Life as a father

I awake. It’s 5.45am. I instinctively reach out to the baby monitor to check on you. You’re still asleep. So, I head to the bathroom. You stir at around 6.25am. I reach for the monitor again. I see you lift your head up, eyes wide open as you survey your room quietly. You crawl briskly towards the far corner of your cot to grab your two toys, a soft rabbit puppet and a blue cat. You start lifting both toys up, swinging them about. It’s how you play. I resist the urge to get up, walk to your room and bring you over to ours. It’s a bittersweet moment for me, to see you enjoy playing on your own quietly, independently while at the same be reminded that growing up is a process that happens in increments of days for you, not years.

It’s only been 385 days since you were plucked well, violently into this world. 384 days since I held you for the first time, on a single arm (these days I can barely contain you with two). Only 383 days since you would wake up every 1.5 hours throughout the night needing a feed. Only 350 days since we brought you back and placed you on your own bed, as you rang your cries through the night, reminding us that independence is rarely achieved quietly. Only been 304 days since we cheered as you learned to turn on to your side, and then on to your tummy a few weeks later. 273 days since we started training you to sleep better, as you again reminded us that you are not the sort to go too quietly into the night. It’s been 182 days since you tasted your first piece of chicken, and just like that, diaper changes went from ‘comfortable’ to ‘contagion’. 168 days since you learned to crawl, which has evolved from you pulling yourself forward on your tummy, to engaging your knees and now settled into what can best be described as ‘sliding your butt across the floor’ (I can recognise innovation when I see it). 152 days since you went on your first out of town trip where you bravely got into a pool for the first time and helped us break a possible record for the longest journey up north that can be achieved without traffic (waves trophy). Oh, only 121 days since you gurgled your first babble, ending months of your mama’s anxiety if you would ever utter a word (you’ve uttered a thousand back a day since to remind her of her folly). 60 days since you learned to say ‘Mama’. 14 days since you learned to say ‘Dada’ and 7 days since you learned to wake up without crying to play independently on your own.

Days, not years.

Papa has had his life turned inside out, tumble dried and turn back out again in this one year. Like a sweater turned over, ready for a wash, I was understandably reeling initially from all the change. Well, not struggling or anything. Just having to learn a lot of new things in a very short space of time. I was thrust almost unbeknownst into this new life, and I had to challenge myself to think of different things and different ways to do things immediately. It was both exhilarating and of course, daunting. And for a moment, papa’s life looked a little unrecognisable. So like a sweater that’s inside out, it retained the outline and form of the life I had butt a lot of it looked different.

As I watch you hold yourself up to the couch, imitate the words we use or laugh at banal things and acts, I am constantly reminded that day-by-day, you are slowly learning how to live this life. In many ways, that was what papa had to do as well.

Papa had to learn how to walk all over again, especially when I am carrying you. I had to learn that when I push open a swing-back door and step in, there is more to accommodate now when you are in my hands, so I must either step in quicker, or push the door open wider. Papa has had to learn how to organise dishes of food on a dining table in a way where everything is out of reach from your curious hands while me and mama can still eat. Papa has had to learn how to park a car differently, to look for spaces where there are gaps on your side of the door, so it is easier to load and unload your baby seat. Papa has had to be comfortable with singing a lot more than he normally does, from inventing shower songs for you to singing you lullabies to sleep. Papa has had to learn to cook differently, just for you. To rethink food into different shapes and sizes that are suitable for you now. Papa has had to learn how to nap differently these days because now he naps with you also napping on his chest so he can’t fully sleep away the afternoon like he used to.

So just like how you are learning each day how to live in this world, papa and mama are also learning each day how to be the best parents we can be to you. We are all learning, and it feels so exciting.

Little by little, papa’s life is starting to turn back out again as I learn the ropes more and more. The sweater is slowly turning back out to the right side again.

