Sharing the bed

I am a self-indulgent mother. I like time to myself. I like time to get my nails done or sit at cafe with a book and just read. But sometimes, there really isn't much time for these pockets of indulgence; what with our helper hospitalised and the general circus that is the house.

In the absence of Me-time, there is one thing that I look forward to every night. That is to sink into my bed, enjoy my very expensive mattress and luxuriate in it till I lose consciousness.

I love it so much that there have been nights where I have had to choose between air-conditioning in JED's room (their room is smaller and therefore cooler) and having the bed all to myself, I have chosen the latter even if it means that I sleep without air-conditioning.

That usually means not sleeping with Packrat. While I love to sleep beside him, I don't love fighting for space on the bed with JED.

Unfortunately, not moving into their room never guarantees that I get the bed all to myself all night long. By the early hours of the morning, there is at least one child on the bed with me, usually Muffin and by 6 am, Evan would have joined us and on occasion, because she wakes up alone in her big bed, Jordan traipses over too. That's when I get evicted because there is no space on the bed.

Mums with older children say I will miss them when they stop migrating over. But right now, I want to roll around my own bed, have my covers and pillows all to myself without having to worry that I would flatten or kick a kid in the face (as they have often done to me).

Simple dreams. Simple dreams.

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Capturing Concentration

At 3 or at 6, even the simplest things are difficult. It's very easy to give up. It might be figuring out how to tie the laces on a sneaker (Evan), hold the stencil still enough so that the picture you draw isn't wobbly (Muffin) or trying not to fall off the balance beam even if it is 4 inches above the ground (Jordan).

We keep telling them to keep at it. So they do, albeit reluctantly at times. And when they do try, the look of concentration and focus on their faces makes me want to shush everything around them while silently waving pom poms for them.

I am glad I caught these three snapshots. I put it together into a  collage to remind them of how hard they worked and when they eventually got it right (and all 3 did eventually) how it made it all the more worthwhile.

I didn't include those pictures, the victory and immense satisfaction ones because those are memories easily remembered. These ones, they will forget, especially when it becomes second nature to them.

But it will probably do them good if, in an existential and contemplative mood one day, they wondered how was it that they had figured out all these supposedly simple things and recalled the sheer grit they had to have had to go from "I don't know how to do this" to "I can do this with my eyes closed". And the revelation that if they could do that at 3 or 6, where ever they would be in life at that point, they could probably summon up the same grit to overcome what ever they needed to.

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10 Years on

10 years ago in May, we got married and to symbolize our unending love for one another, we slipped on these rings. In it, we had engraved 1 Corinthians 13 (4-8).

 

10 years later, in June, while in Penang on holiday with the family, Packrat's ring floats off in the sea into the Straits of Malacca somewhere. We could have mobilised the naval divers but the chances of finding it would have been akin to finding a needle in a haystack. 

The only alternative and 10 years seemed an apt time to do it, we made new rings. Even though I still had my wedding ring, we commissioned a new set. Not matching, just complementary. 

Something we had learnt, in the last ten years of marriage.  


On a more flippant note, I cannot help but also realise how our hands have aged in the last 10 years.

   

 

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Lest we forget

Some people may think that the Americans being over-sentimental and over-dramatic make too big a deal about their tragedies. When I was in Epcot on December 7, the family wondered if some important American had died and that was why the flags were flown at half mast. I said it wasn't and it was to commemorate Pearl Harbour. The reaction to that was a great amount of eye-rolling about how the Americans were over-dramatic.

Perhaps.

But at the same time, I was very awed to see the flag flown at half mast. My mother was born on December 7 she was 2 that day. It was helluva 2nd birthday in Singapore because it also heralded the attack on Singapore.

I felt the same way when I was at the 9 11 Memorial.

I remember the cold autumn night when I was watching television and the news cut in to announce that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Centre towers. The television show I was watching was cut short and for the rest of the night, we watched the news not knowing that we were watching what would be a defining moment in the world and our lives.

No immediate friends or family died. But we had had visiting faculty from the USA who had returned to the USA and one of them, together with her daughter was on the flight that hit the South Tower. No one could work the next day and television only resumed a semblance of normal programming the next evening.

