Tripled

I have not posted any pictures of baby Elephant when he was born. So this morning, as I was watching him sleep, I realised the changes have crept up on me. He's almost tripled in size and his features have taken on a more boy-like quality instead of a small baby's.





Here he is when he was only a day old.







At four weeks


8.5 months, this morning


Vader refers to him as "Young man!" when he calls out to him, rightly anticipated. HAHA!

The Other person's struggle

I've been looking at some pictures posted by a dear friend and her husband. Many of the pictures are of them with their friends' kids or with their own nephews or nieces. Yes, I know the first question is, when will they have their own or are they trying? It is obvious how much they love children and how they are loved in turn by them. If we as observers wonder when they will have a child of their own, imagine the level of anxiety they might possibly be undergoing if they were to keep harping on the fact that they have yet to conceive.

I do not know why some of us are blessed with children relatively quickly after the wedding and others are made to wait a little longer, and then there are others who are unable to conceive naturally. I am always tempted to ask why, but having asked for many years (I ask why about several issues, not only about this particular one), I realise sometimes, the answer doesn't come. In place of this answer, a better path emerges. If I had continued to harp on the losses and the have-nots, I would not have appreciated the better plan that had been laid out for me.

My grouse is with the persistent questioning that couples like my friends have to face. These questions are more often to satisfy curiosity than they are out of geniune concern, despite being done unconsciously. While I am not ashamed to post pictures of my son and talk about him freely, I am also keenly aware of the difficulties other couples might be facing. It is always temptingly convenient to ignore the struggles of others, but because these are people dear to me, it is harder to choose convenience over empathy. Each time they play with baby Elephant or comment about how he's growing well, I wish I could ask about their child, but there is none, YET. It makes me feel utterly useless. Then again, it's not about me, is it?!

You are not a Replacement

I dedicate this post to baby Elephant, although as always, there are always comments from and about others involved.

A few months before baby Elephant was conceived, I was already with child, but that child barely survived seven weeks in the womb. It was the single most painful moment I'd ever encountered, but I know that the child is now in the safest of places and ultimately, it is not my call how our lives pan out. After that episode, we wanted to allow some time for my body and our hearts to recover. We were not 'trying' to conceive, we have never tried because we have never viewed having children as an objective to be achieved. If we are honoured with a child, we will welcome the opportunity gladly. A few months later, I was with child again. This time, it was baby Elephant.

When an acquaintance heard about the previous loss and that I was pregnant again, she said, "well, at least you have a child now." I'm sure this was an attempt at getting me to forget the previous child and to focus on the one inside me then. While I was annoyed at this, I never replied, because I knew she couldn't have known any better. It is still a bloody stupid comment nonetheless. How could anyone in the right mind, think that this child could, in any way, replace the previous one? They are different beings althogether. It's like taking you and dropping you in the middle of the ocean to disappear into nothingness and then putting another guy or girl in your place, as a daughter/son/wife/husband..... and expect nothing to have changed.

So, baby Elephant, when you hear about mummy and daddy's previous loss, know that you are not a replacement. You are not digit number 2. You will always exist as if you were the only child we had. Even if you happen to have siblings in future, it will not take away from the love we have for you. Granted, there will be less time for everyone, mummy and daddy included, but the intensity of the love will be multiplied. We will give everything we have to try to make sure this is the type of household where love binds us together.

At this point, I keep hearing dissenting voices saying, "Love doesn't feed you, can't clothe you or give you an education." Yes these voices will always exist, both in and out of my head, but as long as Vader and I know we are not living from hand to mouth, we will continue to fight to create this world for the family. To these voices I say," You live your dreams of having that penthouse condo and we will live ours of having so, so much more."

My reality

My blog needs more pictures, I was complaining to Vader the other day. Not because I need them to decorate the blog or to capture the memories for myself, but because I think, many times, they can better communicate the experience at any one time than words. Because either Vader or I am behind the camera, maybe baby Elephant will one day understand why we take certain pictures of him, and what emotions we wished to capture and freeze in time. Perhaps these pictures will help him catch glimpses of our reality with him when he is still not fully aware of his.

Here are some pictures of baby Elephant in action.

I finally figured out how to reposition my pictures, very rudimentary stuff I know... but I was puzzled by it hahhahhahaha.......

I was catching up with a friend the other day, and her daughter came to join us for dessert after school. She reached out to caress her daughter's cheek and hair, but of course, her daughter responded by backing away and brushing away her hand. Humoured, I commented that I used to do the exact same thing when my mum tried to touch my hair or cheek. Her daughter smiled in agreement, like she felt I understood why she backed away. What I failed to add, was that now that I have a son, I understood why mothers instinctively reach out to touch their children. I find myself constantly touching baby Elephant's hair, cheeks, kissing his head and eyes when he's asleep. I think to mothers, our children will always be miracles of creation. For me, I know baby Elephant is a gift that I've been honoured with and that I don't deserve. So I reach out to touch him to convince myself that he is real, that it is not a gift I hope for or that I'm dreaming about. When I put my face to his head and inhale his sweaty baby smell, my eyes close unconsciously as I let myself be overtaken by his presence. Then his legs give hulk-like kicks against my arm, and he shrieks into my ear to be hugged or carried, and I know. I know this is as real as it gets. As quickly as my child sends me into a giddy fantasy about how sweet babies are, he also drags me back to reality at breakneck speed, when he bounces nonstop, reaches out for everything in sight to play with or for the next piece of furniture to pull himself up on.

