Being a Child
As a child, I didn’t often think someone would think differently on a subject from me. I did sometimes realise this fact, and that was in arguments with hair-pulling and sitting on the other to subdue them. Otherwise, no.
My family, being a typical Singaporean family in the mid to high income bracket but with an disproportionate amount of young lieblings in the nest, employed a maid. They always have so far as I remember.
My first maid was called Constance. Auntie Connie, or Aunniieee when I wanted her to come quickly. She used to do a lot of things for me, like tie my shoelaces in the morning when I was late. And children are often late, especially when they first enter primary school. The hours are horrible – one has to wake up at about 6am to be ready by 6.30am to catch the schoolbus. Then one would have to sit in aircon, sniffling with sinus and wrapped in a blue woollen jacket, and try to sleep until the bus reached school and we all piled out and greeted our friends in our classrooms.
I’m not very sure what part of our family Auntie Connie was, really. A maid, but more than a mere minion to assign to do work because she’d been around before I was born. She had even accompanied our family to the US for two years, gone to Disneyland and the Famous President Statues because my mother needed someone to help her to manage her brood. Most maids, I venture to suggest, only last two years, the length of their contract.
The thing that defines a child is innocence. The lack of recognition of hurt in the world. I once told a family playmate who was younger than me that she would have to lose her baby teeth to grow adult teeth, and she was horrified. I don’t know if she’d even known what death was at the time.
So at the back of my mind, maybe I’d always known Auntie Connie would leave, or maybe I hadn’t known at all. It didn’t really matter, because I did know when she left.
In primary school one suddenly gets introduced to pocket money, and slowly realises what one can do with it. Especially with the presence of the book shop, which is a source of constant anticipation and happiness and disappointment. They had very cute little notepads for 20 cents, and exercise books at about forty cents, and even inky pens (as opposed to ball-point pens) for a great sum of two dollars.
As a child, with your shopping world thus limited to your bookshop and your school canteen food, you begin to think of giving gifts with things from there. My mother relates that when I was younger I gave her a very small wad of $2 with a note that she can spend it on whatever she likes. She still keeps it.
But going back to the school bookshop and my shopping world. I once saw a very small basket of fake flowers there and thought it’d be perfect from my Annieee’s birthday. And I bought it for her, and she put it in her room on top of her closet.
The year I turned 9 was a strange one. It was the year my maternal grandmother died, while she was away in the Mediterranean on a Christian tour. I remember reading an abridged book with Shakespearian stories. I believe I was on a Midsummer’s Night Dream, with the donkey and all, when my mother came down the stairs with the phone to tell us that her mother had died. The following few days were fraught with more disturbing news. That my grandmother’s body was being delayed from shipping back due to various reasons, that an autopsy was concluded and the affliction my grandmother died from could have been allayed by the medicine in the suitcase. As I read with my back to my mother I had started crying, but I wiped the tears away. Then I didn’t cry until the body entered the oven for cremation and I felt a rush of loss and everyone wondered if I’d been very close to my grandmother.
And from then we didn’t go to her house after my sister’s ballet class again, or stop along the way to extract nectar from the small red flowers.
That year too, was strange because at the end of the year, after my family had come back from America or Australia from our three week holiday, my maid was nowhere to be found. She had gone back to the Philippines for her biennial visit and had been due to arrive back in Singapore a few days before us. My aunt called us to reveal that Auntie Connie had called her from the Philippines to say her sister was sick and she’d be delayed.
My first introduction to housework. My mother taught us, and we’d alternate duties. As there was only one mop, the unlucky ones would have to go on our hands and knees to wipe the floor using a damp cloth. Learning how to wash dishes, helping to hang up clothes.
Eventually as we received no communication from my Auntie Connie, my mother realised that she probably would never come back. My mother decided to hire a new maid, and started the interview process.
In the meantime, I’d gone to her room to visit. Sometimes my brother, the youngest of us all, would go there to lie down and sleep and miss her. There I discovered the flowers I’d given her. When my mother decided she wouldn’t come back, I took the flowers and put them in the drawer of my desk.
The new maid was called Elvira and she was different from Auntie Connie. Auntie Connie used to like to tickle me as I walked past so I was always wary for that, but I had no need to put up my tickle guard around Auntie Elvie. And when I called for Aunniieee, Auntie Elvie didn’t know whom I was calling and called if my old maid’s name was Annie.
But she was okay, I suppose. Just not Auntie Connie.
When I got older my mother began to confide in me more. She said Auntie Elvie reported that some of the maids in the neighbourhood whom she talked to, told her that Auntie Connie was married. My mother wondered if Auntie Connie had never had a sister who was sick, if she had just wanted to stop her long employment with us and had been worried that my mother wouldn’t want her to go. This thought hurt my mother, because my mother had had warm feelings for my maid, who was with her through five pregnancies; four successful ones, and a miscarriage. She would have given her an amount of severance pay to express her goodwill.
It also hurt me, because if that was true then my Aunnieee had chosen not to bring along the small flower basket I gave her, that I chose carefully from the bookshop and used my savings to buy and crept into her room to smile at sometimes, and that is still in my desk today. Chosen not to bring along the worthless basket that was really of no worth except to the child who gave it to her Aunniee.
This story is not about how one shouldn’t employ maids who will influence their children, or about how one should be wary when a maid says her sister is sick. It’s about how a child grows up and feels loss and loses innocence, and every child has a story.
