Recently in Family Category

In the midst of all the hustle and bustle of things that cry out for our attention, there is no greater reminder of how quickly time slips through our fingers than that of our children. They graduate from phase to phase, so fast that by the time we parents learn to deal with the challenges of a tantrum-throwing toddler, we find them asking questions on interpersonal problems at school.

So such it is with Anne and Caleb, our two little stowaway adventurers who’ve become fellow journeymen and constant companions of our lives. It seems only yesterday Anne was born; how silently 6 years have passed! Shy Caleb has turned to rambunctious Caleb to well-mannered Caleb, and even as I write this, he’s already morphing into some new phase of cognitive development, complete with new challenges and joys.

Age is really beginning to catch up with us. For the first time in my life, sheer force of will is no longer enough to overcome the lead in my legs as I insist on chasing down kids less than half my age on the neighbourhood basketball court. I stretch to go in one direction, but there’s this perceptible lag between what my mind wants and what my body performs. I stubbornly refuse to accept the fact I’m past the age some professional basketball players retire, but the symptoms are undeniably visible.

We’re also starting to come face to face with our mortality, and even more immediately, that of our parents.

Dad just celebrated his 70th, a momentous milestone by any measure, but I must admit in my heart that there is a growing worry. The assumptions of life and health of our family and ourselves — assumptions that we so carelessly took for granted in our youth no longer stand up to the stark reality that everything earthly eventually atrophies.

As friends and colleagues around me deal with their parents’ declining health, I brace myself for the same eventuality.

It dawns on me that time is short for us all, and we ought to spend it wisely. For all the words that I should have said and not said, all the things I should have done and not done, there is no time for regret, only swift decision.

To love, to share, and to serve.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

It was a long time ago when Dad went out of a job and stayed home. I can’t remember how long the period was, but like for any job seeker, it must have been hard. During that time he took on the role of homemaker and lunch took on a decidedly Teochew slant. Not that I minded, of course. I could live on salted eggs and porridge for a pretty long time.

It was also the best times I had with Daddy. I remember how he’d take me out after school and we’d go to Marina Bay with nothing but a spool of string wound around a soda can. We’d rummage through rubbish bins looking for a couple of usable sticks, plastic bags and old newspapers. Once the materials were gathered it took Dad only a few minutes before we had a working kite.

And we would escape gravity for an afternoon.

You’d be surprised at how much I learned. We’d walk past shops selling expensive kites, quietly laughing that our handmade concoction saved us quite a bit of cash. I learned that like the flying of a kite, most things in life revolve around knowing when to exert a little pull and when to let go. You’ll be surprised - letting go of the string is how you right a wayward kite.

It’s counter-intuitive, yet not.

When Mum retired a couple of months ago we were a little worried that she’d be unable to slow the frenetic pace of life she had been so used to. Then Dad took her kite-flying. Now my kids Anne and Caleb tag along. I’m so glad that they can share this wonderful side to my father. Were it not for his short unemployment, I would not have had that chance.

Things happen so quickly around here it takes an act of will to put on the brakes, if only to figure out where we are.

Faith and the 2 kids have been battling a wretched cough for a while now. Just the other night, Faith was in a coughing fit. Anne went out of the bedroom and came back with a glass of hot water and handed it to her mother with a small smile. I panicked a little at the thought of the little girl lifting a heavy jug of hot water from a counter a little too high for her and pouring it into a glass. So I hastily told her not to do that by herself again.

Crestfallen, she walked to the corner and wept. Our hearts shattered in a million pieces. Compassion is such a fragile thing and is easily destroyed by cold hard pragmatism. Faith and I held the crying girl until her tears turned to laughter at one of the many jokes I had to spontaneously think up to turn the tide around. I dried her damp cheeks and marveled at the girl God had put into my life.

In the background, Caleb was still jumping up and down on the bed, going “bang bang”, pointing at everyone else with the broken toy airplane wing that passed off for a gun.

Faith and I looked at each other. No words were needed.

Only hearts of gratitude.