Papa used to wonder, before he became a papa, why some people often shade away their own interests for their children’s when they become parents. It’s like suddenly everything about their life is their children and all the things they used to love seems to disappear from their lives. Now that papa is a papa, he can sort of understand why. There was a time when one of the happiest things papa could do was to go to concert to watch a band he likes. So of course, papa would go watch concerts often because it made him happy. These days, nothing makes papa happier than to see you smile and laugh. It beats watching the best band in the world, play papa’s favourite song. So why wouldn’t I want to bring you for a walk in the park, visit the aquarium or play ball with you at home as often as I can? Going to concerts still makes papa happy so he still will do that but it’s no longer the thing that makes papa the happiest.

---

There is a moment every morning when you are between me and mama, she is nursing you and you are holding on to me with your tiny hands. That moment is perfect. Adults use that word a little too generously sometimes but not many moments in our lives can properly live up to actual perfection. This one does. We are both assuming a collective protective posture towards you our cub, cocooning you in our embrace, reminding you that you are safe and loved. You reciprocate by smiling at us, reaching your hands towards ours. It’s as if you’re telling mama and papa that you know. Yes, perfection. And for that 20-minutes, nothing else in the world matters. Not the work that awaits us, the bulging traffic below us nor the usual anxieties that pepper adult lives.

There is just us, and it is perfect.

Understanding in a car crash

I’ve never understood society’s obsession with moving forward.

At the start of this year I’ve seen many people expressing views about how it is ‘important to keep moving forward’. Have we ever stopped to think if we need to?

What is wrong with remaining where you are if that is what makes you happy and contented? If that is where you really feel you belong at the moment? But yet the infrastructure and culture of the world is tuned and designed to force people to barrel forward even if they do not want to.

The pandemic represented, in a backhanded way, the perfect opportunity for us to pause and reflect on where we are individually and collectively as a society. But we spent a large portion of that time being anxious about moving forward again. As though pause was spelled ‘poison’.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against people who want growth, a change and even, if they need it, the feeling of not being stagnant. I would encourage it even. Assuming if you actually know that is what you want.

It’s fine if you know that taking steps forward will get you to something or somewhere you want to get to. It’s fine if you actually know where you’re heading to.

I’ve seen so many people strive and push themselves to move forward simply because they feel the pressure to, or that appears to be what society encourages them to do and it leads them down a destructive path.

That’s because they don’t know where they want to head to when they move forward. A directionless vehicle that’s picking up speed is both careless and dangerous. It should stop so a moment can be taken to ponder on where the driver wants to head to. Just senselessly moving forward is not just dangerous for yourself but it is likely to hurt others as well. It’s like how someone is trying to save time by toggling their navigation app while the car is still moving instead of being responsible by stopping the car and doing it. Some time is not worth saving.

Too many happy marriages, relationships and families have been sacrificed at the altar of ‘moving forward’. Too many careers have been sacrificed by people who move into jobs they did not want to but felt they had to and the fallout from that decision ends up hurting themselves, their loved ones and the people they are supposed to be nurturing at work. Too many people’s finances have been sacrificed at the altar of wanting more. To quote Nick Cave, ‘Wanting everything is the thing that eventually tears you apart’.

I’ve never been an ambitious person. So I suppose that’s the stick that most people would use to beat me when it comes to this subject. That perhaps I am complacent. Or that I am resting on my laurels. Or perhaps I am lazy. I think everyone is entitled to their opinion. What has always been more important to me is that I know why I am where I am and whenever I decide to move forward, that I hope it is because I know where I want to head to and not because I feel this pressure to keep moving.

Otherwise I am staying here, for my sake, the sake of my family and my loved ones.

My darling

Today is the sweet spot. The day between my birthday which was yesterday and my wife’s, which is tomorrow. It being a Friday normally would mean that we would be knee deep in a satisfying meal tonight but as it stands we are not.

Instead we’ve been spending time shuffling between hospital departments, paying for stuff, waking up incrementally throughout the night because of the need to feed, paying for more stuff, out the car, in the car, alarm rings after alarm rings. as Netflix drones on in the background of our confinement centre room, mostly unwatched. This is the new normal, at least for us, at least for now. Why?