Postscript: I wrote this on the bus to school today. While I was waiting at the bus stop, I saw a familiar green-striped bus with the MGS Number 18 sign on the back of it, as it sped past my junction.
My family, being a typical Singaporean family in the mid to high income bracket but with an disproportionate amount of young lieblings in the nest, employed a maid. They always have so far as I remember.
My first maid was called Constance. Auntie Connie, or Aunniieee when I wanted her to come quickly. She used to do a lot of things for me, like tie my shoelaces in the morning when I was late. And children are often late, especially when they first enter primary school. The hours are horrible – one has to wake up at about 6am to be ready by 6.30am to catch the schoolbus. Then one would have to sit in aircon, sniffling with sinus and wrapped in a blue woollen jacket, and try to sleep until the bus reached school and we all piled out and greeted our friends in our classrooms.
I’m not very sure what part of our family Auntie Connie was, really. A maid, but more than a mere minion to assign to do work because she’d been around before I was born. She had even accompanied our family to the US for two years, gone to Disneyland and the Famous President Statues because my mother needed someone to help her to manage her brood. Most maids, I venture to suggest, only last two years, the length of their contract.
The thing that defines a child is innocence. The lack of recognition of hurt in the world. I once told a family playmate who was younger than me that she would have to lose her baby teeth to grow adult teeth, and she was horrified. I don’t know if she’d even known what death was at the time.
So at the back of my mind, maybe I’d always known Auntie Connie would leave, or maybe I hadn’t known at all. It didn’t really matter, because I did know when she left.
In primary school one suddenly gets introduced to pocket money, and slowly realises what one can do with it. Especially with the presence of the book shop, which is a source of constant anticipation and happiness and disappointment. They had very cute little notepads for 20 cents, and exercise books at about forty cents, and even inky pens (as opposed to ball-point pens) for a great sum of two dollars.
As a child, with your shopping world thus limited to your bookshop and your school canteen food, you begin to think of giving gifts with things from there. My mother relates that when I was younger I gave her a very small wad of $2 with a note that she can spend it on whatever she likes. She still keeps it.
But going back to the school bookshop and my shopping world. I once saw a very small basket of fake flowers there and thought it’d be perfect from my Annieee’s birthday. And I bought it for her, and she put it in her room on top of her closet.
The year I turned 9 was a strange one. It was the year my maternal grandmother died, while she was away in the Mediterranean on a Christian tour. I remember reading an abridged book with Shakespearian stories. I believe I was on a Midsummer’s Night Dream, with the donkey and all, when my mother came down the stairs with the phone to tell us that her mother had died. The following few days were fraught with more disturbing news. That my grandmother’s body was being delayed from shipping back due to various reasons, that an autopsy was concluded and the affliction my grandmother died from could have been allayed by the medicine in the suitcase. As I read with my back to my mother I had started crying, but I wiped the tears away. Then I didn’t cry until the body entered the oven for cremation and I felt a rush of loss and everyone wondered if I’d been very close to my grandmother.
And from then we didn’t go to her house after my sister’s ballet class again, or stop along the way to extract nectar from the small red flowers.
That year too, was strange because at the end of the year, after my family had come back from America or Australia from our three week holiday, my maid was nowhere to be found. She had gone back to the Philippines for her biennial visit and had been due to arrive back in Singapore a few days before us. My aunt called us to reveal that Auntie Connie had called her from the Philippines to say her sister was sick and she’d be delayed.
My first introduction to housework. My mother taught us, and we’d alternate duties. As there was only one mop, the unlucky ones would have to go on our hands and knees to wipe the floor using a damp cloth. Learning how to wash dishes, helping to hang up clothes.
Eventually as we received no communication from my Auntie Connie, my mother realised that she probably would never come back. My mother decided to hire a new maid, and started the interview process.
In the meantime, I’d gone to her room to visit. Sometimes my brother, the youngest of us all, would go there to lie down and sleep and miss her. There I discovered the flowers I’d given her. When my mother decided she wouldn’t come back, I took the flowers and put them in the drawer of my desk.
The new maid was called Elvira and she was different from Auntie Connie. Auntie Connie used to like to tickle me as I walked past so I was always wary for that, but I had no need to put up my tickle guard around Auntie Elvie. And when I called for Aunniieee, Auntie Elvie didn’t know whom I was calling and called if my old maid’s name was Annie.
But she was okay, I suppose. Just not Auntie Connie.
When I got older my mother began to confide in me more. She said Auntie Elvie reported that some of the maids in the neighbourhood whom she talked to, told her that Auntie Connie was married. My mother wondered if Auntie Connie had never had a sister who was sick, if she had just wanted to stop her long employment with us and had been worried that my mother wouldn’t want her to go. This thought hurt my mother, because my mother had had warm feelings for my maid, who was with her through five pregnancies; four successful ones, and a miscarriage. She would have given her an amount of severance pay to express her goodwill.
It also hurt me, because if that was true then my Aunnieee had chosen not to bring along the small flower basket I gave her, that I chose carefully from the bookshop and used my savings to buy and crept into her room to smile at sometimes, and that is still in my desk today. Chosen not to bring along the worthless basket that was really of no worth except to the child who gave it to her Aunniee.
This story is not about how one shouldn’t employ maids who will influence their children, or about how one should be wary when a maid says her sister is sick. It’s about how a child grows up and feels loss and loses innocence, and every child has a story.
Postscript: I wrote this on the bus to school today. While I was waiting at the bus stop, I saw a familiar green-striped bus with the MGS Number 18 sign on the back of it, as it sped past my junction.
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