My Mom
About Matriarch who turned 62 last Friday.
Matriarch and I never really had a close relationship. I used to think Big Blood was her favorite (the thing moms always have on their boys) even though she mentioned before that I was the easier kid. It improved a little after she had a hysterectomy when I was about 21, and that improvement came in the form of me giving her pecks on the cheek whenever I leave house. But generally, we were still distant. I never opened up to her until maybe after dad died. That was probably because she, being highly chatty by nature, didn't have anyone else at home to talk to.
Most times, I feel that Matriarch is everything I'm not. She's a go-getter, annoyingly feisty, gregarious, sociable, opinionated, enterprising. While I have tendencies to dissolve and ignore shoddy customer service, she's the complete opposite despite the fact that she never had proper education and speaks little English. A lot of things, she learnt from friends or picked up on her own. But I admire her for being street-smart. She never went to school but always had her way of generating income through tours, wedding dais, mak-andam, tupperwares, curtains+cushion covers, Indonesian teak furniture, fabric among others. She has done them all. Even my private art studies of 3+1 yrs was financed by her (+1 cos I flunked a semester, repeated a year). Only much later then I realised how crazy it was for her to try to make it work for me despite not being able to afford private course. I was spoilt like that, insisting on something my parents couldn't afford. But now that I'm a mom myself, I suddenly saw that she had never once stopped putting her children before anything else. She doesn't stop praying for our happiness, never complains and never expects anything more than we can give. She has set the bar up pretty high, I'm not sure I can beat.
I jumped on the opportunity to buy Secret Recipe's Choc Banana Cake.
Matriarch and I never really had a close relationship. I used to think Big Blood was her favorite (the thing moms always have on their boys) even though she mentioned before that I was the easier kid. It improved a little after she had a hysterectomy when I was about 21, and that improvement came in the form of me giving her pecks on the cheek whenever I leave house. But generally, we were still distant. I never opened up to her until maybe after dad died. That was probably because she, being highly chatty by nature, didn't have anyone else at home to talk to.
Most times, I feel that Matriarch is everything I'm not. She's a go-getter, annoyingly feisty, gregarious, sociable, opinionated, enterprising. While I have tendencies to dissolve and ignore shoddy customer service, she's the complete opposite despite the fact that she never had proper education and speaks little English. A lot of things, she learnt from friends or picked up on her own. But I admire her for being street-smart. She never went to school but always had her way of generating income through tours, wedding dais, mak-andam, tupperwares, curtains+cushion covers, Indonesian teak furniture, fabric among others. She has done them all. Even my private art studies of 3+1 yrs was financed by her (+1 cos I flunked a semester, repeated a year). Only much later then I realised how crazy it was for her to try to make it work for me despite not being able to afford private course. I was spoilt like that, insisting on something my parents couldn't afford. But now that I'm a mom myself, I suddenly saw that she had never once stopped putting her children before anything else. She doesn't stop praying for our happiness, never complains and never expects anything more than we can give. She has set the bar up pretty high, I'm not sure I can beat.
I jumped on the opportunity to buy Secret Recipe's Choc Banana Cake.
posted by Mimi at
4:35 PM
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