Memories and Musing Paths Not Taken

It was Father's Day last Sunday--that's my excuse to post this ancient photo of me with my (late) dad and mum.

I remember telling my dad when I was nine or ten years old that I wanted to be a writer.

Why?

Because the girls in my class used to ask me to tell them stories at recess.
I remember one about the loud, angry woman who had a pastry shop down the hill from Mount Sophia where our school was.
In my story, her (delicious) 50 cent curry pies were made with the tongues of dogs and cats, and her $1 pies were made with the tongues of children--that's why she never talked to primary school students like us, because she wanted to preserve young tongues for her special pies.
But (and I still like this twist) our Principal secretly went to talk to her and Loud Angry Aunty agreed that she would only cook the tongues of students from our school who lied to her.

After the squeals and giggles came the dilemma: what if Loud Angry Aunty caught you eating one of her plain curry pies and asked 'how is it?' and it had no taste (because no tongue); do you tell the truth and make her angry or do you lie to her and let her Cut Out Your Tongue?

FYI that last question was delivered At someone and when that Someone started to cry I knew the story 'worked'.
(Sorry, H!)

I thought telling stories would be a good way to earn a living, but somehow my father wasn't equally convinced,

'You'll become a doctor' he said.

This photo is evidence I tried Med School for a while. Here I'm with some course mates in front of a Rubber Plantation upcountry, on a break in Malaysia.

And yes, I'm thinking of setting the next book in a rubber plantation. How does 'The Rubber Tree Mystery' sound?

It was Jeff's last birthday post that made me think about paths not taken. Dropping out of Medicine felt like the right thing for me then and now. The only time I've wondered was when first my mother then my father got sick and I wondered if I might possibly have made a difference if I'd taken a different path...

But of the twelve of us (including the photographer) in front of the plantation a lifetime ago, four died before reaching their 60's--despite access to the best (presumably) Medical care Singapore has to offer.

I doubt I could have made a difference to them or to my parents. And I've had a wonderful time on my chosen path so far, even / especially the sections I would label 'Adventures' (Thank you for the definition, Patti!) .

Another of those friends is now a neighbour and, since a stroke made it difficult for him to, I get to walk his dog sometimes,

This furry sweetheart brings me so much joy!

And so does this slightly less cuddly one I spotted last week...

I love mudskippers for their adaptability and for how they hop, skip and climb mangrove trees. They're literally 'fish out of water' but seem perfectly comfortable adapting to their environments!
If I had a spirit animal, it would be the mudskipper!

And now, like the mudskipper, I have to decide whether to go for a long walk on land or go out on the water today--it's not raining but there are definitely some clouds not too far out--

Or I could just stay here reading and writing--which seems to be where I end up, no matter which path I choose to start out on!

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things woul be if you had made other choices.
Matt Haig--The Midnight Library

Shadows and Stories

 Ovidia--every other Tuesday

It's been a very 'interesting' week, but I was finding it hard to come up with a big, meaningful topic, and yes, I've been finding it hard to focus too--just sent in a draft and I'm feeling a bit scrambled. 

So this is just going to be about a couple of small things that came up this past week.

This is a shot from outside one of the venues of the just concluded Singapore Writers' Festival:

It's the last line of 'If... else', a poem by Cyril Wong, (the link is to the whole poem) and is what made me decide to just look at some of the shadows.

Shadow 1: the (probably American) lady tourist

I was in an MRT Station when this lady was talking to the security guard kind of loudly, wanting him to show her where to go. Her husband was saying they'd exited at the wrong station and she kept telling him (her husband) to shut up (!)

It seems someone had told the lady to get off after four stops and the guard said 'four stops correct, but wrong direction. So now opposite direction, you go eight stops. Take escalator down--' he pointed.

Her husband wanted to go, but the lady was angry with the security guard for pointing at the escalator rather than taking her down. 

And she was angry with someone at the previous station for giving her the wrong information and wanted him to record her complaint. 

But since she'd pulled down her mask to complain more clearly, the security guard kept saying 'please put on your mask inside the station' every time she stopped for breath, which made her even more angry.

I'd slowed to a stop to watch (not that I walk very fast at the best of times) and two young girls stopped next to me. 

'We are passing Bencoolen,' one said.

'Me also,' I said.

'We can show you the platform,' the other girl said to her.

Now that's when the post earthquake tsunami started. 

Apparently we three (one 60+ female and two teenage girls) were part of the 'gang' that had deliberately sent them the wrong way to rob them!

I don't know if it was because we were wearing masks or because the girls were wearing tudung (head scarves) but the lady started saying she saw through us and she knew we'd been following her since she arrived in Singapore (no we hadn't. At least I hadn't!) and telling her husband not to let us get their names (?) or we would follow them to the hotel and rob them of their passports and identities (?)... and get them arrested.

The good thing was, she finally let her husband bring her down the escalator.

Anyway, I asked the Security Guard, 'are you okay?' and he said, 'No problem lah, it's my job. I pity her husband,'

The girls and I went down the escalator too, at a safe distance. 

I saw the lady and her husband on the platform and went several carriages down from them so she didn't think she was being followed again, so I didn't see if they got off at the right stop (kind of hoping she didn't!)

What surprised me was how shaken up and angry I felt after, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I'd been feeling quite mellow before the encounter, but after that I found it hard to read/enjoy my ride.

And it stirred up all kinds of bad feelings in me, like my brain wanted to pick on how she was overweight and underdressed and flabby though all that had nothing to do with their getting lost. Like the anger in her created anger shadows inside me. 

It also made me feel/ fear/ realise that if I found myself lost in a strange country I could so very easily become her, projecting all my fears on everyone and everything around me.

And worst of all, it made me want to shake/ smack/ shout at her for picking on the security guard whose fault it clearly wasn't! In other words, the anger shadow had got inside of me and were ready to grow. And if I'd shouted back at her to contradict the stuff she was saying about Singapore and us I would be getting into that anger shadow zone with her.  

I must say I was very impressed by the Security Guard for remaining so stoic-calm.

Anyway, that was Shadow 1. If we're all shadows here, I don't know we made any kind of dent in the light but I hope they got back to their hotel okay.

Shadow 2: Big birthday that became a wake

This one is just part of life. A big 88th birthday event was planned, but instead we ended up at a wake. No, not for the birthday boy--who seemed positively chuffed to have outlasted another of his generation. It wasn't unexpected, just another reminder that life doesn't go on forever--which I find makes the good moments better and the bad moments seem much less of a big deal.

And that leads to my second quote (from the same poem of Cyril's) of the week: 

I've always had a big fear of the nothing. Our poems, our stories, our plays--these are the things that record momentary blips of existence in the big nothing.

And I realise that turning my Shadow 1 into a story has already made me feel better about what happened there.

Hopefully I can rootle through all the nothings and come up with more stories!

Happy Tuesday everyone!