We're always tempted to say, baby Elephant got this certain trait from me, or from Vader. Well, I'd like to pretend I can speak up for baby Elephant now and say that while he's certainly inherited our genes, he is still, a hundred percent himself. That is the reality I would like him to live out, that he needs to discover his own dreams, his own mission in life and live it.

Convergence at Six Degrees

The funniest thing happened when I decided to sit in a favourite coffee-joint this morning to surf, plan and write. As I was writing the previous entry, the store manager came up and asked if I would like to sit in on a book promo session. I had seen the book earlier at the counter and was initially attracted to it, but told myself I had come to complete some work and would look at the book after I had accomplished my task for the day. So as luck would have it, the manager came up to me with the invitation and I couldn't turn it down. This book is of course Six Degrees of Expatriation by Maida Pineda.

I hope I don't get into trouble writing about my encounter here, but it made an impression deep enough for me to want to blog about it. The author, Maida, is like a breath of fresh air. Contrary to my very ignorant impression of writers, she wasn't loud and intimidating (don't ask where I got this impression from, I probably just conjured it up from nothing). Instead, she was open and polite, always smiling and for want of better words, amazingly sweet. She shared with us a snippet of the book, about her experience when her honeymoon period in Singapore had come to an end, and when she experienced a fall, both literally and figuratively.

What touched me was her curiosity and and her desire to learn more about our culture, while remaining non-judgemental. I asked her if there was anything that struck her about Singaporeans and she quipped eagerly, "you mean something positive?". I replied that it doesn't matter, just that I wanted to know how an Expat viewed us, and was prepared to receive an honest opinion. She commented that Singaporeans are all hardworking and concerned about getting ahead. I enquired if that meant that we were caught up in consumerism, and she apologized and said, yes. She almost looked sorry that she had to admit it, but I on the other hand, was happy and surprised, that her views echoed mine. She said that the prevalence of consumerism was sad, but that as long as we knew who we were, then we could pay more attention to our spiritual selves and work on it. Rightly said, I see it as a constructive comment instead of a criticism of our identities and our goals.

It was a fulfilling morning, to see that someone supposedly sitting outside the fence of our culture had views that converged with mine. Of course, these are general comments in a casual conversation and do not in anyway characterise the entire Singaporean community (this disclaimer is here for fear of the backlash I'll get when my comments get distorted to something like "Singaporeans are empty or have not emotional core or shape"). There were other things that we chatted about that made me feel I wouldn't mind talking to her again. Just in case I don't get the chance to meet her again, I'd just like to say a warm welcome to her, to come be part of our eclectic culture.

Letters to Nowhere

I miss writing letters, old fashioned letters where you actually sit down and think about the other person you're writing to. Yes, modern technology allows us to update each other on our whereabouts, vent our frustrations, share our joy almost instantaneously. Almost at the exact moment we encounter something that intrigues us, our friends get to know about it via sms/facebook. It announces what we are, who we are at that moment to a wide audience. I feel, still, it lacks a certain depth and intimacy.


I used to have a penpal a long time ago, when I was just a little girl. I think she was a girl of my age from Germany. Our teacher managed to get us matched to penpals to write to, and then it was up to us to keep the writing relationship going. It was such a long time ago that I can only recall that she sounded so bubbly even in her letters. Her letters arrived in nice colourful envelopes and she had neat, rounded cursive handwriting. I on the other hand, never mastered writing in cursive, so it was always individual, blockish letters, not much different from my current handwriting. I made up for it by writing to her on my best paper, the prettiest designs that I always struggled to use, because all I wanted to do was keep them on my shelf, unused, and stare at them forever. But I would use it anyway, because strangely, writing on it was as pleasurable as staring at it, and I knew I would get bored soon enough anyway. This relationship was shortlived however, barely a year, if my memory doesn't fail me too terribly. I don't remember who stopped writing and why I never sent another letter to continue the relationship.



The second person I used to write to and with, was a very dear friend, let's call him/her T. This time round, we never bothered with nice paper or handwriting. T obviously knew of and shared my love of writing letters, so T bought us a shared journal. When T and I weren't spending time together, we would write to each other in this journal. I would write an entry, and pass T the journal the next time we met, then T would read it and respond. So the journal was passed back and forth, and constantly accompanied one of us each time we left the house. Its entries were read in the silence of our own bedrooms, on solitary bus rides, read and reread, savoured slowly and responded to and then past entries reread again. What thoughts passed through the journal? Everything that mattered to us. Raw emotions were laid bare on its pages, our joys, fears, insecurities, frustrations, at life, at each other. There was little or no inhibition as we talked about our past, present and future together, although I was always apprehensive about broaching the topic of the future.



