Blessed life

My friend asked if I have been the apple of my parents eyes since young since I seem to have a rather good relationship with them. Well! I am definitely not born with a silver or golden spoon in mouth. This is my growing years....

As a middle child, my parents really do not pay much attention to me. Being born as a girl did not help at all. My mum gave birth to 4 girls before she finally had a son. They decided to have number six and so we were a family of 8. Furthermore, my parents have no formal education and so my father was only a labourer at Sembawang Shipyard. He is still working there and salary is still a meagre sum of $1000+. While my dad worked hard to support his family of eight, mum stayed at home to look after us. My eldest sis is 9 yrs older than my youngest brother so they really had a hard time finding money to clothe and feed us then. What we had were hand me downs from cousins and neighours and food from our own farm. Mum worked as a washerwoman for our neighbours also. We even do things like plucking dried chillies stalks off the chillies. No tuition and no idea what the world was really like as we were quite ignorant of what was going on. Old clothes or not, it was all okay since we got to run wild and play havoc in the vast areas in Kampong.

Life actually got better when I was in Primary 2. We started to do cockles packaging. Cockles or rather xi2 hump1 is a must for Chay Kwey Tiao so there was a market for the cleaning of these shell fish. Everyday we have to pick one big guni sack of cockles. The whole process take about 4-5 hrs. We had to sit on stools and scrape the cockles off the shells with a small knife. After the plastic cup was filled, we washed our hands and used a plastic bag to pack the cockles. Every day, we were dead tired after sitting down for the amount of time. If we were not careful, we will be badly cut by the knife. To us, we had to work to survive.

Actually if there was a traffic jam at Woodlands Causeway, we would have few hours of idle time to roam around till the truck came in the evening. We loved the playtime and yet hated having work delayed as that means we had to forgo our sleep to finish the job. When my friends were sleeping soundly, we were working and many a times till 1 or 2 in the morning. If you think this should be tough life, well... to us life is deinitely better for us since we can afford to have more material things and pay our school fees. We usually earned about $1000+ for a month and that can means a lot to my family of 8 even though Saturdays and Sundays were working days as well.

When I was in Primary 5, we moved to a 3 room flat in Yishun. We did not want to pick cockles again since it is HDB and we lived together with 200 households. We tried all kinds of work from cutting threads of garments, electronic components and so forth. All these work did not really pay well and the expenses in HDB was greater than in Kampong. Well! Maybe some people will think we would have received compensation from government since we were shifting out but that was not the case for us. We shifted out on our own and the Kampong house belonged to my grandma. No income and need to pay expenses and children's education, we were forced to pick cockles again. From Primary 5 till junior college 1, we had to go to school and returned home to pick cockles. Even on Saturdays when we had CCA in the afternoon, we had to work a while before taking a bath and go to school. That was one of the reason why all my schools were chosen -- for their close proximity to our home. Another reason was saving on transportation and lunch money. Life was simple in that we just worked and study day in day out.

Actually we really hated this kind of life. Many hours sitting bending at the stools means all of us developed some back pain. The fact that it is quite a dirty job also made us want to turn our life around. Why dirty?? It was because the cockles came from swamps and there was mud and dirt. There was also blood everywhere even though these are cold blooded creatures. Dad had to use a pail to send the cockles shells to the rubbish collection centre. Parents were already very considerate and did not chute it down the rubbish chute. My parents are honest people who believe in making a honest living. They may be poor but they taught us many things essential for life. We may be financially poor but we are emotionally rich.

Back then, we decided to stop doing this job after my eldest sister started working in a factory after her Junior college. She never really thought of going to university since helping out in the family was a priority. Still we need to make sure things get better so my sisters and I started to give tuitions to primary school kids. I always rushed off after school to teach or do so in the evening. Most of the money went to household but we were rather happy. Using our brain to work rather than doing physical work was really a turning point for us.

For me, going to university was chance and opportunity. If I did not receive the teaching scholarship, I probably would stay put in my life and continued to work as a clerk. My results were really not fantastic and still I was given the scholarhip after my interview. Maybe they could feel my passion to become a teacher?

Anyway, looking back at my life so far, I am feeling rather blessed. I had a family who looked after one another when young and I managed to find another family that accepts me for who I am -Joe's parents were not snobbish and were really supportive of us. Joe really is a great partner and even though I always give him a lot of surprises in our marriage, he is still very determined in having a wacko me as wife.

Somehow I am who I am because of my growing years. One can never walk away from one's family. Without family, there is no us and family means FATHER AND MOTHER I LOVE U!

As for being the apple of my parents eyes, I can say I have gone from resenting them to forgiving and loving them. I used to have all the emotional baggage in me whereby I was really unhappy. I was the middle child and a girl so my growing years was filled with lots of spanking and household chores as well. I am also so rebellious then. Parents do find me more than a handful since I tried all ways to have my opinion heard. Well! I am now moving off that phrase of my life and I definitely can appreciate my parents more since I am now mother of 4 active kids. My mum said my twins take after me - climbing trees, rooftops, swimming in ponds even though did not know how to swim, cycling with hands off handle...You name it and I probably had done so. Luckily for me, I am still okay in my schoolwork since I do make an effort to study.

To move on in life, I learn to forgive and forget. Life is too short to dwell in unhappiness. When I forgive, I am free from all the unhappy memories and I learn to forge happy memories in its place.

Appple in my parents' eyes, let's just say I am blessed.