Because our baby girl was born last Sunday.

I’ve always been a little detached about celebrating my birthday. Yes, you were born on that day. But is it something really worth celebrating by anyone other than yourself? The answer felt like a no before Sunday, but since then, I would say a big yes. Witnessing the process that led to our girl being born made me feel like for someone to have been birthed into this world, it would’ve taken a Herculean effort and force to will it into being.

Mainly because there is a plethora of things that could go wrong within the course of the months or years leading up to the pregnancy, the nine months of pregnancy and the hours leading up to the delivery. It’s a journey with many complicated and moving parts and shifts that requires various people of diverse skillsets making the right decisions at all times just to facilitate the birth of this life.

In many ways, I can now see why there is a special heartbreak that parents endure when they see their child wasting or throwing their life away meaninglessly – It was not easy to produce their life. That labour of love creates a special bond between parents and child. It is important for parents to not foolishly throw that bond away in the name of college majors, career paths and life partner choices. It has to be protected as sacred. This is something I will remind myself of everyday. To work hard to maintain that bond.

Our journey had a few bumps along the road, namely the scare we had in September. But ‘worrying’ is the main product one procures as soon as one decides to become a parent. Our last scare just before her birth was the worrying underdevelopment of her femur. The only comfort the doctor could offer us initially was, ‘Oh, looking at you guys, I wouldn’t be too concerned.’ Thanks doc. So we plunged ourselves into worry and concern. My wife analysing each printed report after a visit with a fine comb, studying trends and graphical movement. As it turns out, we had nothing much to worry about because her femur is fine. I mean, I don’t know if I can guarantee she will have a future on a fashion runway but we can always pray and hope. I am adding this along to my recent prayers to God about blessing her with the ability to walk to the toilet on her own (zero diaper change goal baby, come on!), sleep when we want her to (notably when mummy and daddy wants to watch Netflix) and being a David Bowie fan.

Okay jokes aside (not joking about Bowie), God has really fulfilled his end of the bargain throughout these months. We would pray to Him for something different for her every night. ranging from her having good hearing to her having a compassionate heart. Although programming for the last few weeks leading to her birth was a rerun of ‘femur length’ constantly. If prayers were cumulative, we should be expecting some Miranda Kerr legs on her right God? Just kidding (also not kidding).

We’ve had a relatively easy pregnancy. My wife was still out and about doing morning walks and yoga days before her first contractions came. We’ve had scares certainly but God allayed each of them in spectacular fashion. He’s blessed us with good doctors, nurses and friends, gosh what friends we have. Constantly supporting us, encouraging us, checking up on us and giving us stuff. We have enough breast pumps that I probably can be subbed in as well. I did warn our baby as she was crying yesterday that if she continued crying I may have to offer her my boobs. She stopped for a moment.

And yes, just like that she’s out into the world now and in my arms.

39 weeks suspended in a flurry of animation within my wife’s womb, hearing every conversation we’ve had with each other (understanding probably very little of it), bouncing to the steps of our weekend walks, sampling a tasting menu of the food we’ve consumed and just like that, the last page of pregnancy was turned and a new life steps into this world last Sunday at 8.00am.

I’ve written and processed a lot about being a father. In the grand scheme of roles that we assign to ourselves in this life such as ‘son’, ‘husband’ or ‘friend’; ‘father’ was never one I was particularly wedded to, mostly brought about by fear of being a lousy one and also never being with a partner who could awaken that collective desire until I met my wife. Yes, it is a collective desire. At least it should be.

In the course of trying to lull her to sleep last night by singing to her and having a conversation with her, I referred to myself as ‘daddy’. It still felt a little surreal. I’m a father now. Yes, I am a father now. And there is no turning back.

In my bid to grow into the role, I fashioned a daily project to talk and interact with her while she was in the womb. I would sing her a song I loved every night and give her one fun fact about the world she would soon be born into. Since September, I’ve sang a total of 165 songs to her and delivered 160 daily cool facts to her, every night. I was going to say without fail but there were fails, a day or two where I was ill and probably one where I was too sleepy. Daddy is not perfect.

