Dee’s Space

I’ve always kept late nights. All through life, it seemed the world was divided into those who kept late nights and those who had to sleep early (by this I mean before midnight).

In school, I studied best through the early hours, the whiff of the thin night air, the ticking of the clock, sometimes that strange marble ball that dribbles from the ceilings above…me and my late night radio; Silkie at my feet… cup after cups of Teh. That’s how I went year after year from errant absent student to those A grades overnight. Literally. Ok, B grades sometimes.

Even when I was writing my thesis, I would read in the day and leave my thoughts that sauntered through the day’s active reading and inactive musings to culminate in those late night writings. I’d finish up just when the first light of the skies breaks to piercing traffic sounds. That’s when I’d take the chance to put my newly acquired driving skills to the test and drive Diana, who was a mere kid, to school. Much trust she had in me, come to think of it!

So I’ve never been the kind to go to bed early. I think those in this side of the camp would say that we’re just built to thrive in the late night hours. I used to theorise that if one were born in the midnight hours, it meant those were your “golden hours”. You’d otherwise be sleeping in the womb rather than fighting your way out.

I feel that the night offers much repose. Many of us only find peace and time to ourselves when our “responsibilities” go to bed. In my case, Lucien…

Separately, going to bed later stretches the waking hours. It lets me do more, think more, maybe gives me a sense of achieving more. It’s a kind of unthinking, unconscious reluctance to let the day go, just yet. It’s over when you close your eyes to sleep; a new day begins when you open them.

So I am glad that lately, I’ve been going to bed early.

In fact, I had luxuriated in much loved Time to do all the wonderful things I love doing that one weekend night, I had relinquished the weekend to an early retirement at 10pm.

I was no longer holding on to “more”.

Restful. Purposeful. These 2 that never seemed to go together, do now.

I was asked at an interview once whom my superhero was. I took the question seriously, as people do, at interviews. I said Jesus Christ. I didn’t get the job.

Anyway, this is an ode to the unlikely superheroes that we find in our lives all the time. If only we’d ask, or take time to notice.

KEL has a theory that lizards, our eternal nemesis, a shared enemy of hers and mine, find moments when we’re at our lowest and weakest, and then attack us with their sheer presence.

Whoozy theory but I have to credit her foresight.

Last Friday, after spending the evening at the hospital with the husband who needed an op on his knee, I took a lesser known route through Tyersall Road where houses are big but people do not afford lights on the long and windy roads outside their insanely huge abodes. It was so dark the only light came from my headlights. I could hear the insects outside ; the stereo was turned off in order that I could hear the GPS.

I suddenly worried about the oddest occurences, like whom I could call if a tyre burst. Would I pull over if I had to or would I keep driving nonetheless till I saw the main road where there will be some sign of life? This is the stuff horror flicks are made of! Just so you know, the people who made the list of people I could and WOULD call if car failed me, were:

Cynthia TAN Sing Fern

Erene TAN Wai Leng

Lovell HO

ErJie

Since the husband’s in crutches, I guess he could not save me, even if I was very close to the Glenegles Hospital. I also didn’t think to call KEL because she would (1) need me to tell her where I am which would require me to get out of car. WAY TOO RISKY

(2) may never find me and she’d call the police.

Anyway, I digress. Tires stayed intact and the car got me home without a glitch, which was good, because my phone, had so little battery left, it was on SOS the entire time. i.e. NO radio signal.

Point of this post, I came home and after getting naked in the tub, I find, staring back at me, a pair of curiously unflinching eyes of a lizard. It looked like it layed in waiting, as if to prance at me if I moved.

Usually, this was Ken’s thing. But he’s not here tonight. And I hadn’t mastered the art of seeing lizards as pets. They were still, my greatest fear.

I stepped out of the tub, wraped a towel around hastily and called for Remy. I was embarrassed at my state of undress and also the silliness of my request.

“Are you afraid of lizards”, I asked, wimpily.

She looked at me, smiled and said, “Where”.

With that, she took said creature in hand, yes, in hand, even spoke gently to it…”it’s harmless…” she sang… as she ushered the creature into a plastic bag to be placed somewhere else, where it could not terrorise me.

My Superhero.

And all the could-have-been superheroes of my life. I realize you guys would be the same people I’d call on, if life ever made me afraid again.

I am glad I have my list. Start compiling one today… you never know when you’d need one.

I took a long drive from Jurong (where I stay) to Pasir Ris (where church is) one Sunday morning with the baby in the car seat behind duly entertained by the high-pitched and eternally mirthful Remy; the ipod streams a wave of U2, trembling stars, Coldplay and a part of my youth reverberated within me. Feeble but real. I look into the distance of the winding PIE and think, boy I am nostalgic.

