Getting by

When we were younger, we used to have weekly family outings, usually after church. Every first Sunday of the month, we'd have lunch buffet at Shangri-La; on most other weekends, we'd be shopping at Centrepoint. We used to joke then that we could navigate the shopping centre with our eyes closed, because of how much time we spent there.

Centrepoint used to hold frequent competitions or shows for children then, and I once went on stage to take part in a balloon-blowing competition: to win, one had to be the first to blow up a balloon to the point that it burst. My sister insists that I cheated because I dug my fingernails into the balloon while blowing it; I argue that no one else had the guts to. I won a pack of coloured erasers, which sparked off my eraser collection, much to my parents' dismay (or their wallets', rather).

They had this giant maze thingy for a while, that occupied the entire forum. My sister, brother, and I, spent many hours, many weeks, weaving in and out of the maze. At the end of each successful attempt, we received a spiral notepad with a giant maze on the cover and said something like "I completed the Centrepoint Maze!" You have no idea how long it took us to use up the piles of notepads that we accumulated.

In the economic recession of '97, the company that Dad was working in was taken over, and Dad lost his job as regional manager. We had to make changes; the parents sat us through many long talks at our old marble dining table. I used to pick at the corner of the table, where it was slightly chipped. We stopped going to Shangri-La for lunch; our shopping was limited to grocery-buying. We'd just moved house too, so there was also the problem of meeting instalments. Things were tough for a while, but you know what they say, that life may suck, but God is still good. We understood what we had to do, and we moved on.

Dad had a tough time finding work; he was pushing 50, and no one could come close to matching his salary from his past job. Despite his willingness to take home a third, or even a quarter of what he used to make -- anything -- he couldn't find any employer who was willing to hire him. We were undergoing a recession, after all. After months of unsuccessful attempts, Dad decided to start his own company with the contacts and expertise that he had built throughout his career. He was in the electronics business. Today, we still have some businesses in that area, but we've since branched out into cosmetics, and -- more recently -- are beginning to explore some options in the area of sports equipment. Life sucks a lot less for us now, by the way; in fact, it doesn't really suck at all.

When he first started out, Dad hired back his secretary from his old job, who'd also been let go. But he couldn't afford to keep her, so for the first time in about ten years, my mom had to go back to work. Mom and Dad met as colleagues, and they became colleagues again after a long hiatus and three kids; call it full circle if you'd like. These days when I tell people that my mom and dad work together, their response, without exception, have been along the lines of "Aw, how sweet!" I smile and nod, because it is sweet, but it's also only part of the story.

For that reason -- my mom's return to the workforce -- I believe that my brother had a very different childhood from that of my sister's and mine. Thankfully, the gap between us has narrowed in these past couple of years. He now stands at the precipice of adulthood as society defines it, and is in the midst of making many choices that he's never encountered before. It's a big, scary world out there, but I hope that we'll at least provide him with some warmth, comfort, and support, to come home to at the end of every day.

We talked about a lot more over dinner tonight. Well, we didn't talk about all the depressing stuff, actually; those were just me. Mostly, we reminisced about happy (but not necessarily happier) times with the maze and the balloon-blowing. Oh, and the time that I locked my sister in the boot of the car, and the time she gave me such a great shock from behind while I was doing my history homework that I jumped and drew a thick black line across the page (I was furious!).

Then there was that year where Mom was in the hospital (recovering from the birth of my brother), and my sister kept calling the hospital in the middle of the night to speak to her, until the nurse had to wake Mom up to tell her to stop calling because she was jamming up their lines. Dad and I tried to pry her away from the phone; we had a Mickey Mouse phone back then, and she clung on firmly to Mickey's nose. It really was quite a sight. Mickey's nose was eventually ripped off, and for the next few months, we tried everything -- from superglue, to scotch tape, to plasters -- to reattach it.

It's funny how the things you remember most are not the huge events, like the overseas trips (which we used to embark on yearly; another luxury that we had to forego) or award ceremonies, but the small, everyday bits.

Even though we do have frequent meals together, it rarely becomes such a full-fledged family affair. The reason why we were eating out was because we'd decided the other day -- on a whim -- to visit the Night Safari; Mom complained that she hadn't been there. So that was how it was: simple hawker-fare, fantastic feast, wonderful company; the weather was perfect -- the wind blowing in our hair the entire time. We marvelled at the animals in the enclosures; we sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as we crossed the suspension bridge; we laughed at the couple who fell asleep on the tram ride; we told off the tourists who were using flash photography, and we ended it off with ice-cream at Ben and Jerry's.

It's possible that life is not only not sucking, but is actually getting better with time. Huh, who would've thought? :)

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Aptly pasted on the back of the cubicle doors in the Night Safari toilets.