These 2 Indian ladies occupy the same bench every evening, their 2 white dogs on leashes as they observe the day-to-day routine of the neighbourhood repeat itself with little variations in each iteration. The contrast of fluffy white fur against their dark skin, their presence has become part of the coming home experience for the many families who walk this path daily.

Anne and Caleb often run up to say hi, if only to gaze curiously at the dogs for a bit, before bolting off towards the lift lobby, jumping over imaginary lava floes made up of lines of different coloured tiles on the uniform concrete floor.

The passage of time becomes apparent: when we first began walking this path, there was only Anne, and we carried her. There is now two, chatty as ever, and we beam with pride whenever they show the appropriate level of respect and cheerfulness when greeting the 2 seated aunties; it is this race-agnostic unity that I love about Singapore and want desperately to protect. The 2 little tykes also used to need help leaping over their imaginary obstacles. These days they jump over them without nary a thought. It won’t entertain them for much longer, I think to myself.

I put my arms around Faith. Life is good, I tell her. We breathe it in deep, so utterly satisfied, yet half-afraid at the inevitable: that all this too shall pass.

We have today’s blessings to be thankful for.

Raymond’s Dad passed away last week. I had only met the man once, at Raymond’s wedding. Raymond very proudly told all his guests how his dad built the ice-cream cart they used to serve ice-cream by hand, and also the small trolley a little dog would sit on, carrying the wedding bands up the aisle. I remember all this so clearly because Raymond’s dad reminded me of my dad.

In this new-fangled world filled with technology to connect people, we are inundated with text messages, emails, tweets, RSS feeds we need to read, Instapaper and links on Delicious, every one vying for our attention. In return, we are producing an equal amount of curated garbage via our phones, laptops and iPads.

And somewhere in this mad, mad world, you have these people who seem totally unaffected. The most beautiful part about them is that they speak loudest with their hands, and their actions cut through all the din, all the smoke, ringing like a bell that speaks directly to our heart.

In my parents house, Dad sits at the dinner table, continually peeling all manner of shellfish. It is no secret that my mother has the luxury of not knowing what the shell of a crab looks like - Dad tirelessly makes sure that all family members seated within arm’s reach of him receive food and fruit that is meticulously prepared for hassle-free consumption.

Dad is the sort of person whom, after lamenting about how much pocket money you demand, quietly slips his last $50 bill into your wallet or purse while you’re asleep. And you only discover it the next day at school.

So when Raymond’s father passed on, it hurt to know that one day Dad would as well, and I wanted to write to tell the world that we have amazing fathers.

Because they are the least likely people in the world to write about it themselves.

For Faith, Anne and Caleb.

I miss you already.

To our sisters Audrey and Louelle who couldn’t join us for the Chinese New Year festivities. Thought I’d give you guys a summary of stuff we did this year.

“Are we in Singapore or on Singapore?” Anne asked last night while in bed.

“In Singapore, I guess.”

“If we’re in Singapore, why is it we’re on earth?”

Whoa. My 4-year old just set me up for a tough question. I struggled with that one, not because I didn’t know the answer, but I didn’t know how to explain it in a way a 4-year old would understand.

You know, maybe I didn’t have to dumb it down. After all, she was the one who asked right?

So here goes.

When we say we’re in Singapore, we refer to its national boundaries which we remain physically within. We do sometimes say we are on the island of Singapore, which would refer to the actual piece of land we stand on.

Likewise, when we refer to Earth, we do not mean an invisible boundary (not until we start parceling out plots of space for condominiums anyway), but the planet itself. Therefore we are on the planet and not in it.

Unless we’re spelunking.

You think Anne’ll understand spelunking?

The whole family is down with the flu, and the ubiquity of the H1N1 news in the media does add that tinge of fear, I must admit. We’ve seen the family doctor but no tests were taken to determine if it is flying pig syndrome we’re suffering from.

Faith somehow managed to will herself out of falling sick. I’ve always known her to be a superwoman and all that, but this really takes the cake. Caleb and I have the perpetual runny nose and Anne has a cough that would rival the Marlboro Man’s. None of us has really come down with a fever, so that is something to thank God for.