This writing relationship lasted longer than the previous one with my penpal. The writing lasted 3 years, the relationship longer. The writing stopped when I couldn't meet the next milestone in the friendship and put up barriers to entry. And so the journal became unwanted property, because it held memories we no longer wanted to keep, and yet could not bare to destroy / discard it with our bare hands. I kept it in a shoebox and stuffed it in the corner of my wardrobe, together with other random letters written on cocktail napkins or torn out notebook pages when we didn't have the journal, but wanted to write to each other. Then one day, several years after the writing stopped, I knew I had begun to use the journal as a psychological crutch. Each time I wanted to retreat from the world, I would take it out to read, and pretend time had stopped and I had become Alice in Wonderland again. The memories shackled me to the past and crippled me so I never wanted to move forward. The moment I realised this, I knew I had to get rid of the journal, so I did, nice and clean. Not forgotten, but no longer attached, and I felt like I could run again and let the sun into my life, instead of hiding within the confines of my closet.

Now, I write letters to nowhere, to no audience, or perhaps to an open audience. Like a cruise to nowhere, there is no intended destination, but we enjoy the journey anyway, and we do find ourselves at certain endpoints, and it takes us by surprise and is all the more fulfilling. Sometimes I write stuff on impulse and when Vader reads them, I wish he would respond in kind, but I realise, I no longer need a response all the time, I no longer need to hang off every word in the response, when there is one, that is.

Who's Opinion counts?

When we become mothers, all of a sudden, everyone seems to have an opinion on what a good mother is. Many of these opinions irk me, not because they are ill intentioned (people are mostly well intentioned actually, when they voice such opinions), but because they seem to think that because a certain method was used before by another mother, then it would work for the next one. Did anyone have the sense to check with the mother if the method continued working ten /twenty/ fifty years down the line? Can anyone be sure they have a guaranteed foolproof method regardless of the individuality of the child? Or maybe, as some of the older folks would say, "All babies the same lah, will work one lah..." yada yada yada... Yes, I sound ungrateful and unneccessarily critical of people who care, so sue me.... I never said I disliked the people, or their concern for that matter, it was the opinions that annoyed me.


Here is a list of opinions on what a good mother should be:

1. should continue working until the child is in primary school to ensure a steady stream of income and also because prior to primary school, children are merely babies who eat, sleep and play
2. should ensure that the work she does is high paying, because it would be irresponsible to bring a child into this world and only be able to provide him the basics (time and love do not count even as basics apparently)
3. must breastfeed until the child is 12 months. Any shorter and the mother is lazy and does not love her child enough
4. should send her child to enrichment classes from 6 months onwards so the child doesn't fall behind when he starts going to school
5. should send the child to some famous nursery/play school because only then will the child develop well
6. must be prepared to move to the area where there is a good school to send the child
7. must strongly encourage (i.e. give the child no other option) the child to become a doctor, because only doctors are smart and are worthwhile human beings. The rest of the population makes up the scum of the earth, that's why pollution is on the rise.
8. must enforce filial piety by ensuring the child gives me money in future

I'm glad I made the list above, because now rereading it, it makes me chuckle. I know the people who voiced the above opinions, and most of them are really sweet people who meant the very best for me, and they each have gone through their own set of challenges and each have grown up with a slightly different belief system, that led to them thinking this way. The list merely isolates the opinions and has taken them out of context, so they sound ridiculous. But I wouldn't be surprised if there are several people who would readily take the above list as serious should-dos when they have their own kids.

So who's opinion matters? Beats me, but I sure as hell know one thing. Observe your child before intervening, talk to your husband about what matters to the two of you, because it should always be a family decision, not an individual one. That's my take, at least. Does my opinion count to others? Doesn't bother me as much nowadays and I am happy.

Shedding

For the past 22 months, I have put on a cloak every single day, on weekdays. Each day, the cloak got thicker, tougher and more fitting, so tight it almost seemed to melt into my own skin. Each Friday, it got harder to remove the cloak. With each passing week, when removed, the cloak seemed to leave stains on my skin, until I realised that my entire body was covered in a layer of the cloak. I was covered in anger, fear and resentment. This was the fabric that was the cloak.

Yesterday, I removed this cloak and forcibly scrubbed off any remnants that had crept into my skin. I no longer have to ask why incompetence is rewarded and guarded in certain people and not in others. I no longer have to be the obedient sheep, who while is resentful of the fact that she has to pick up on stuff carelessly (or perhaps intentionally) left undone, still does it and ensures it is done well and efficiently. I no longer have to sit in silence and resist the urge to hurl my chair across the room. I can finally enjoy peace within and without.