Mom thanked me for listening to her stories, before she turned and walked home with dad. It must feel good to release your real life experiences to your own daughter who listens without interrupting you.
I stood over the sink washing the dishes while mom told me the same story I've heard many times before. But tonight, that same story has another detail that caught my attention especially. With that fact, that little (but pivotal to my mom) detail to the personal history, suddenly explains to me - great many things about my emotions over certain things.
It is coming to a year since my parents moved from our hometown Taiping to live in Kuala Lumpur permanently. "I've come here to die." My dad sometimes quips. "We are old now, of course we should be closer to our children." This move has transformed me in ways I would never have imagined, alongside with COVID - all these have changed the person I am. On the surface I have simply changed from someone who barely have any family ties or responsibilities in her daily life for decades, to someone with family obligations - parents' daily meals, doctor appointments, soothing their bickering and doing the reverse parenting and such.
Deep inside, I have been changed for good. I have become patient, for the first time in my life. From having been forced to have empathy and compassion, to now - I genuinely and truthfully wish to see things from my parents' perspective and be in their shoe. The horrors of ageing and physical deterioration are being played out in front of my eyes everyday when I am with them. There is no greater lesson for humility than this - to be close to the people who gave birth to you going through these pains of life, and the process of being closer to death.
Anyway, I do want to record what I heard tonight, at my kitchen, and the profound emotion that swept over me in that moment. It was a moment of revelation, and realisation.
For the longest time, I have harboured a mix of disdain and under-appreciation of my parents' weariness, love and care for my brother. Granted, I have never sat myself down and analyse those feelings honestly. It feels like I never bothered to understand their relationships (my parents' with my brother), it felt like an occupation of no importance. "What do I care about what is between them? My job is to just do my part well, take care of the old while they are under my care, work well with the siblings on covering all ends, that's it. What else is there?"
My mom was telling the story of our 7-year-long (although I don't think it's 7 years, I think it was 5 years), troubled, dysfunctional and problematic domestic/family life back in the Taiping old house when brother and I were both in school. I honestly can't remember the year now, it would have been when I was still in primary school, probably around 1984 or 1985. Brother snapped and became a reclusive and violent early-teen who became aggressive when he saw us in the house, swearing, throwing things and such (believe me, I don't have very detailed memory of what he'd done, I blame it to my young sub-conscience who probably is trying to wipe out all my memory of that painful period).
So we created a strange, but functional (in a torturous way) patten of life at home, between perhaps 1985 to 1990. During those years, in the entire waking hours of all members of the household, when brother was at home, we were to not have any physical contact with my brother, or there would be unpleasant troubles, bad tantrums. We had to stay out of his way when he was at home. I would come home from school in the evening and go straight to the backdoor and entered the kitchen which was an extended part of the house, and stayed there until it was time for mom to serve dinner in the dining hall. Brother would go to his room, stayed inside while mom put dinner on the table, for him to come out and eat, alone. My sister and I would use this short window of time to retreat to the our shared bedroom. We would have to stay inside for the entire evening until...well, I think until brother was done with dinner and done using the space in the house, watching TV and such, and went to sleep.
We had no attached bathroom in the bedroom, and we were not allowed to go out to use the toilet if we had to go, because brother was in the hall. So, chamber pot. My sister and I had to use chamber pot in our bedroom, if we had to go then. For years I remember the smell.
Of course, my elder sister being the eldest of the three of us, left home first. She would have lived like that with us in that house for about 2 years or so. For me it was five years, until that eventful, miraculous thing happened, that ...defies explanation then.
My mom says it was the act of divinity, that 'cured' my brother. That was her story tonight, told to me while standing next to me at the kitchen sink. She said she had prayed hard and made a vow to do good deeds if the divine spirit cured my brother of his strange behaviour.
"My prayers were answered, your brother was healed, like miracle. He started making contacts with us through writing on little pieces of paper, remember?"
Of course I remember. I saw some pieces of those old handwritten notes from my brother in dad's folder when I was decluttering the old house for moving out, a few months ago. One of those papers contained a life-changing message, when brother detailed what his plans were after he finished high school. He instructed my parents to drive him to Ipoh to be enrolled into a technology college or a learning centre, for he wanted to study IT.
For years he has kept himself away from all of us but he had everything thought out for his own life after school, and his handwriting was neat, consistent, and creepily beautiful.
Mom told me, "He instructed us to prepare the car, get into the car and wait for him to get into the back seat. And he requested for you to stay behind and not follow us to Ipoh, and asked you not to come out and close the gate until all of us are gone in the car."
"And when he climbed into the back of the car, he called me mom. That was the first time in years that he called me mom. In fact, he called me first before he talked to your dad, telling him that the road in front, is the right way to go to Ipoh."
It felt like my brain just stopped (or exploded?) when I heard this. Imagine you have a grown son who's not talked to you for years and you don't know what caused that; and then one day you'd hear him calling you mama again. In a split second I was almost my mom, I could imagine being her - as a clueless, pained woman who wanted nothing but to have my son talk to me, and to my family, to be 'normal' again. In a second I was put in the shoe of a worried and troubled parent, and feeling the weight of all that worry over my strange son, and whether he would survive growing up, school, other people, getting jobs...managing life.
Suddenly everything got explained. All these years that I have lived with indifference and annoyance, over parents' over-caring and hyper-sensitivity towards brother. They are super protective of him, they worry about him all the time.
How could I not see the reason for all that? He has been the special child at home since he snapped - now we know, it was when his Asperger autism escalated and held him imprisoned in his aggression. Coupled with ignorance and their helplessness, life was definitely tough for mom and dad.
Part of this revelation is knowing now how narrow my mind worked and my eyes see, all these years, of the big picture of what would have been a shared burden of fate for our family. I could not appreciate the struggles and pain my parents went through to make the household work, to make sure all of us grow up without hurting ourselves, or get into trouble. Though I never thought it hindered me in anyway, in my journey to be my own person; but my annoyance towards my brother probably have stopped me from being a more loving, empathetic person.
It has been all too apparent, I have always been self-righteous and condescending with my brother. Even last year, at my ripe old age of 43, I picked a fight with him in the public, in front of my parents, during CNY.
What kind of person would do that to her family? Someone who fails to see the bigger picture, someone who values being right over being kind. Yup, me. "Couldn't you just hold it in for a couple of days of peace? For parents' sake." My sister told me off.
I have vowed to never repeat the mistake of parents - of marrying and being miserable with a spouse, of having children. I brand marriage as a source of misery for human kind.
But tonight, I realise there is a better way of being rather than feeling like I have the answers to what a good life is. There is really no need for being the cleverest in life, being a Miss Knows It All, of being a Miss Right All The Time.
I don't know a shit about what it means to give love. I don't understand sacrifice. There is too much I don't know about life, and there's more to life than I will ever know.
For now, for the time being, just knowing that I know nothing - will be my guiding force. The meaning of humility just got bigger for me.
Thank you mom for the stories, they have taught me and opened my eyes to more than you thought.
Labels: Parents