Probably the result of the flu medicine, but the possibility of losing one of the kiddos to the bug isn’t lost on me. I just spent the last half hour applying vapor-rub to Anne’s chest as she repeated attempted to cough her lungs out. I lay there in the dark, soothing the girl to sleep as my brain recalibrated its place in the universe. Life and death — the very basics of existence we’ve struggled with through all of humankind — is something we still have no control over. For all the intellectual debate, all the scientific rants, all the technological achievements we’ve made, we are (in biblical terms) unable to make a single hair on our head black or white.

There comes a time to surrender the intellect, and it isn’t borne out of a defeatist attitude. It feels right to cede that the really important things in life are in the hands of God. You could say that it is the feeling that comes with using a crutch; but honestly, it feels more like the realisation that it is the air currents that bears the wings to soar, and endless flapping is a poor substitute.

“I love you, daddy,” my daughter whispers as I tuck her into bed. My relationship with my children is very different from the one I share with my own father. Maybe it’s because we’re more westernised; we are more vocal about our feelings, less efficient in many ways as we try to explain the logic of our decisions to three-year-olds. Different from the do-as-I-say parenting technique I lived under.

It would be the furthest thing from the truth if I said that my father doesn’t love his children just because he never told us so. Now that the shadow of the firm disciplinarian is a memory distant enough, I have come to know my father as a model of a loving husband I can only hope to emulate.

When I was young my future was framed by my two parents - my mother, who was the paradigm of perfection I could never ever live up to, and my father who positioned himself as the cautionary tale of not doing my homework. He was a man who worked with his hands, often tinkering with broken machines he’d pick up where others discarded them.

He was, and still is, my Crocodile Dundee. He has the most amazing gift of picking fruits. Where people would prod and poke at fruits in the aisle before buying them, here was a man who knew exactly what to do. He had individual techniques depending on what fruit you were looking to buy. I’ve tried to acquire the secret mantra, but it is impossible to document what dad does so instinctively. During one of our durian-buying trips, I realised that the fruit-sellers kept an entire basket of their best fruit for my father. Somewhere he had earned their trust as a bona-fide fruitman. One of them. He has always been one with the common man.

He always has a knife handy, like Crocodile Dundee as well.

My mother jokes about how she ought to be mortally afraid of her husband being armed to the teeth all the time, but we all know that she is most blessed among women. Fruits, in my mother’s world, come ready to eat, without the hindrance of skin or seed. Crabs are without their hard shells and prawns are always peeled. This is how my father loves his wife.

Clearly, I have a lot to live up to as his son. But his example is the greatest gift a father can pass to his children, and I am often so thankful for all that he has done for us through real action, and not words.

I do not know how I shall ever repay this debt, and words are all that I have. In my own hybrid western-asian way I speak these words publicly to the world yet not directly to him in the knowledge that someone will print out this very blog post and have him read it. That he may know that I love him very, very dearly.

And that if I had all the choice in the world, I wouldn’t have been able to pick out a better father for myself.

In an era where we’re all about choice it seems inconceivable why anyone would surrender their individual freedoms to have children. After all, children are viewed as a shackle; a ball and chain that ties you down for at least 2 decades if not more. This view isn’t erroneous, as many parents will attest to the fact.

Frankly, the commitment level of having a child ranges somewhere between “the hardest thing I’ve ever done” to “the hardest humanly possible thing”. Faith and I are blessed enough to have parents who are more than willing to take care of our two younguns. Even then, a good night’s sleep has become an alien concept and a faraway memory.

But the rewards! Being so intimately intertwined with another life is an indescribable experience. And this small person will reveal the crust of cynicism and jadedness you’ve accumulated over the years of dealing with adults. This child of yours has no agenda, yet in the most gentle and stark of ways shows you how things really ought to be. Spending a day with my kids resets the priorities of life. They remind me of the simple and inexpensive pleasures like a good conversation or the sound of laughter.

