between the Hokkien stars of those bygone decades and the American pop of today.

With my grandfather’s textbook of familiar tunes in hand, we began ‘taking orders’ for songs around the house – in the hope that we might familiarize ourselves with some of the pieces before next week. Mom would sing “Pian Pian Xi Huan Ni”, Third Uncle chose “Hai Ou” and even my Grandfather  gamely agreed to sing “Rong Shu Xia”.

But the real surprise came when we approached Grandma – the usually demure and petite woman who’d only raise her voice in money quarrels and grandmotherly nags – for she immediately gave us three song titles and began singing them softly to herself.

It was as if I’d been suddenly awakened to another side of Grandma – a side that had once been young. It was difficult to picture her as a teenager, latching on to the songs of her age and learning the tunes by heart – tunes that she would still remember sixty years down the road. And it was even more painful to think how time and tide had transformed her into a thin, pale and albeit grandmotherly figure who’d always be there to clear our dishes and cook our meals, yet never eat her share of dinner until everyone else had finished.

I suddenly had flashbacks of the years that I stayed in that very flat as a boy, while my parents went to work, living the princely life as Grandma sought, always unsuccessfully, to discipline me. My mother used to tell me that I ate my very first scraped apple here as well, and loved it so much that I came back for more every week.

I remembered how Grandma had – against all odds – toilet-trained me, and patched the cuts and bruises of my kindergarten years. I remembered how she would spread a delightful concoction of condensed milk and Milo powder on a slice of bread every morning for me to bring to school, and make French toast or sugared potatoes for me when I pranced home in the afternoons. And I remembered how, after my cousin and I had both flown the coop of her eternally comfortable home, she relentlessly asked us back every holiday for a night or two; to remember, perhaps, those tears-and-laughter-filled years, and to break the silence of a house where children had come and gone.

I wonder how she feels like, today, living in that ninth-floor house with Grandpa, tirelessly sweeping the already-pristine floors every day. I wonder how she feels without my cousin and I working our lively antics about the place. I wonder how she feels every Saturday evening, when we journey back for a visit.

In that way every Saturday evening spent at Grandma’s is special for us as it is for her. For us, a journey back in time, and a reminder that Grandma may not have that many years to go. For her, something to look forward to during the long weeks of the prime years, and a blissful remembrance of happier times.

These Saturday evenings, become memories of love.