I mostly sang to her in our bedroom but I did croak her a possibly painful version of ‘Across the Universe’ in a hotel in Taiping, a strategically selected ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ up in the cool heights of Cameron Highlands and delivered a thankful version of Wilco’s ‘My Darling’ to her in the hospital delivery room, 7-hours before she made her life-changing entrance into our lives. I sang her a total of 104 Beatles songs and 61 songs by a range of artistes that were important to me from Cure to Springsteen to The Flaming Lips.

Throughout the days I also gave her really cool facts about the world, like how dogs sniff good smells with their left nostril, that turkeys can blush and that the tiny pocket in jeans was originally designed to store pocket watches (I especially loved this one).

These sessions were my favorite moments of those days. I’ve really had the time of my life these past 6-months doing them. But nothing could prepare me for the 14-minutes that led up to her birth into this loud and disorientating world. To say those 14-minutes represented the most beautiful and jaw-dropping thing I’ve ever witnessed and experienced in my life is to put it very, very conservatively.

I went into this process as I always do with anything that’s important – numbskully optimistic but also blockheadly clueless. To be fair, the data I was given to crunch so I could form an idea of what a delivery experience would be like was so wide and diverse, I might as well been told that it’s like walking around a mall with a bag of doughnuts in my hand while being chased by a pink unicorn.

There are mentions of the mother being able to walk around. She will be able to eat whatever she likes. That she will be on drips. That she will be hooked to a machine that measures baby heart rate and contractions. That she will be able to watch TV. Bounce on a birthing ball. Shoot a machine gun. Swim in the ocean with sharks. Okay, just kidding. But only about the sharks. There are probably some parts of the world where the wife may empty a clip into the husband in the process of giving birth.

So yeah, I had no idea what it was going to be like.

Doesn’t help that Tinseltown has done a lot to gloss over the birthing process, so this Latchkey kid learned nothing from it. It’s often represented by a sudden belly ache experienced by the mother (they occasionally show the water bag bursting), a mad dash to the hospital and the inevitable coach/pep talk by husband or doctor leading to a single push which results in a baby that often looks like it’s been nursed and bathed for months and if given a chance, could probably walk to the nearest parlor and order herself an ice-cream.

What films don’t tell you is that the water bag doesn’t always break, contractions don’t come just before a birth but sometimes, days even a week before and that single push that results in the baby coming out is the open goal tap-in at the end of a 54-pass move. Oh sorry, football analogy. Let me try again, it’s basically the last kahuna push after many kahuna pushes that’s been happening possibly for the last 2-hours. We can see how that doesn’t exactly translate to a tangy watch.

My wife’s contractions came deep into Wednesday night, four days before the eventual delivery. In hindsight, I realised I was being very insensitive to her when I suggested if a contraction basically feels like a terrible diarrhea. “I guess, if you needed a reference point,” was her answer when the right one would be to boot my head through the nearest window. No, seeing what my wife went through for four days, I can concur it is not like a terrible diarrhea. A terrible diarrhea does not render you incapable to move or speak when it comes. This was something else.

Our family and friends suggested inducing the pregnancy after two days of contractions but my wife said no, “What if she’s not ready to come out yet?” I can only draw a parallel with me being asked to throw the thrash after I am showered and comfortably seated on our couch with the TV remote in my hand. “Okay, let’s wait for her.” But in 24-hours, the pain had gotten unbearable and my wife agreed to induce on Saturday night.

Civilization may have attempted to dress up the birthing process in clean air-conditioned rooms and plushy pillows but the truth is, it remains as primal an experience as it did thousands of years ago. There are strange-looking discharges, a lot of writhing in pain and well, blood. I was standing next to my wife comforting and encouraging her, two-feet away from the action and I still got blood on my shorts and hands. There was blood on the floor and on the sheets over the operating equipment.

