journal entry 02

Well, blogger isn't up to standard today.

I've been thinking a lot about family. And about my life.
Today I asked my parents a question: If you had to lose one of your senses, which would it be? My mother said taste, which was my answer too. My dad said touch, so that he wouldn't feel pain. I guess we're different, but I can't imagine not touching all the things God gave us. The rain, the cotton sheets, a friend's warm touch, a firm handshake, flower petals, the brush of a stranger,and the wind. Oh the wind. Perhaps it was Paulo Coelho's Alchemist that made me love the wind so much, but since I read On Angel Mountain by Brian John, I can't get the word "zephyr" out of my life.

I'm thankful for all those comments that have been appearing on my blog, even if some are anonymous. I won't go out of my way to find out who it is though. Some things like tests and problems with friends and Alessa, our debate trainer being mad at us. I have it easy compared to a lot of other girls, and compared to a lot of other people in the world. Sometimes though, I wish that I could understand the acceptance some people so gracefully allow in their lives.

I was thinking though, how much would I be willing to sacrifice for Christ. Alright, the time I'm using now or those precious Sunday mornings could be better used for something, but they are very rewarding. I feel energized by them. If someone chooses religion as the topic for discussion on the bus (Gwen), I like renewing my faith in the midst of Christians from other groups of Christians. Its confusing with the Catholics and the Protestants and the Anglicans and the Presbyterians and us Methodists, but I think I simplify things to a simple, "We're all Children of God". I'm kind of fearful that I take church as just a recharging point, I want my relationship with god to be much more intense and stronger than me getting a wake-up call which subsides by Monday morning. The quiet time has been helping.

I guess I've been dalliant with my time, but I think sometimes that I had rushed through childhood. One of my more vivid memories was when I was in kindergarten and we were all at the playground somewhere in Jurong. It was those old brown tile skeletal slide plus bridge type playgrounds located on a huge sand pit. Then a stranger, which was wearing black and honestly, now that I look back, looks like Michael Jackson. I was about four then? He was giving out those fruit flavoured heart candies after walking out of a taxi. The rest of the kids except me and a boy, with stubble hair on his head, went over jumping and skipping, clamouring for one. Both of us remembered the teacher's rules before they left for a while: Do not go near strangers. We faced each other and repeatedly shouted "STRANGER!" over and over and over. The teachers, two of them, one was a caucasion lady with cropped copper-gold hair, came forward and we rushed down the slide to expalin what happened.

Later, back in a class on the the second floor with blue carpeting, the students had to throw away the sweets into the waste-paper basket, saying "I will not accept sweets from strangers again". This is my most vivid memory of my childhood to date. That same boy had to go through the ritual even though he hadn't taken the sweets. I loved those candies and felt a little pang, but I was wondering and thinking up all sorts of poison that a person could put into a sealed sweet. And I remember that I wasn't called up to do it.

My parents say that I was always rather well-behaved and that friends would come and wonder how there could be so many breakable items on the shelves with such a little girl tottering around. In my grandparents' place last time, there was a whole shelving kept under lock full of small, exquisite bottles of purfume. I asked my dad why they were locked up. At my other grandparents' place, I would play dolls and the most long-term plot I had was the circus, where a guy would admire the girl balancing on the tightrope which was nothing but air.

The memories are coming back faster now. Miss Cecilia Lim, my primary school principal asking me to talk to her in the office about the school environment when I was Primary 1 or 2. At the church carnival where I bought the exact same doll that I had to throw away some time ago, just so that I could get those deep purple stockings and touch that golden hair that curled in a ponytail. And me wondering whether or not to buy the stuff toy cat they were selling which was from Barang Barang, that furniture shop. me saying my first testimony in front of the adult congregation when I was Primary Four, where I talked about the coma I had when i was four and how I thank God for letting me live. At the end, I said, out of something in the air or my mind or heart, "Praise the Lord", like so many other people said.

Me and Joni at the cabins looking at the stars in a packet we bought for a dollar, convincing ourselves that we could wish on them. And each of us wondering how many wishes we could make. Me puting them in an age old faded mickey mouse wallet of blue and pink with multiple compartments with mickey on one side and minnie on the other. My dad reading Enid Blyton and Pody (forgot the spelling) books to me at night where mom was working late. I loved the book on texture and I could hardly get through the story The Secret Door. It took us some nights. Me reading The pig with green spots when some irritating girl by the name of Nicole proclaimed it hers and me writing and crying on the pages, my name on every page, because my mother had got it for me. Me cutting myself with Joni's swiss knife when I was in Primary two and trying to make tribal markings on lollipop sticks. Mr Morrias, then a physical education teacher, suggesting elephant glue and then the principal calling my parents with me sheepishly saying that I wouldn't need stitches. Me scraping my knee on the road on the way home with my mother. Jan and Elly enrichment with Teacher Martin and receiving fruity gel squeezing things in tubes like those for glue and the Enormous Aligator by Roald Dahl. Me and Shannon eating and talking about art and hobbies at the staircases and little nooks in the school. Me sitting and blanking out after a good meal when Uncle Steven pronounced food as the thing to keep me quiet and my mother denying it this very night.

Eleven-twenty-two. There's a sad sort of chiming in the clock in the room and the bells of the steeple too, and up high in the nursery an absurd little bird, is popping out to say cuck-oo, we really hate to say it, but we really need to say it, to say good night, to you.

Thanks for the memories, God.
Amen