It's been more than a decade on. And the horror that I felt that night, actually wondering whether the world would go to war and Packrat would be called back from reserves and whether we would actually have a Singapore to return to at year end as well as more comically, if war was declared, would I have to finish my dissertations?

There were many things that moved me about the 911 Memorial.

1. How big the memorial pools were. The memorial pools are in the exact footprints of where the towers were. And it made me think about how large the craters were on that day and how many people died and how much rubble and debris had filled the craters that size.

2. Every single victim was named. And some of them had, after their names who they were; the first responder policemen or firefighters who did not know that they were running into buildings that were about to collapse.

3. The thoughtfulness that went behind the memorial. Yes, light shoots out from the second crater in the fountain every night as an example of an electric eternal flame of sorts but what touched me was how every single name was hollowed out so that family members or the public who want to honour the dead by placing flowers could do so by placing the flowers in their names.

 

4. The new Freedom Towers are still being built. National memory and the economy are tightly interlinked.

5. There were two thousand over people who perished that day and 7 buildings collapsed not counting those who died elsewhere that day. The debris and the toxic gases remained over New York for months after. Amidst of that debris, a tree was found. And that tree was then taken to a botany clinic and actually revived. It now stands proudly in the middle of the 911 memorial and is known as the Survivor Tree.

I remarked to my brother that as a mark of respect and honour that the memorial should actually be closed on 911 itself so that families could visit it without the gawking eyes of visitors and onlookers. 

It is hard not to be overawed. But it is also easy to forget tragedy. When I was there, I remembered, it was September 11 2001 that I had decided that I needed to become a teacher. I had forgotten that, and much much more.

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Spoil Market

I get very stressed with Teachers' Day because JED aren't old enough to fully take charge of Teachers' Day gifts. But Jordan and Evan can do some of the bits with minimal supervision. They can make cards.

Except, Jordan doesn't just make a card. She insists on writing a book for her teacher; fully illustrated and coloured. She even tells us very specifically where the 'conflict' is in her story.

Evan looks up at his effort, looks over at hers and while he doesn't say anything, it's written all over his face "Spoil market!" and possibly the formings of expletives that he doesn't yet know. I work with him and we come up with something passable but he doesn't allow me to photograph it. To his credit, he ties bows on their gifts to their teachers much more deftly than she does (his shoes have laces). And Jordan's reaction to his being able to do that was pretty much the same as his was earlier.

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Water for all

The sun, hot and high

Water rising in streams from the ground

Laughter, squeals, sun burnt joy

 

 Technorati Tags: JED, Singapore Science Centre, play

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Vicarious Living

The twins are obsessing over medals.

They cannot figure out how to get their own.

They fight over the one I had lying around the house (The Stan-Chart one from last year).

In desperation, I take out my box of medals and they ooh, aw and grow quiet.

Jordan: How do you win so many medals?
Mommy: You work very hard and you never give up. Then you get better and sometimes, you get so good, you win a medal.
Evan: When can I win some medals?
Mommy: When you get bigger and when you stick to your swimming and stuff.
Jordan: I'm small now. Can I just have yours?

So, for now, my medals are their medals. Perhaps one day, they will win their own and leave mine alone.

Technorati Tags: JED, growing up

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Holidays mean family

We try not to make every school vacation a big deal, meaning that we don't necessarily travel. We don't want JED to associate vacation time with expensive holidays. But we try to do things that we don't get to do on a regular day.

Evan's request was the Underwater World. We've been trying to support the Underwater World being the poorer cousin to the new SEA Marine Aquarium.

We asked Mama Rosa and Cousin Becca to come along so the adventure started the night before with Becca staying over.

All four slept on the same bed, with Mama in the middle.

 

Monkey faces abound and one uncooperative Muffin turning his back on everyone.

 

This resembles Mama Ducks and ducklings crossing the road.

 

The dome of silence while having her head magnified. Jordan equates having a big head with being clever so she loved the size of her head under the dome.

The starfish boy on his nth round through the underwater tunnel.

Having had food stolen out of her hands from animals before, Jordan was very cautious about the sea lion stealing her banana. She didn't buy it that sea lions didn't think much about bananas.

Feeding the rays and touching them. Scary, slimy, smooth and splashy.

All in, a great and fun family morning although all came back smelling of fish and sea water. 

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Technorati Tags: JED, School Vacation, Singapore, Underwater World

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