meandering thought

one of the things about living the transient life
is that the holidays and festivities you grew up with cease to hold much meaning to you the further away you get from home.
its not just the lack of secular reminders that dulls the importance of certain holidays (in fact, i'm glad for the absence of whining strings and old school wailings of "guo xin nian, guo xin nian"),
but its the community around you, the changing landscape of faces and values that one is daily confronted with that slowly rub out the significance of childhood events.

i did not even remember that it was lunar new year today until S reminded me. At first, I shrugged my shoulders - living 8 years away from home has meant 8 years of missing out on lunar new year celebrations, christmas, birthdays, mother's days, etc - skipping out on another event wasn't going to matter.

but as i lay in bed, resting and procrastinating, my mind began to wander and i tried to envision what i would be doing on this day if i were back home. Apart from collecting the little red packets full of money, Lunar New Year wasn't always my favourite holiday. The 3 day long holiday was meant to be a time for families large and small to gather together. Typically, its marked by people coming together, exchanging stories and jokes and meeting up with relatives with whom they haven't seen in a long time. Perhaps, it was because of my age and the fact that I was the youngest child on both my mom and dad's sides of the family that I had always found the exchanges with my relatives to be somewhat disingenuous. my cousins were a good 10 to 20 years older than me and had little to do with a small squirt as myself. my nephews and nieces were amused, growing up, to have an aunt that was only about 5 to 6 years older than them. And from my aunts and uncles, I could typically guess their usual questions and chatter, although these did evolve over time from "what grade are you?" and "are you doing well in school?" to "when are you going to get married?" and "why are you still studying?". So really, lunar new year was not all that special to me.

Except for this. On the first day of the lunar new year - a day typically marked by my family going round to visit all our other relatives - we would skip breakfast, pack ourselves into the car and make our way to my old Ee-poh's house. Ee-poh was my mom's foster mother and this was a visitation that I always eagerly anticipated. I don't know if it was because her apartment overlooking the sea-side and decorated with peranakan furniture and knick knacks that held a certain warmth and charm that made her home a welcoming place; or if it was the promise of sardine and cucumber sandwiches alongside pineapple tarts and small porcelain coffee cups on little saucers that fascinated me, but Ee-poh's place was special. I was never bored there and unlike the other places we would visit later on that same day, Ee-poh had always made it a point to make every single guest that came to her house feel important. I remember playing the angklungs at her place and how she would leave the table of adults and sit and play congkak with me when I was a little girl. She always remembered which grade I was in and better she asked me questions that she knew would interest me: "So what books are you reading now? Have you finished that series? "

Ee poh was a great woman really, and her bark was worse than her bite. You couldn't change her views on some things, she was obstinate in her way, but it never stopped her from having a generous heart and from treating each individual with dignity. She died last year, when I was home for the summer. I remember attending the funeral and thinking that it was funnily enough one of the happiest funerals I had attended. Yes, there were tears shed at the service and as people recounted stories of her life, but at the same time, there seemed to be also a sense of tribute and celebration. The people gathered at the funeral were not mourning or regretting the lack of time spent with her, in fact, if you went from table to table and heard the stories related, you would almost say that the people gathered there were celebrating and hailing the life she lived.

Now the old apartment that Ee-poh had inhabited has been packed up and sold. Thinking about it, my family back home would now have to skip ahead and visit the other families that we typically only met up with later in the day. Its one more event that we will keep in our memories but never visit in real life again.

Is it growing older or is it the transient life that mutes the spirit and causes the once bright colours to fade? Ah, but then maybe its not that important what the changing hues are. Thinking and writing all this about my Ee-poh has reminded me that its the role you play that makes the colours bright for someone else. Its probably my own tendency to get too self-absorbed, but i think that's why i keep coming back and returning to role models who remind me how important it is to look beyond myself and to be real for someone else.