I was standing there, like a man seeing a UFO, eyes and mouth gaped when the doctor suggested the use of forceps and proceeded to access these two things that looked like cricket bats (at least to me at the time) and within seconds, he pulled out our baby  girl and dropped her on to my wife’s chest, caked in blood. The next few seconds were a mingling of panic, relief and excitement as they stuffed a tube into our girl’s mouth to get the excesss liquid out all while she screamed and cried, like she was dragged rudely to a party she did not wanted to go to. Well, she was.

And now she’s here. An autonomous being with her own personality, wants and moods. She is now a part of the tapestry of the world. Her story will be embedded into the story of the world. Her life will now become intertwined with the lives of others. There is no reversing this process. She isn’t going to be climbing back up into the womb after a week. She isn’t going to dissolve into stardust after a year. There is no return policy.

It’s done and our lives will never be the same again.

And why would we want it to be what it was before after seeing her, hearing her and smelling her? She is the most beautiful thing we’ve laid our eyes on and the mere gurgle from her causes both our hearts to feel like it wants to explode with love, joy and contentment. We want this life, not the one before anymore.

A lot is often made about the sacrifices one would have to make to raise a child. There are tons. The sleep is the first to go. The TV binges. The lazy weekend afternoon on the couch. Korean BBQ (at least for a while). But all these things just shade into the background as me and my wife cheer on each successful latch by her like we’ve won the World Cup. It’s like your life gets re-orientated and refurbished into something new. It’s in the same space, but things do not feel nor look the same anymore. And that is really very okay.

I sang her Wilco’s ‘My Darling’ on the night before she was born and I sang it to her again two nights ago, trying to put her to sleep. I teared, with joy, at the meaning of it all and how life will be from now on.

I can’t wait for each day to happen.

Go back to sleep now, my darling
I’ll try to keep the bad dreams away
Breathe now, breathe easier
And I’ll think of all the right things to say

Because we made you, my darling
With the love in each of our hearts
We were a family, my darling
Right from the start

Grow up now
Please, don’t you grow up too fast
And be sure
To make all the good times last

Because we made you, my darling
With the love in each of our hearts
We were a family, my darling
Right from the start

Whatever hurts you through the night

Warning: Some spoilers for ‘Scenes from a Marriage’

Occasionally, I watch something that moves me in an almost primal, instinctual way. Back in 2020, it was probably the three-part movie ‘The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby’. Yes, it was dismissed by most as pretentious drivel, but for me, it drew me into the tangled lives of its two protagonists, encouraged me to invest into both their narratives and have me dangled by my ends on the fate of their story.

At the start of 2022, it was ‘Scenes from a Marriage’.

Again I was drawn into the tangled lives of its two protagonists, encouraged to invest into both their narratives and was dangled by my ends on the fate of their story. I know how it looks. The common denominator of both being Jessica Chastain. Perhaps she is just drawn to playing characters in brooding relationship dramas that have just the perfect quotient between strength and vulnerability. The type of female protagonist that just lures me in like an idiot.

‘Scenes from Marriage’ revolves around the lives of Jonathan and Mira. Through the five-episode miniseries, we get impressions from Jonathan and Mira’s marriage taken from selected moments of their union and it paints a messy picture of betrayals, sexual attraction, and selfishness, ultimately coming to a place of queer peace by the end. It is the English-language remake of the 1973 Swedish television miniseries by Ingmar Bergman.

I found so many scenes from the show poignant and powerful from an emotional standpoint. The one that comes to mind immediately was the scene where Mira was feeling the full weight of her guilt after dumping the revelation that she had been unfaithful on Jonathan and is looking to leave immediately. She haphazardly pulls a luggage bag out of the closet and starts forcing clothes with the hangers on into the bag together with her shoes and the bag wouldn’t close. Jonathan tells her to stop, moves her aside, and proceeds to remove the pieces of clothing from their hangers and start folding the clothes and placing them neatly into the bag. The scene lingers on for longer than scenes of these sort normally does, with each passing second more excruciating than the last. With each piece of clothing folded and tucked neatly into the bag, I felt a sharp pang of pain. It’s a powerful scene that tells the story of Jonathan’s dutifulness towards the marriage and how he thought that by excelling in this, that would be his gift of love to his wife. Yet, it meant so little to her because she was hurting so much more because of other things he was doing. That after he was done tucking everything neatly into the bag, she still took it and left. I sometimes think we invest a lot into the idea that a marriage functions on a single narrative line and everything branches from that, when the truth is a lot more complex than that. What we see as a line is actually a whole world of intricate narratives pulling each other to and from each other, each with a story that is screaming to be heard.

