Author: Cho Ge Xun
The long awaited CNY has arrived! My elder sister was calling everyone to get ready to leave home soon. It’s time to visit our Ah Ma place, where every one of the family members would be there for a reunion!
At Ah Ma’s place was a 40 years old 4-stories house, which had no toy, no game, and there was obviously no computer back then in the 1990s. But together with my elder sister and brother, we still look forward to going there to see our Ah Ma.
Just the same old moment, when we were there, Ah Ma always just sat in the living room, overseeing the garden in front of the house with the newspaper and a copy of tea next to her. The first thing she said was “Lai Le Ah!!”. She quickly stood up and came to our car to invite us. She always carries such a warm smile and soft tone, welcoming us to her home!
Ah Ma will then start to bring out each and every cookie, candy and the most important dish she made by her own hands “Suan Pan Zhi” and “Yong Tau Fu”. They were the most highly demanded dishes, each CNY! Always run out in no time, no matter how much she made. Some of the years we will always stay at her side to roll the “Suan Pan Zhi” piece by piece. It could be long ‘boring’ hours if we were just laboriously rolling hundreds of it, but it was very enjoyable to hear all sorts of stories from Ah Ma. It would be from how these foods are made, how her favourite yet super spicy chilli was made. To the stories of how my Dad and Mom survived through migrating from malaysia.
There are so many other story that fill our 8-hours with Ah Ma that never had any ‘dry’ moments with her, WITHOUT TOY OR GAMES…. Her way to love us was just so simple with food, caring words, gentle smile, and warm touches.
Thank you Ah Ma, we all miss you a lot!