In a nod to Mother's Day, Shireen Zainudin and Viji Krishnamoorthy, editors and authors behind The Lockdown Chronicles, an anthology of 19 fictional works set against the pandemic, offer a touching tribute to a very special woman
MOTHERHOOD MADE A DAUGHTER OF ME
Shireen Zainudin on mother, Judy Zainudin a.k.a. Judy Chua
"A very small, very old silver-framed photograph sits on my desk. In it my mother is kneeling, holding a toddling me in front of her. We're flanked by my sisters lounging like mini gangstas, frilly knickers showing, in those old string chairs that have become fashionable again.
Decades of ultraviolet exposure have bleached the snapshot of almost all its colour. Even in palest mauve monochrome, my mother is a knockout. A Louise Brooks bob grazes her razor-sharp cheekbones. She's staring unsmiling straight at the camera with gentle eyes. A mother of three, still in her 20s.
Before she got married, before she had children, before she carried the dual, weighted identities of wife and mother, Judy Zainudin a.k.a. Jamaliah Abdullah had been Judy Chua.
Judy Chua ran long-distance for Johor and won ballroom-dancing trophies. She was artistic and strong-willed and married young.
As a new mother, Judy radiated effortless hauteur. She reigned over the family with an almost visible crown and scepter and the sensuous notes of Joy by Jean Patou.
As her daughter, I have vivid memories of growing up in an immaculately run home.
I revelled in the seduction of wafting kitchen smells and sheltered in a sanctuary of love. That love was often tough, sometimes comforting, but always unconditional.
This became the backbone of my security.
Till today, my mother has an eye for detail. I think she could have been a brilliant architect.
I remember her always sketching — details for a corner of our home, how to lay a table, the re-wiring for her renovations!
Instead, she shoehorned all her creativity into her framework of motherhood.
She sewed my dolls pyjamas that matched mine. I loved the crinkly pink ones but hated the itchy checked flannel. Birthday parties were planned right down to the placement of the last skewer of cheddar and grape in the pineapple centrepiece.
As a moody teenager, it was difficult that my friends adored her. She lay them in an assembly line for home facials and could "talk boys".
At university, I was the only student I knew who preferred flat sheets to fitted ones. My mother taught me to fold and tuck razor-sharp hospital corners and I actually just really like a good crisply-made bed.
Incidentally, she also has a razor sharp third eye to match those bed-corners and cheekbones. It's eerie the way nothing escapes her. She's direct, uncompromising and her rules are laid out like the unsheathing of a knife.
I think like many Malaysian women, my mother is multi-faceted from striving to maintain multiple identities.
Back in the day, she wore the kebaya as well as she once did the cheongsam. She taught us that nothing beats otak-otak from Muar even as she had ikan patin Pahang on the table for my father. And she always, always knew whether it was piano or mengaji classes that we'd skived. Yes. Third eye.
My daughterhood continues to be a watershed of growth as I now mother my own daughter. Time has folded in on itself and there's this poignant crossroads where past and present slot together beautifully.
I will always be my mother's daughter, just as I will always be my daughter's mother. I have learned that love is firm and quiet and hides behind so many things.
It's paediatricians and dentists, playdates and pets, packed school lunches and flipping crepes together. Yes to the right shoes. No to Twilight. It's doing the cha cha cha with your mother and Tik Tok-ing with your daughter. It's flower tea baths when the blue moon waxes and mercun on Raya Eve. It's quieting fears, it's encouragement, it's sponging hot foreheads.
It's the responsibility to see that you equip your children with all the qualities that can help them live wisely, and hopefully happily, in a difficult world. It's the knowledge that there are days you fail miserably.
The complexity of raising children is balanced only by the richness of raising children.
Being a mother has shone a spotlight of modernity, bringing into full shocking technicolour, the past, which hitherto possibly existed only in a pleasing sepia. I now see my daughterhood with better clarity. But hey, wasn't the past just the present, yesterday?
As for my mother, does she really have magical mummy powers? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand or measure the immeasurable? She hasn't aged in any way that is explicable and continues to mother me well into my adulthood. But now she stands taller with a golden grandmothering feather added to that crown."
(NB: Both my mother and I have much loved sons but for the purpose of Mother's Day, the focus here is the daughters we raise to be mothers.)
ROOTS AND WINGS
Viji Krishnamoorthy on mother, Ooi Beng Choo
"My mother gave me my best friend — my sister. I am eternally grateful to her. In that one act of benevolence, she taught me several life lessons. The rule of fair play stands tall amongst them.
She has two daughters and we've always been equal in her eyes. I'm her first born but she never treated me to more or my sister to less.
My mother grew up in a time where sons were weightier than daughters. She was resolute not to repeat it, even when she had no sons.
My love for oral stories and books come from her. Back when I was a child, bedtime stories were dotted with lessons in grammar and went something like this:
How do you conjugate the verb:
To lie (down) — lie, lay, lain
To lay (a table) — lay, laid, laid
To lie (tell an untruth) — lie, lied, lied.
I can never forget it.
When my sister and I wrote letters home from boarding school, she would correct our spelling mistakes in her reply to us!
Meet Beng Choo — the grammar police!! My mother was my first teacher, my first cheerleader, my moral compass and honest critic. Puppet-making with string, jute and cardboard, copper tool projects, upcycling, and recycling, were just some of the rainy-day activities she engaged us in.
We were encouraged to solve the Whodunit mysteries that were part of the Sunday paper supplement, crossword puzzles and that was where I first read and loved the cartoon Nancy and Sluggo.
We learnt to appreciate texture in art and nature, to turn pressed flowers and leaves into bookmarks. But the one thing she didn't teach us was how to cook or bake!
A determined and steadfast young woman, against her family's wishes, she married my Tamil father in the 1960's. A brave and bold move.
There's a quiet strength and tenacity in her small frame that empowers her to walk tall. She's the most honest and genuine person I know, not one for effusive compliments, if anything, a little parsimonious with praise.
Thankfully, she's not sculpted from the tiger mum putty, though she believes that there is nothing to be gained if there is no pain and if you start something you must try your hardest to finish it.
That was her premise when I started Baratha Natyam lessons and when my sister and I were sent to boarding school in Madras. Finish what you start. It is that "get on with it" attitude so steeped in that generation.
The lessons she taught me are not jotted down in a notebook but have been pressed into my memory. It's in how she conducts her life — with simplicity and gentleness; with the striking absence of jealousy and envy.
Her soft-spoken nature is a stark reminder that I don't need to be loud to be heard. Gossip and pretentious small talk make her uncomfortable; she will diplomatically disengage herself to water the plants or check her compost. In conducting her life such, she is of "the less is more" school of living.
In my adulthood, she never fails to drop off her stainless steel container of freshly made yoghurt, remind me to take my vitamins and to eat the rainbow colours of vegetables.
And on a spiritual level, to show gratitude and put good thoughts out in the Universe; that life is a present to be unwrapped every day and that life's dramas will unfold no matter how hard you try to fight it; that I need to acknowledge it, accept it, learn from it, and move on.
On my journey as a mother, what I have gleaned from my mother is that my children must find their bliss and naturally from there, they'll find their place under the sun. There is enough room for all.
They must be allowed the space to learn and grow; that very often, their grades do not define them; that this is their journey and what we offer them as parents and grandparent is always roots and wings."