Sometime last week, I ran away from the child and hid myself at the hairstylist behind frivolous vanity and a stack of glamourous magazines with spanky covers and expensive couture. Read an article, a heart-warming account by a young author whose sister’s a supermodel from age 14 and how the journeys of a million runways bring on the spotlight that blinds eyes to the cosy idyll of home based sisterhood. Boy, I am nostalgic.

I watched Shrek with the son and because we had little time to feed him, prepare his mik for his next meal and wash all bottles in preparation for next meal and feed ourselves (in that order); we ate at the humble Glory counter, an old fixture at the Lido theatre. The authenticity of the mee siam blew me away. I was only expecting for it to be warm. It came hot and sizzling spicy with the perfect tang. I had to have the curry puff and topped it all off with fish balls, the kind that comes 3 in a skewer; with the special chilli sauce. I was reminded of how this was the standard canteen fare at public pools parents used to take Diana and I to. I even had the smell of chlorine for a second, right there at the Lido theatre. Boy, I am nostalgic.

So what is it with this old but sweet familiarity coming back in warm waves?

I conclude that I miss. I miss who I am when I am in under the nostalgic waves of all these things. Less of things past, more of feelings deeply engraved, of hot sunlight rippling across the glistening pool when parents were young and we were kids; when going to the pool meant I’d be good for an entire week and when we shared the canteen fare and I wondered why swimming always made me so ravenous. And the smell of chlorine in my puffy wrinkled fingers all day long.

I remember me driving with the windows down, speeding occasionally, often with a cigarette between my fingers; letting the wind flick the ashes out onto the dusty world. I remember that carelessness; a quality I used to mistake as the carefree ability to take life as it comes.

Missing, remembering, reflecting and being at peace. Today. A real possession in the changing seasons of life. And death. And all things in between.

This is probably the most indulgent night I’ve had in a while. I am almost embarrassed to even blog about it but reminiscing about it still brings the corners of my lips into a whimsical curl so this is too good to pass on.

I soaked in the tub tonight.

A quarter-tub, really. I just couldn’t really bring myself to fill it much further. Felt like it was such a waste of water. It would be no overstatement to say the guilt filling up in me was proportionate to the sounds of the fat sprays of water filling up the tub. I can be such a miser when it comes to these things, the penny-wise, pound-foolish woman, they say.

Yet, I felt a deep desire to indulge. Oh what insipidity isn’t it? I wouldn’t call a dip in the tub hedonistic…

But such are our struggles, the nuances of all the parts that make up who we are, the parts that keep us together are also the parts that conflict and tear us. The parts that make us happy also cause us to deliberate, calibrate and police how we lap it all up. Are we not made to simply, indulge? Apparently not. Not me, at least.

So I found that the things that I truly celebrate, are the things like these…

Knowing that you will wake up tomorrow to a new arena to play out your hopes and plans, however slowly, the masterplan unfolds very soon where you shall steward this course called your life, your career…

When we as a family and our friends, feast no matter the restaurant du jour. We have all come a long way from committing this one day each week for our weekly rendezvous to feeling a strange ache in the bone if we didn’t meet up. The suckling pig wraps, the chicken rice, the beef soup, our coffees and ginseng teas. The kind of stuff that keeps my feet firmly on the ground and my heart on the skies above. We really must have done something right to have your friendships.

When Lucien piles his pounds on and does the Ricky Martin in his diapers.

I had all these tonight. It’s all so good I had to top it all off with a soak in the tub.

Life is good. And I am reminded once again, that a heart that gives thanks in all climates, learns to celebrate all seasons.

In a world that seeks to put people in categories, how do we come to remember and realise our truest potential?

The lasting effects of over-categorisation, those selection/deselection processes that dump us in folders according to capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and all those things that we like to think makes us distinct from one another, often become self-fulfilling prophesies. For those of us who were “labeled” very early on in life, how do we ensure we hold on to convictions about who we are and can be and not make the fatal mistake of accepting these as our own?

I would like to believe in the power of the Human Agency, an innate ability that gives us the power to become anything we set out to be. Limited only by the fears we put in front of ourselves. Contained only in the spaces we allow ourselves to operate and thrive in.

This became especially important this week as our family bands together to overcome some harsh realities.

In times like these, one can focus on what’s lost and be a loser. Or one can look at what’s learned and become the richer for it. And frankly, cynics may quip what a cliche this is but there really is no alternative if one were to consider that Moving On is absolutely needful and critical to life.

So today I want to lift those shackles of self-doubt off my shoulders. So must you. Don’t let the world get you down, don’t let it let you down. Don’t let the world put you in a box.

Grieve if you must. But do not let those shoulders hang too long.

Because the world continues its nonchalent orbit even as you weep in quiet corners. Jump right into orbit again love, for you will be wiser and fitter for this ride this time.

I was an angry person for a very long time.

