In memory of my mother - a dutiful housewife

It is almost a year now since she was taken home to be with Abba Daddy on November 07, 2006 and recently I was talking with a good friend about how we remember our parents after they had left us; what legacy(ies) had they given us to remember them by. Hence the series of posts on my memories of my late earthly father and I am now penning my thoughts on my late mother.

My mother was born in China and as a young girl left China with her parents just after the Japanese Imperial Army invaded China back in 1938. They landed in Malaysia and settled in Selangor State and my mother and maternal grandmother went to work for Bata, the shoe manufacturer while my maternal grandfather was surviving on odd-jobs - small repairs and helping to sharpen tools.

After marriage, my parents moved to Kelang and stayed with an adopted relative n 1948 and my father decided to move the family (wife and two young children) in 1952 to Christmas Island where he found a job as a store-keeper in the supermarket in Christmas Island. After the birth of my elder brother (in early 1953) and I (in late 1954) and as we grew up, my mother started to take on homecooking to supplement the family income. And we siblings were tasked with housework as she busied herself with her 'meals-on-wheels' business and on weekends, it would be helping dad with cleaning up the fishes that he and his friends had caught. In fact mom ran a small scale business - meal-on-wheels, fish-mongering, fruit-selling (homegrown from our garden), eggs (from the family chicken farm) and became a celebrity among the residents in Christmas Island.

She had always been there to support dad in whatever he wanted to do and seldom did I hear them arguing (maybe they did behind closed doors and I might not have heard them). In fact she was so supportive that she had to force herself to make appearances with him at annual functions - my father was the chairman of the Chinese Association for a number of years and it was in that capacity that he had to attend annual cocktail parties at the residence of the general manager of the mining company on Christmas Island. I recalled one such function (it must have been his initial years) where dad came home drunk and threw up and mom spent the whole night cleaning up and telling him not to drink so much in future. Well, it taught dad a valuable lesson and for subsequent years, he knew better and was better prepared - never drink alcohol on an empty stomach!