Just moments ago Anne cried. She had spent a good portion of last night cobbling together a present for her brother Caleb using scraps of paper carefully cut with her pair of scissors and held together by scotch tape. It had fallen on the ground and broke apart before her brother could do the official unwrapping. Looking at her crumpled countenance, I could empathise with her pain at watching her hard work fall to pieces, and am reminded to similarly apply myself to my craft, regardless of whether management will eventually break it.

There are so many lessons we learn in parenting, and I would venture to say that they teach us more than we teach them. My only hope is to hold on to these valuable lessons they impart to me, that I may one day impart it back to them.

Anne turned 4 yesterday. Caleb turned 1 today.

Life has a way of passing you by. There’s the daily grind where minutes turn into hours, and yet in retrospect, it would seem that everything flew by. Our children have passed huge milestones in their lives.

We pushed Caleb’s celebrations to this Saturday, which turned out to be a good thing ‘cause the boy has been fighting the flu the past few days. It’s amazing how quickly babies turn from needy little bundles of endless wanting to individuals with their own little idiosyncrasies and flair.

Caleb walked his first steps about a week ago.

He’s shown an affinity for putting objects together, unscrewing the tops of bottles and initiating endless rounds of peekaboo on his own (usually behind a chair or under a table).

It’s a humbling experience, this parenting gig. You find yourself awestruck so much of the time as a whole person is formed before you. The big secret of it all is that the children emerge beautifully in spite of our parenting. Every parent who’s honest will confess that despite our best efforts, we suck at this. Every child is different, every child pushes us to the limits and we often do not have all, or any of the answers. Yet somehow, by the grace of God, our children love us.

More than we ever deserve. And our only response is to love them back.

Blessed birthday, my little boy. Thanks for the little hugs. I need them more than I realise.

Dearest Anne and Caleb,

The year was 2003 and Aunty Min and I were students in Tucson, Arizona. In the evening, I drove to the mountains to photograph the sunset, as I often did, while Aunty Min caught back-to-back episodes of “Friends”.

The skies were a flat grey - terrible conditions for a sunset - and it was threatening to rain. Were it not for the narrow mountain roads that made it hard for me to turn back, I wouldn’t have driven all the way to Gates Pass.

Every evening, the carpark at Gates Pass would be 3/4 filled, with families hiking up the trails and couples snuggling up the side of the mountain waiting for sunset. I was the only one there this evening, and it didn’t look as it I was going to see any sunset at all due to the very thick cloud cover. I took a short hike up to the vantage point, looked around a bit and headed back to the car.

“Wasted trip”, I thought to myself.

As I started the engine, the skies glowed a most unreal blue. I grabbed my camera, ran out and took photos from the parking lot.

Like Shawn Colvin’s song goes, “I never saw blue like that before”.

There are times when you find yourself at your strength’s end. Tonight, it’s a general weariness from struggling with intermittent internet access at work, a body that’s recovering from a short round at the gym yesterday and a bowl of fishball noodles that on retrospect, had some rather stale prawns. Bleaugh.

Caleb requires more attention than ever as he’s learned how to crawl. He’s already trying to stand up and do a “look dad, no hands”. It scares us a little as his head has met the cold hard floor a number of times already. Anne’s not taking too well to her little brother hogging her mum and dad. She gets overly affectionate towards Caleb, often forgetting that her strength and her weight could injure him.

And so tonight I came home, tiredness written over my face. I tell Faith how yucky I feel.

“Feeling tired?” she asks. “Yeah, me too.”

We’re both kinda burned out I guess.

Faith did a great job sleep-training the kiddos while I was away. Caleb now pretty much sleeps through the night, but the amazing thing is now Anne goes to sleep without needing us in the room. She actually tells us to leave while she settles herself to bed. We don’t know what goes on in the bedroom, but the scene in the morning is normally one of hilarity.

On a normal morning, we’ll find Anne sleeping in the midst of what looks like a disaster zone. Pillows strewn around and the rolled up mattresses toppled over. These nights I kiss her goodnight then topple the mattresses so she doesn’t have to get out of bed to do it. Just yesterday night we went in to see her fast asleep wearing a pillow-case like a crown. It reminded me of the time when she was a baby in the pram, and the youths at church put a makeshift hat on her that made her look like the Pope.

