My Grandmother

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Everytime I start a sewing project, I think of my paternal grandmother 🙂 Sadly when she was alive, I seldom thought of her, nor even had decent conversations with her even though she lived next door to us.

No, it wasn’t the language barrier either since I can speak Hokkien passably. Looking back I guess I didn’t think she was worthy of my attention since she was uneducated and I was educated. Yes, I know, *cringe*! 🙁 I was not close to my grandmother and I really know much of her or her life. 

In fact, as I was preparing to write this piece, it dawned upon me that I don’t even know when and how she passed away. 🙁 I had to check with my dad. Just for the record, she was 63 when she died of a heart attack in 1990. And no, I don’t have any photos taken with her at all 🙁

However, recently, everytime I sew and cook, I can’t help but think of her. I may not know her well but I do know that she was able to cook well and to sew even better! However, she was not acknowledged by most since she was uneducated and prone to many idiosyncrasies. Besides cooking and sewing are not skills admired by many people in society.

As far as I could remember, Ah Ma was the assigned cook of the family since everyone else was either working or studying. My mom was a SAHM but she had to babysit my 4 cousins besides my brother and me. Meals were never elaborate since money was tight but Ah Ma would always have meat (stir fried, braised) and vegetables and sometimes even soup for our meals. Of course our meals were mostly Chinese style even though she would occasionally cook curries for us to try. She would also try out new recipes she saw on TV. However she had a tough crowd to please 🙁

For many years, Ah ma had to cook for 9 adults and 4 children daily. She would even cook separately for me when I started developing eczema and had to abstain from many foods.

Come weekends, she would whip up new and special foods like yam cake and soon kueh for breakfast. She would also spend hours preparing special foods associated with the various Chinese festivals (dumplings, love letters, pineapple tarts, glutinous rice balls, etc…).

I should have watched and learnt from her how to cook for so many people! She would single-handedly whip up a feast when her grandchildren’s birthdays rolled around and of course for the annual reunion dinner before Chinese New Year. It was only in the later years that she had extra help from my aunts. Ah Ma would go grocery shopping daily by herself – a long walk to and from the wet market with just her trusty pull-along trolley and then haul the trolley up to her 4th floor flat herself! No lifts stopping on every floor back then. That’s why I said she was a very strong woman.

And she was a real talent where sewing was concerned. She was always able to replicate whatever we gave her! And if at first, she couldn’t figure it out, she would mull over it in her head till she could. Again, I sigh with regret that I didn’t learn a thing from her!

She used to sew curtains for an uncle’s business and she would teach my mom how to do it. Her workmanship was superb according to my mom. She just knew how to calculate measurements and how to arrange the fabric so that the pattern would match and one wouldn’t know that the curtain wasn’t made from one huge piece of fabric!

Ahhh!!! Isn’t it a pity that I lost out so much by not learning from her? Everytime I am struggling to figure out what to cook for the family and how to sew something for the children I would think, “If only I had learnt all these from Ah Ma!”

I am just grateful that God allowed me to inherit some of her creativity and talent and I pray that I won’t waste it! And in writing this piece I hope that my children will get to know their great-grandmother just a little bit.

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