A sort-of love story

There are two chairs at the back of the living hall. I call it a hall because my grandparents’ kampong house has an immensely large living area. My grandparents sit on those chairs all the time. They especially enjoyed doing that when we are all home. The sit there quietly, listening to our chatter and observing us. And I observe them. And hope that there will always be both, together.

On the second day he was hospitalized (yesterday), Auntie Lai Keen drove back to Ipoh. She brought grandma to the hospital. After some hours, she told granddad that grandma should go home and rest. Granddad started to cry. I have never seen granddad cry.

This morning, grandma told Auntie Lai Keen that granddad would use the massager and massager her shoulders. Nobody had done that in two days and her shoulders had gone stiff. Auntie Lai Keen started to tear again when she told me that just now.

You see, my grandparents are the most loving couple in my whole family. All their children could not emulate that in their own marriages.

And you know, my grandparents almost didn’t marry each other. They weren’t supposed to.

My aunties always tease my granddad about marrying the wrong girl. The occasion of their marriage was not all clear. Apparently, granddad was supposed to marry someone called Loke Mooi. I supposed he never met that girl he was supposed to marry. But he ended up with my grandma.

Grandma told me once, long ago, that she wouldn’t know what would have happened to her if she did not marry my grandfather. Grandma came for the kind of poverty you only see in olden Chinese drama series. She was never educated and she could not read or count (but boy, has good memory). She patched her clothes with pieces of cloths. Her mother died before she turned a teenager. Her dad was killed by the Japanese.

She told me once, her brother got a job as a seamstress (can men be called seamstress?) in a hospital. He had to made uniforms in white. He took the left over white pieces of clothes and made a dress for my grandmother. She was ecstatic. A dress! In white! Unfortunately, the material creases quite a bit. “But you know, if you lay down the dress neatly under your mattress and sleep on it, you flatten out the creases,” she said. And when she went around in the white dress, she said she got lots of compliments. “Wah.. Ah Moi, you look so pretty!” Grandma would laugh even as she tells me that (she told me this story a few times before)

Granddad on the other hand, never told stories. Not that we did not ask.

But everybody looked up to him. He had two years of primary education. His grandfather came from China and he was a tutor. He had one son- my granddad’s father- who was a useless person and an opium addict. So my great-great-granddad raised my granddad and his only elder sister.

Granddad, before this stroke, reads the Chinese newspaper diligently everyday. He educated himself. He even knows some English words! He worked for the Straits Timber Company and I think they had buyers/ suppliers from overseas and spoke English. So granddad picked up technical terms in English.

Actually, he did tell me stories. In an even longer time ago. I only remember that he worked at odd jobs to begin with. He even worked in a quarry and he said he once climbed the limestone hills of Ipoh to cut marble!

Granddad built his own family. The house on Jalan Jelapang Chemor was completely rebuilt by him. That’s where I grew up for the first five years of my life when my parents were too poor to care for me in KL. Granddad was generous with his relatives. He was not rich but he managed to send my dad to India to study engineering. He was even going to send my second uncle to UK, but the academic inclination stopped at the eldest son (my dad).

Grandma’s life, of course, transformed when she married granddad. They were strangers!!!

She never knew how to cook because she was never taught, she said. So my granddad’s aunties took her under their wings and educated her from scratch. Grandma remains one of the best cooks I know. Some of her dishes have no competition. None of my aunties cook as well.

A few years back, granddad’s car broke down and was left at the workshop for a few days. My grandparents go out for breakfast every morning (yum cha). I remember calling Chemor at that time and had a chat with grandma. I think I was in London. I asked her how would they go yum-cha when ye-ye’s car is in the workshop? Ah-ma said “we got on the bicycle”. And did I laugh!

Grandma is actually quite spoilt. By all of us. She laments on small pains and worries constantly. She goes to the doctor every few weeks. Granddad never complains. He dutifully drives her to Ipoh to see the doctor and dutifully returns to get her medicine. He attends to all her whims.

Grandma fusses over granddad. When I was a little girl, she made him his SunQuick orange juice everyday so that it was ready whenever he comes back from work. I would hide behind a wall of the house and try to ‘scare’ granddad as he gets out of the car. He let me scare him and sometimes carried me into the house. Then I would bring him his glass of juice and grandma would tell me to be careful. Each time. He gulps it down. Each time.

Now she makes him his Milo. She nags him about drinking too much liqueur (but only because it is the form of endearment she knows).

Auntie Lai Keen said grandma never shed a tear since granddad was hospitalised. I said grandma has had lots of time to think. Everyday, as she sits on her lazy chair. She thinks.

We asked grandma to come to KL for a visit, many times. She says she needs to take care of her chickens. She has no chickens now because she can’t walk well. She still refuses to come. We would tease her for not telling the real reason- she just wants to be with my granddad. To spend every little moment they have together, together.