I guess I had the best of all worlds when I was a kid. We were always a standard middle-income family though we had our own fluctuations of wealth here and there. But the thing was that I spent my childhood travelling ALOT, so I got to see many different "worlds" as well.
My memory's a little fuzzy, but certain things still stand out clear. Like the many trips to quaint Penang to visit my father's side of the family...that was when things still did not get too sour among the adults, but more about that another day.
Let's talk the pleasant stuff...the way my cousins used to climb the many rambutan trees in my grandfather's garden, and how they'd try their best to pull me up, but lady-like little me would never be able to ascend the tall tree with ants crawling all over them ;)
How every one would be frolicking around the swimming pools in the hotels and water slides and weak little me would just sit close by drawing/reading and being eaten alive by mosquitos =)
How we'd pick seashells along the beach, and then clean them and then the older girls would make trinkets and jewellery boxes out of them. There are no more shells left on those beaches anymore...
How I would sneak into the dusty, dark and warm rooms in my grandparents house, the unused rooms, and pry around, and find stuff like my father's really old school photos (he really was cute when he was young) and the report cards and the old gramaphone records. My grandparents used to listen to jazz and those really old oldies together...in the old house late at night, after all the children went away to start their own families...I like those songs...got a couple of those songs in CDs now, was pleasantly surprised when kenneth burnt a couple on that jazz cd he gave me.
I remember that old house...the room my dad, mom and I used to sleep in during the holidays. The way the fan was right above the old flat wide wooden bed. Even the sound of the rotation of the fan...The full length mirror on the inside of the old teak wood cupboards. The giant porcelain barrel that stored the bathing water, the way we had to bathe using a little plastic pail and the water went "polooong, polooong"...the old fashioned wooden clogs that I'd love to wear to run all over the garden that my grandpa planted himself.
I remember how I'd sit on the swing in my grandpa's garden and feel the breeze gently caressing my face... how my cousins and I would play mahjong and taidi (from the age of 5) and catching late in to the night in my grandma's spare bedroom and jump on the beds, and search the house for old treasures like my grandparents wedding photos... They were such a loving couple...grandma was about 4 years older than grandpa, but they loved each other more than any other couple I ever knew...He missed her so much after she died, and I guess the last years of his life just seemed so much emptier, even with 10 children and 20+ grandchildren...Their wedding was a grand affair, it was such a fairytale, they told us all about it. About a WEEK of celebrations, wow...Grandpa was a poor clerk, sort of given away by parents at a young age( yeah, "Yeoh" wasn't our original surname..it's the surname of the foster family, working in some rubber plantation, grandma was the daughter of this really rich family who owned banks, one of those spoilt brats perhaps =) she studied english literature and became a teacher for awhile, till they got married and started a family....
But anyway I digress.
My cousins and I had much fun with sparklers and the little pop-corn like little bombs that we threw on the cemented part of the garden to make noise too...But I was too scared to hold the sparklers sometimes, was afraid they'd burn me =) sigh.
We'd run out into the penang streets to buy ice-cream, every time the ice-cream man with the bell came ringing along...the aunts would always buy Char Kway Teow and Hokkien mee and dou4 hua1 to treat us.
At night we'd all pack into one of those little white protons, sitting on everyone else's lap and then drive down to this open-air hawker place where there'd be women in cheena resplendence singing hokkien getai songs. The hokkien spoken in those parts was pure. "One two three" isn't "ji4 neng3 sa1" it's actually "ji4 nor3 sa1"...that's how you differentiate penang hokkiens from singaporean ones, and also that's why my surname "Yeoh" has a "h" at the back...
Still remember grandpa craddling me in his lap and feeding me with Pistachio nuts. I'll always remember the pistachio nuts and how he'd always say I reminded him of grandma...she had such a sweet face, their portraits are still hanging on the wall in the hall, with a clock separating the two of them.
We'd sit in the hall and recline on those old fashioned chairs....grandpa always wore a sarong. A light blue checkered sarong on a dark blue cushioned chair...and then he'd fall asleep while the children all played "stack the mahjong tiles" on the ground at his feet. I think he was the only one other than my parents who called me "yang yang"....he had a really sweet voice.......
I really miss him.
Remember the funeral, and I was crying...and then Lye Hsiang (one of my cousins) was hugging me to comfort me...and my mom got pissed because some people though Hsiang was a pervert, but he really isn't, just mentally a little slow...
After he died everything just went downhill.....family disputes and all........perhaps it was good he was only around to see the beginning.
Before he died he told us that grandma had come to see him in his sleep...that she told him that she could not wait much longer, and so he said he couldn't wait to join her too......
I didn't really understand much, I was only about 7, but now I feel like crying all over again.
Remember the night he died...we were in penang, saw him the last time that afternoon, then that night mom crept into the room, where the cousins and I were all asleep spwraled all over on matresses in a room. We had a sleepover the night before, they were chewing bubble gum and we were laughing and everything..and then I almost fell from the bed in all the excitement, but surprisingly SOMETHING pushed me back to safety.That night when I was asleep, grandpa was announced dead. Mom came beside me and stroked my head and told me. And somehow I just wept silently, half-asleep....
Then after that it was all very chaotic in the morning. So many relatives, our extended family was probably over 200 people. Kept folding bags and bags of paper money, they taught me how...
I haven't visited the urns for a very long time........5 years? 6? 7?.........
I miss the happy memories. I want to go back to penang soon.....but it'll never be the same again.
posted by Geraldine @ 9:34 pm
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