A bruised and unsightly bucket of deep deep anger that I nursed quietly. For decades. Angry at the insipidity of ineffectual love, angry at the forgetfulness of hurt that erases events but not their sting.

Then I became a Mom..

It took me a really long time to come to this awareness but I finally know now how Dad ached when he could not provide as he wished, when we had struggles and he couldn’t help. When we pained and he was the cause.

In his youth, he was hard, steely and violent. Our simple minds simultaneously loved and hated him. During the peak of my own violent coming of age, I was a seething teenager with an unbalanced sentimentality that would erupt in rebellious demonstrations of all sorts. The one thing I never did was screw my grades up. Why? Because I knew it was the only real hope I could give myself.

You broke me down utterly but I am re-invented bigger, stronger and better.

I know now how deeply you must ache today. For the years that lapsed and the time we spent in combat. For knowing that as we discover each other again today, so much has been lost.

But take heart. Because you have taught in us a fierce love Daddy. Deeply profound even for me to grasp but its possibility wells in my heart each time I see your smoke-stained grin meet Lucien’s toothless one. I think Life itself streams possibilities of renewal and resuscitation. Like how Lucien’s birth has made your pain mine, bringing our hearts together once again. That we may live again as Father and Daughter. Forever and Ever.

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To stop the music press stop/pause.

This is a beautiful song about the seasons of life. Being a parent now makes me acutely aware of how Time strips away at all of life. Whether you do the right things or not. So the only thing I can do is to keep a heightened awareness of the here and now.

Never has my mortality been this strongly felt.

THE CIRCLE GAME Play

Yesterday, a child came out to wander
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

And the seasons they go ’round and ’round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Then, the child moved ten times ’round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, “When you’re older”, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him, “Take your time. It won’t be long now.
‘Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down”

And the seasons they go ’round and ’round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.

And the seasons they go ’round and ’round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and ’round and ’round
In the circle game
And go ’round and ’round and ’round in the circle game.

A child embodies an endless array of wondrous things that amaze, cheer and humble us.   They look at the world with such innocence and excitement, full of wonder and awe; a little afraid sometimes but always very game for discovery.

As adults, often, our world views become less glorious and it becomes harder and harder to become excited by the world.  Worldly possessions become our new toys and we let go of the simple but dear things that used to be all we needed in this world.  Like a hug, a cuddle, a kiss on the forehead, a lot of love even when you’re swimming in a diaper full of shit.

Why does the significance of these things diminish as we grow up? Is it the loss of innocence of our little ones? Or is it our failure to love unconditionally as little children stumble from the cradle of our arms into the world; when we begin to weigh expectations on their growing shoulders, matching affection with accomplishments?

I have no answers. But I know we are not perfect. Maybe Babies are, for a while.

What I know is that today, baby Lucien receives an abundance of love. In the simplest but most important gestures. A cradled stroll for as long as he fancies no matter how the weight breaks our aging arms, immediate attention to his every whimper, hugs and pats at night, clinical attention to his daily needs and a crazed amount of love that almost always threatens to burst my heart at the seams.

My prayer is for Lucien to always have a child-like purity, that he would always hold these dear and know that all the money in the world would not buy this deep affection and love.

May we, always continue to love him this way, even when he is no longer a babbling roll of cute fat and pinchable pink cheeks.

That we may teach one another the true meaning of Family.

At 2 months and 10 days, Lucien can’t say many words and clearly he can’t yet converse. But we’ve found that he likes to engage in baby babble and some nights, when he’s not sleeping and he isn’t allowing us to anyway, talking with Lucien can be very gratifying as we find him excitably imitating our words. 

So this is the beginning of the Father-Son Speak.

May we always find this much joy in each other’s company; and have such perfect understanding, even when we do not always speak the same language.

8th Nov : Sunday 11pm

Spent the evening watching MSN Videos under Tab called “Stupid Videos”.   Laughed heartily at seriously some of the darn stupidest videos ever. Evil Baby Laughter,  Dogs doing the Skateboard, etc.

Maybe it’s me, I am 8 months pregnant and this is a serious source of entertainment for me. But it does nothing for the husband, who occasionally gets jolted out of his slumber by my hyena laughter. Everytime he’s about to doze off, I am laughing myself to tears again and he wakes up in a dreamy startle.

Poor man. But how I love him.

Somewhere between the dogs and baby videos, he wakes up and tells me he’s going to catch the Man-U game. The one they lost, cos he came back into bed later all grumpy.

9 Nov: Monday 0400h

Felt a “thud” sound occur INSIDE belly. How strange…like a puncture …

Warm trickle of water … first thought: I laughed too hard I peed in my pants?! No way, I have better pelvic control that THAT!

Stood up to go check. Felt more gush out. Decide to wake up hubby and go toilet real fast.

OOH. Blood.

0410h: Husband can’t open eyes.

