Come Away with Me

Happy Birthday Mommy

It was our Mommy's birthday on May 5th and though missing Daddy and Rosie, we had a cosy little celebration for her at this tonkatsu restaurant near Ebisu area. The small eatery has a nice ambience and also serves some pretty decent soymilk shabu-shabu to the delight of everyone.


Of course we got the birthday gal to pick her own birthday cake for the occasion. It was orange soufle cake with crunchy hazelnut base and I assure you it tasted every bit as good as it looked. I especially like the long and thin candles provided by the cake shop. After litting, the cake with all its white chocolate pieces resembled a ship with many sails, very lovely!



I love my mommy very much. We all do. Come to think of it, she is the one person that we spend the most time with all these years, especially when we were all still schooling kids. I couldn't recall many times when she was ever out of sight for too long. She was always there to greet us when we got back from school. Even till these days, she is home most of the time when we return from work.

Mom has never really worked before. She is a housewife through and through. While Dad is the one who brings home the dough, mom is the main caregiver of the family. She keeps the house clean and orderly, does all the household chores on her own and cook almost all our meals when we were young. Most important of all, she made sure we are well taken care and kept everything in order. This way, dad need not worry about his children while away most of the time cos he knows that we are in good hands.

It is certainly not easy raising 4 kids (especially when the youngest and eldest are only 7 years apart) on your own. When we were still in KL, she had the wider support network of her own family and other relatives. Things changed when we moved to Singapore. We have no relatives here and neither do we have any friends to begin with. With dad home only once a fortnight or so, I ever wondered if mom does feel lonely sometimes. I remember asking once why she did not make more friends when we were younger and her reply was she already has 4 best friends who require her undivided attention then.

Though not working, Mom reads the papers to keep updated with what's happening around her. In her own ways, she stays connected and attuned to what's going on in the outside world even though she spent most of her youth holed up with her kids. I remember some weekends when dad couldn't be back in Singapore and mom would bring us to the park, malls or a trip to some special kids' events in town. We all grow up being very close to our mom.

With a job that requires her 24/7 commitment and what with little help, mom's health suffered and she fell terribly ill consequently. It has been more than 10 years now since she was diagnosed with a chronic illness which requires her to be on medication and go for routine check-up once every quarter. It was indeed a close call for the family that mom's condition was considered manageable but the worry and fear remains very real even till this day. To date, doctors are still unable to provide a full and certain medical explanation for her condition though it is likely to be stress related and over-exertion which resulted in an auto breakdown of one's immune system.

It wasn't until I came to Japan last year did I really began learning how to take care of myself. Returning to a house that is always spick-and-span, to be constantly greeted with the aroma of food from the kitchen, to put on clean clothes without thinking twice and crawl into fresh bedsheets, things I've taken so much for granted all this while. Though I did help out around the house and in the kitchen a bit here and there in the past, i must admit it was more of form over substance. It was really when I started cleaning up an entire apartment on my own, doing my own laundry and cooking my own meals did I realized just how much effort and hard work it is to run and maintain a household(and we are not even talking about child rearing yet in this case!).

It is not going to be another year before I will get married and have a place of my own. From now till then, I look forward to being home and learning more from mom in every aspect, mom and her treasure-trove of knowledge. I want to want to cook in the same kitchen as mommy and learn all her best dishes. I am inspired to be the woman she is and I can only hope to be half as good a mother as she is in the future.

For all that mom has done for the family, she deserves to sit back and enjoy life a little more. I am glad I share mom's love for cooking and traveling. I wish and pray for my mother good health and happiness and I look forward to bringing her around the world to try the many cuisines that await us.

posted by テレサ @ 12:33 PM