After a day at work, my normal home routine consists of getting everyone fed, bathing Anne and reading her bedtime stories before tucking her to bed. Faith makes sure fat boy there loads up on lactose before heading off to his night-long (hopefully) voyage into slumberland. It’s only after everyone’s tucked in when we sit beside each other, like comrades after a hard day’s work. The company is great, and tonight we had vanilla ice cream.

The awkward moment of the night came when Anne popped out of the bedroom to pass Faith her blanket and caught sight of our little tub of sin.

“What’s that?”, she asks, knowing exactly what she saw.

Faith and I felt like we did a million moons ago, teenagers sitting in front of the television while her parents popped in every now and then to make sure we weren’t engaged in some forbidden activities like holding hands.

We ‘fess up, offer her a spoonful of ice-cream. She skips back to bed. I tuck her in again and kiss her goodnight.

She doesn’t speak; mouthful of ice-cream, and savouring every last melting drop.

This is something I’ve been thinking about writing for a really long time, partly because we have quite a number in our circle of friends who are wondering whether or not to have children, and partly because our government keeps harping on the subject but is doing a really poor job of selling the idea, the latter being my personal opinion.

Wow, that was a really long sentence.

When I attended the government dialogue session for young couples back in May, there was this candid exchange between the MP who was on the panel and a mother of two.

“What would make you have your third child?” asked the MP, “$10,000? No? How about $12,000?”, referring to the Baby Bonus scheme. Sitting there, it felt like I was watching someone bidding in an auction for a piece of meat.

That’s part of the problem with us isn’t it? That we often view having a family as an economic decision. Not merely monetary, but economic. That having a child will incur the opportunity cost of a high-flying career or late night parties. And you’d be right. If you’re a parent worth his or her salt, you’ll be conflicted with these choices.

With Faith and I, having children wasn’t an economic choice, probably because neither of us had the mental tenacity to strenuously debate this life-altering decision.

We had children simply because it felt like a natural next step. It literally felt like the act of putting your right foot ahead of your left foot in the act of walking. I think we gave very little thought to the consequences of our choice, and looking back I doubt any amount of extrapolation would have prepared us for its magnitude.

Children are a blessing from God (Psalm 127). We can truly testify to that statement. My heart is filled with joy just thinking about how Anne wore her pants on her own a few hours ago. Back to front, no less. Maybe the joys of parenting seem so trivial to the onlooker, but that’s what parenting is. It amplifies life. It stretches the gamut of emotional experience, tests your physical endurance and in the process transforms your mind so indelibly. Where once you frowned upon parents who brought their children out to dinner, now you can’t help but gush over how cute those kids are.

Does parenting make you stupid? Possibly. Unsophisticated? Definitely. Parenting strips away the unnecessary baggage that has been accumulating over years of social engineering. Your children will not respect your enormous job title or your educational qualifications. They do not care for your keen business acumen or your dazzling intellect, but a smile from you would suffice to light up their faces and a kind word would go a long way.

It is then you realise that they are educating you in the truly important things in life. And that at some very tangible level, you needed them more than they need you.

“Engagement ring, wedding ring, suffering.” - The punchline of a joke too often used by priests, ministers, aspiring emcees at weddings.

Our lives as parents seem like a long chain of chores, and any free time between planned chores is quickly consumed by the immediate needs of the present. This weekend has been especially hectic with Anne succumbing to a minor flu and Caleb learning that being carried is preferable to lying in his cot.

I toil endlessly, strengthened every now and then by moments where our children are angels and the universe is in harmony, in order to deal with the illogical and unreasonable demands of same-said children. But what buoys my spirits the most is seeing Faith by my side. We exchange silent “I love you”s like members of a boy band lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track.

The premise is simple - there is solidarity in mutual suffering.

But it also goes against the very human trait to be averse to suffering.

We currently face the decision of whether to hire a domestic helper.