Remembering August 6th
Of the Gregorian calendar, August 6th is a day before the Eve of Seventh Day Festival or Qixi Jie 七夕节 of the Lunar Calendar. Up close on the mentioned August 7th, China will host the international event Olympics on August 8th. The above chronology is essentially to follow time or timely events, and out of this temporal concept more to remember the past. During these back to back events, August 6th is timely for me to remember mom. Mom has passed for a year now.
Mom was born in Malaysia. To the earliest memories I am trying to recall now, I was from a growing or enlarging family. Family was a lot of people together, i.e. many mouths to feed. Even to this day, I – and respectively for so many of us the first generation Chinese Malaysian – could hardly understand how mom, and dad of course, had made it all these years.
It is hard to believe that women from those days could be so devoted to raising family; mom was one of those women inherently built with this indescribable human attribute – pulling families together. Raising family is indeed more than a matter of life and death issue; conceptually, our everyday matter is all linked to raising a family.
Neither mom nor dad had any opportunity for formal education; however, they picked up learning socially on their own. It is simply amazing to see how reading ability, due to contextual reason or social conditioning, could be enhanced over the years with personal determination and perseverance. In vivid details to recall: dad would always habitually sit by the door way for better lighting, and he would leaf through the newspapers while informing mom about the current affairs. On other occasion, mom would seek help from us the young ones for reading letters, from some distant relatives far away in China or matters pertaining to local governmental information. She would tirelessly and educationally remind us all to self-assure our cognitive competency for our sake. She would want us to read our books, yes, as many books for books represent knowledge.
Mom was absolutely right. Reading or speaking ability put me in a great degree of language competency, in many respects, from mother tongue to other Chinese dialects, from Mandarin, Malay to English languages, as well as other languages. Of course, both raising a big family and picking up as many languages take time, and not without determination and perseverance. I could only say but it is the strong willed devotion – precisely an all encompassing giving effort in raising a big family – to maintaining language competency has helped me to achieve in this writing, more significantly to remember both mom and dad, before all else transform into subconscious oblivion.
Mom and dad had passed.
Jeremy
Shanghai upon the Sea
August 6th, 2008
A heavy flash shower hit this noon, helping to cool down a little bit. 
On the way back from grocery shopping this Sunday morning, a tractor was parked in front of the building and two scaffoldings erected for the workers to remedy the situation. In fact, there were altogether two high hung glazing disintegrated, most likely due to the sweltering heat.
Wendy Lee
a cheeky lady...
...meeting Wendy Lee Hooi-Hoon & Jaxston Lee at Superbrand Mall, Pudong