I say, CHECK THE HYPNOBIRTH BOOK, what does it say? AM I IN LABOUR??!!

Husband reads a page and casually says No.

Para goes something like this … Signs of Early Labour…

1. Rupture of Membranes (water bag breaks)

2. There is a bloody show..

3. Contractions…

While on toilet bowl, cramps starting, and more blood showing…I stub index frantically on page.. I’m showing TWO of the three symptoms! Are you reading? Are you here? Hello? Sudden fear that I will be laboring alone grips me..

Husband wakes up from stupor and decides to call Doc and our doula. Then he proceeds to go back to bed.

0500-0900…

Contractions are steady 30sec long and 7-8 mins apart… I put on some music and try VERY hard to sleep. I find I do manage to sleep in betwen surges, but would go Hot and Cold each time one came and went….I am about to have a baby..at 36 weeks… I suddenly worry about the health of my baby… isn’t that premature?

0900hr

Message the Boss to say I could be in early labor. He says. “Good Luck!”

0900-1200hr

Suddenly, Nothing.

1400hr

We see Doc who puts me on 45mins CTG…baby’s heart rate decelerates with each contraction…she’s worried.

I was hungry.

She says she wants me admited and for antibiotics to come in by 4pm. I try and buy time. I say I want lunch.

1500hr

Husband and I walk slowly, and I mean very slowly… to Kiliney’s at Lucky Plaza.  I finally indulged in 2 soft boiled eggs, one of my eternally favourite things I had to give up due to the pregnancy. Decided that nothing should matter by now when I am about to give birth.

I feel elated, jubilant, confident, happy and excited. I can’t wait to have my baby.

1600hr

I am admitted into the Delivery Suite at Mt E. I didn’t like their hospital gown, so I put mine on. 

My elation was quickly dampened when the CTG was strapped on again and they tell me Baby’s heartrate is erratic.

Doc wants to put me on anti biotics… I say no and fnd self negotiating and bargaining for more time. I worry that soon, they will decide that the labour is taking too long and will start to augment it with a series of interventions. I didn’t want to lose control of a moment so intimate to me.

It’s been 12 hrs since labor started…

1600 – 2100hr

Pain intensifies. I struggle to breathe deep and slow as I feel convulsions overtake me.

I am bleeding onto my beautiful gown…I continue to lose water…

2 V.Es tell me I am only 4cm dilated…and it feels like forever.

I sip some water. I throw up. Must be the hormones. Or the pain. I take some grapes. I throw up. I take nothing. I throw up.

My spine hurts. In an electrifying, back- breaking kind of way. I feel like I am going to disintegrate from my spinal cord. And you will never put the million pieces of me back together again.

2200hr

Doc comes and tells me I am not only at 4cm only, cervix is only slightly effaced.

WHAT?! How much longer?!

I want some help. Get me some pain relief! Please…somebody do something. Don’t let this labour kill me. It’s been 18hours of pure pure pain.

2200-24hr

2 hrs of epidural later, I go easily from 4-10cm. By this time, the husband is on the couch asleep and our doula had gone off for some much needed food.

2430hr

Midwives tell me I can push whenever I want.

I suddenly felt this immense fear to push. It’s like pooping a watermelon. I’ve never done this before!

10th Nov, Tues, 0300hr

Almost 23 hrs later, including 3 hrs of pushing, Doc literally throws Baby onto my lap…umbilical cord still there, bloody, fresh from me, 100% baby, just there.  I didn’t know what to do. I help him gently and saw his eyes meet mine. For a fleeting second, before he worked his lungs with a wail.

5mins. Just us. Ken, Lucien and I. In our moment of Surreal Togetherness. I already love you baby…

Welcome to my imperfect world and making it better with your Perfection. 

……..

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Thank you for making me a doll! You. Made. Me. A. Doll!!!

Eternally one of those things I could never do, because I have fingers that cannot create.  

I love HmmBao. I love that you made it, and each stitch is you painstakingly putting together pieces of nothing into something special.  And HmmBao has that perennial look of Pensive Consideration.  A bit cross.  Definitely strange and very familiar but they kind you just cannot place…Looks like a dog / rabbit/hybrid/out of this world.  

It’s exactly the kind of present I want. 

1. $ cannot buy

2. Only I have the only and only.

3. I have Naming Rights.

4. You made it! And even if you attempted another, it wouldn’t be HmmBao.

I like I like I like! I have so many wonderful surprises this year. I’ve really been blessed.  This year especially. It makes me want to reach out and make Dad feel this way too. I cant bear knowing I have all these and it’s all staying here with me.  

I know we love some people more than we do others. In fact, with some, it’s really so hard to love them.  I hope I will find it in me soon to just let it go; to know that it’s best to let the past stay where it is and let today really count.

Thanks for making me feel this way, a way I hadn’t in these months.