Every Mother’s Day,
breakfasts in bed
handmade cards with handprints and hearts
flowers are bought and given
restaurants booked and meals eaten
ang pows from the elders
a day alone (a year)
to take a breather

“What do you want this year?”
the husband asks, with tired trepidation
“And don’t say nothing.”

Of course, then, the answer is,
“Whatever. I don’t care.”

This year, it’s not nothing.
I have an answer.

The answer is, I want to love being a mother
I want to wake up
and want to spend the day
cooking and cleaning
worrying and scolding
chauffeuring and doing laundry
breaking up fights
wiping bottoms and blowing noses

I want to want to talk in a silly voice
get excited about another piece of paper
with globs of green and purple
some on the carpet
and glue on the couch

I want to want to read stories
ten stories every night
and one more
and another
and one last one, pleaaase

I want to love to love
and love and love
my growing children
before I blink

and find them grown

Technorati Tags: Mothers Day

Come May 11, I’ll be commemorating my sixth year as a mom. What have I learnt?

That there’s no such thing as a “bad” kid.

That it’s possible to discipline your child without guilt.

That one can still be surprised by how different you and your child can be - and how alike.

That loving has nothing to do with liking.

That dads can be trained to do “mom things” (we already do lots of “dad things”).

Here’s to another year of inept parenting, obsessive self doubt and the indubitable wisdom of simply winging it.

Happy Mothers’ Day, TIM readers!

Technorati Tags: mothers day, mothers, parenting

A few days ago, KUOW’s Ross Reynolds was discussing vaccinations.

Basically, there have were some recent outbreaks of measles and naturally, the media milked it. Reynolds called for comments and naturally, pro-vaccination AND anti-vaccination people (moms mostly) responded. There was even a doctor present and everything.

One woman, who was clearly of the “I’m not giving my money to another cheatin’, lyin’ pharmaceutical!” camp, emailed in and blamed the measles outbreak on poor nutrition and bad parenting. What was surprising was that the doctor had diplomatically agreed with some of her points, “particularly about nutrition contributing to the overall health of a child”. If I hadn’t been driving, I would’ve picked up the phone…and called my husband in a middle of a meeting to bitch about how some women just have arses for brains.

I’m sure someone somewhere has made this argument already, but there is such a thing called “herd immunity“, which essentially makes getting vaccinated a social responsibility.

The article linked here says it best - doing what’s factually good for our kids, and doing what we emotionally feel is good for our kids, can be two very different things. While a majority of us vaccinate, there are those who are skittish or just think they know better. And yet, everybody stays relatively safe, say, from smallpox, all because of herd immunity.

Now I’ve met a few “Earth Mama” types who say they’ve done all the research and think that immunization is just big business trying to wheedle money out of us poor, ignorant bastards, using the media to pump us full of fear and BS (pardon the pun). Now I’m a big breastfeeding supporter but breast milk does NOT prevent chicken pox.

Honestly? I find it hard to believe that you’ve read 20 million pages of medical data and probably two thousand combined years of research by scientists who all conclude that vaccination is the way to go.

And sure, it might provoke a violent reaction from one out of 30,000 kids and I’m sorry if that turns out to be yours, but you know what, those odds are better than the one out of 1000 where your kid contracts Hep A from eating contaminated crayfish and dying (yes, I’m pulling those numbers out of my roomy arse, but they sound rhetorically right).

Sometimes, it doesn’t even work, but nothing’s perfect. As long as my child doesn’t grow an extra toe from it, I’m good.

Let’s say your son grows up to become a Doctor Without Borders (a path you’d most likely encourage him to take, because why wouldn’t he? You would’ve brought him up to be all nobley and non-profity) and ends up somewhere in Nicaragua where he contracts, I dunno, mumps?

As his face swells up to unrecognizable proportions, you can barely make out the words coming out of his mouth because of the flies swarming over his drool-streaked chin, his one good eye peering questioningly at you over the webcam:

“Why wum? Why deen you wad-nate me?” (Translation: Why mom? Why didn’t you vaccinate me, you sanctimonious idiot?”)

My point is, get over yourself. It’s one thing to have your child get vaccinated and then watch with alarm as he sleeps 12 hours straight (now that’s a reaction), and another to not be able to watch your kid squirm and cry through another shot.

It’s one thing to be genuinely concerned over unnecessary vaccinations made by ONE company because your gut tells you it smacks of capitalistic maneuvering, and another to be throwing ALL pharmaceuticals selling vaccines together as if capitalism itself should be outlawed just because you can’t watch your kid squirm and cry through another shot.

