10th entry - My Parents (Part 2)

My Mom

In part 1 I wrote about my dad. This entry is about my mom...

My mom was born in a middle-class businessman’s family in Singapore that had been started in China but moved to Singapore in search of a brighter future. The youngest in her family, my mom was rebellious at a young age and always fought hard to get what she wanted or felt that she deserved. Being intelligent and pragmatic, she relied on her strengths to help her through her hard life. Money is of great value to her – she will think long and hard before spending an extra dime on her wants e.g. new clothes and tries to look for the lowest possible bargain prices even for her (and her family’s) needs e.g. groceries and household things.

My maternal grandmother is a ferocious only daughter born and bred in China. She came over to Singapore when she was in her 20s together with her husband and second daughter (her eldest daughter died in China). Back in China I was to understand that people were very poor and even had to eat tree bark and wild weeds. When the family settled down in Singapore, her husband started a small dried-goods distribution business that grew steadily. The relative prosperity that they earned through hard work eventually allowed them the luxury of having a nice house with maids looking after the brood of offspring that my maternal grandmother produced here, including my mom, the youngest of their children.

As a child my mom was active and rebellious. She felt that being the youngest meant she was vulnerable to bullying and therefore needed to protect herself at all cost. She did not get along well with her sister-in-law, who married reluctantly into the family through match-making (which was very common in those days) and particularly disliked my mom. I felt that this was primarily due to the fact that my maternal grandmother often criticized my mom in front of the whole family, so she took the cue from the matriarch and took every opportunity to vent her frustrations on my mom thinking that she could get away with it. My mom did not have a happy family life as a young woman. Instead, she found happiness in the world outside of her family, a world where she could be herself and receive love, warmth and attention that she longed for but never got at home.

My mom was often invited to house parties (another common thing in the 60s) and it was at one of such parties that she met my dad (who also loved to attend such parties). My dad and mom had a mutual friend who asked my dad to pick my mom up to go to a party. They did not hit it off initially, as both were not lacking in suitors. The parties gradually became fewer and far in between, and many of their friends got married one by one. My dad felt it was time to settle down and end his lonely bachelor days, while my mom felt that my dad was her ticket to freedom from the oppression of her family.

According to a story my mom told me, a humorous incident took place not long before they got married. My mom often hung out at my dad’s bachelor pad and sometimes stayed overnight but slept in a separate room of course (my dad was a true gentleman). At one such occasion, my maternal grandmother came to know about this (my mom always lied about her staying over at my dad’s – she would say that she stayed over at her girlfriends’ place) and nearly called the police. This incident served to hasten the series of events that led to my parents’ marriage: the all-important meeting of the in-laws; the decision to purchase an apartment together; the preparations for the wedding, including venue and guest list etc (if you recall, my dad’s family was in Indonesia at the time).

The rest was history: after my parents got married they faced very tough challenges. It was not easy staying in a marriage without any support from their families. My maternal grandfather’s business gradually went into decline following the mysterious death of my maternal uncle (apparently he dropped dead on the floor after receiving a telephone call). Soon after I was born, my maternal grandfather died and the family business was wound up.

Left to their own devices, my parents struggled to make ends meet. My mom went through a great deal as a young mother. She had to work in an emporium as a store clerk until she was nearly 6 months into her term. Her mother did not care very much for her, and her mother-in-law played her out by promising to do her confinement for her and then leaving her in the lurch at the last minute. My dad was earning a miserly income at the time and we lived in a dimly-lit, one-room rented apartment until I was about 3 years old. My mom, who decided to stop working after giving birth to look after me until I grew older, tried very hard to make sure the family had enough to keep going. She controlled the household expenses with an iron grip and deprived herself of any luxury so that we did not starve and were in fact able to stay in good health. Her self-sacrifices made her one incredible lady who I am eternally grateful to. Not only was she always around to listen to the stories I told her everyday after school but she was my teacher at home and my confidant. Due to her strict disciplining and teaching I became obedient and acquired important values and principles. She was not perfect – far from it – as a person but in my eyes, she is and always will be my perfect mom who I love and respect dearly.

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My mom wrote down her experience giving birth to me. In those days our family did not have a camcorder and she scribbled down her thoughts and what she went through from the time her contractions started to the time she was in delivery and what happened afterwards. I wept long and hard after reading the account as I felt so sorry for her. I will re-produce her amazing “diary” letter in my next Blog entry.