Roots Matter

My mind shifted. I wondered. About Singapore. My home. My family.

Mum had been bored for too long a time. Unlike most girls, she does not thrive on the idea of being a "tai-tai" at home. She needs to get out there and do something. After decades of little adventures, being anything from a halal-meats butcher in a wet market, a canteen vendor in my secondary school and polytechnic, a free-lance cook for festivities, sales agent for pyrex and tupperware (amongst other companies), a real estate agent and many other little thrills - all this, while taking care of five children; she now looks at the prospect of becoming a cab driver. Sometimes, I wonder what is it that she cannot do.

Dad lives his day in anticipation for me to graduate. I have this feeling that he wished to retire and start a business on his own once I am done. He shared his vision with me, once. To be a farmer. I can already imagine him wearing a straw hat, large retro sunglasses and khaki pants, tending to his small-time cattle and crops. Under the tropical sun, drinking pina coladas (more probably to be teh-tarik or milo-ais) over green meadows in the country's sultry tropical sun. My mum perhaps, would intercom him over the walkie-talkie every half an hour asking him to come back and eat lunch / tea-break / dinner in a real kampung house. There, they shall bask, in a simple life. But then, how can mum even stay at home ? Anyways, he sounded chirpy the last time I spoke to him over the phone.

"Didn't you get the news ?"

"What news ?" I queried his too general a question.

"We're having a six-month bonus this year !"

I could sense the hearty smile from his voice. It was almost child-like. Dad had been with Singapore Airlines all his life, since Paya Lebar days. His affinity and loyalty, is disdainfully unquestionable. He loved the planes to its bolts and screws.

My siblings are generally fine, save for some "post-natal and post-honeymoon period" crisis for my first sister, "what to do with my life in the future" crisis for my second sister, and "searching for an identity" crisis for my teenage brother. All in all, these are the phases of lives we all have to go through, one way or another. Hana, my eight-year old sister, is still too young for crisises. She still lives in a time when forgetting your homework is like the end of the world. How I wish, I am an eight-year old too.