And if your kid is enjoying better health, it’s not because you fed him better or are a better parent. It’s because my children are vaccinated - as are 200 million others.

So the next time you feel like criticizing the very people who are keeping your vaccine-free kid from contracting a life-threatening disease, think.

Think of Nicaragua and mumps.

ps. No offence to Nicaraguans. I pulled that out of my fat arse too.

Technorati Tags: vaccination, parenting, immunization

Maybe Somalia or Zimbabwe may be too much of a stretch.

Try this.

Thanks, Daddy, for the heads up.

We don’t know the dad and son in the last picture but they were irresistible!

I once knew a lady who felt everything.

I’m not sure what her deal was but she seemed to feel so much, that she ended up needing a lot; a lot of love, a lot of attention, acknowledgment, security, acceptance, in order for her to be happy. It was as though attention, love and acknowledgment was fuel to all that feeling.

Her appetite for attention and love was quietly voracious and you’d never peg her for someone who needed because she was beautiful and intelligent and seemed to be the kind of gal both men and women would go bananas for. Of course, even the most beautiful people in the world are flawed in some ways. But I’d never imagined her to be flawed in this manner (I’d expected her to be a slob or perhaps be bad in bed), and that the flaws would run so deep.

That she did not keep these feelings secret was not as odd to me (even though where I come from, people just don’t share these things with the general public) as her insatiable hunger for the attention or acknowledgment or sympathy that her sharing generated. I wasn’t sure if that was all part of the therapy. If it was, it wasn’t working because unless a hundred people or so were responding, saying she looked good or sympathising with her situation or telling her that whatever horrible thing she did was okay because she’d come right out and admitted it, it didn’t seem to have any sort of curative impact. All it did was create more need, more hunger, and hence, more gloom and sadness and self-pity.

I wondered if anyone ever told her that she was still too young, or that there were other things in the world more worthy of the kind of attention she demanded. If anyone did, did she simply wave them away, telling them in her mind that she wasn’t like anyone else, that she was unique and hence her problems were special and deserved all that attention? Did she think that these people were incapable of empathy, choosing to believe that they didn’t care or were trying to trivialize her suffering? Did it anger her that they compared her problems to that of people in Somalia or Zimbabwe, who didn’t suffer from depression (in the American sense) because they had real, survival problems, as opposed to her navel-gazing nonsense?

People often accuse Asians, particularly the Chinese or perhaps the Japanese, as being unfeeling or that we don’t really place a lot of stock on all that emotional mumbo-jumbo. I always claim that the Vulcans are modeled after us in their ability to control their emotions - and that’s just what it is. We do feel but we just keep it checked. Why do you think our serial dramas and movies are so over the top?

And it’s not just about ‘face’. It’s also about not wanting other people to feel embarrassed or uncomfortable. It’s about respect for others, for your family and most importantly, for yourself.

There is nothing in the world that’s so bad you need to broadcast it to the whole world - unless you want the whole world to mourn with you. Nobody needs that kind of attention.

You may want it, but you do not need it.

What is she thinking about?

Probably candy.

Or ice cream.

Or both.

Technorati Tags: photography

I told you I started writing a novel about my aunt’s salon back in the 70s and 80s but I’m beginning to wonder if I can pull it off without producing another cliche.That era is so over-written, especially in Malaysia where people seem to LOVE stories set in that era, including ads (I mean, look at all the Leo Burnett ones) or anything remotely connected to the past. Is it because so much more seemed to be happening then, that we can’t find anything exciting to write about the now?

Granted I’m a few thousand miles away and am the last person to be writing about life back home. I wasn’t gone that long. So why is it so hard to describe what it means to be Malaysian? Or Malaysian Chinese, without sounding as if I’ve heard it a million times before?

Also, I find it really challenging to peg down what it means to be Malaysian Chinese. Almost everything I can think of is a cliche (like not being able to read or write Chinese aka being a “banana” but not really because BM is actually our first language and not English). Really, what distinguishes us from other nationalities? And what distinguishes us from other Chinese? Or other Malaysians even?

I am currently reading Elif Shafak’s Bastard of Istanbul and I envy her ability to identify the nuances of being Turkish and Armenian AND Turk/Armenian American. Do other Turks and Armenians think of her descriptions as being cliched? I wonder.

It’s sad I don’t have much to write about that I don’t think is 1) overwritten; or 2) interesting enough to write about.

This is depressing.

Technorati Tags: Malaysia, writing, short stories