The other, perhaps a little more controversial scene that I personally found poignant was the one in the fourth episode where in the midst of a house move and Jonathan trying to get Mira to sign the divorce papers, they have sex in the living room. As a scene on its own, it would not be very meaningful except you realise later on in the episode that Jonathan slept with Mira to confirm that she no longer had a primal hold on him and that Mira slept with him because she had already lost her job, her relationship with her boyfriend and just wants to ‘come home’ to what she had with Jonathan before by using the one thing she thought she had over him, her sexuality. More specifically, his sexual desire for her. Both parties turned to that primal corner of the relationship and manipulated that to their respective benefit.  It firstly shows that people are at their core incredibly selfish when it comes to self-preservation but it also speaks to a larger narrative – that for a marriage to work, like truly work, it requires two people to sacrifice so much and be constantly at the top of the game. That if we turn in 5.5 performance too often, it can all collapse from under you. Before you know it, your marriage is a walking carcass, shuffling around meaninglessly without any purpose other than the simple wish to die with some dignity.

Which brings me to the point I wanted to make with this post. As much as popular media right down to the gossips of your social circles will try and have you believe that all marriages die by the force of a single blow, I’ve come to realise through my own experiences as well as the experiences of the people I know, to confidently propose the hypothesis that this notion is not true for most relationships or marriages. From the outside, observers and commentators prefer the cleanness that a ‘single blow’ provides. That the marriage died because of the infidelity of the wife, the financial tardiness of the husband or the meddling of their respective mothers, etc. It just makes for a snappier conversation, a soundbite that we send into the gossip ether and not have it return with more questions than we are prepared to negotiate.

Every scene was intense

That is blatantly irresponsible though. Not just because speaking of these ills should not be done even of your most mortal of enemies and is mostly in poor taste but also because such a superfluous closing paragraph to a complex and intricate entity such as a marriage does it a great disservice, given how important that union was for both parties at some point in their existence.

Instead, I’ve come to realise that a marriage almost never dies because of a single blow, but instead from a thousand cuts. An infidelity is admittedly a large, large cut and is often a fatal blow but is only so because of the hundreds of cuts that came before that.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not exonerating people who commit infidelity nor am I downplaying the act in itself. Marriage is a commitment between two people and no matter how crisply contemporary you want to spin your story, infidelity is a huge violation of that commitment. What I am saying that there are times where infidelity is merely the byproduct of a broader disease and in those cases, if there was a greater effort placed in avoiding cuts, things may have turned out rather differently.

Jonathan and Mira had many smaller cuts before Poli came along. There was Jonathan’s inherent judgment of Mira’s poor performance as a mom which he constantly hangs in front of her in the form of how good he is with Ava their daughter. There was Mira’s obvious misgivings about Jonathan’s religious upbringing and how that had affected him as a person which probably began as something cute and interesting about him but eventually grew into an ugly crutch that she despised. There was probably some judgment on Mira’s part on Jonathan’s career choices and how she enjoyed hanging that over him in the form of her meteoric career.

Some cuts in a marriage can be avoided and are at times, completely unnecessary. We just have to be a little more proactive in reading the signs and recognising the dangers. Do I have ‘cuts’ in my marriage? Of course. No marriage is without these cuts but I have placed more effort in recent years to being more concerted in my efforts to avoid them. Sometimes I find myself doubling back to assure my wife after I’ve said or done something, just to dispel any doubts that might linger because of an act or statement. The war in marriage is almost never fought and lost on an open battle field but in dark silent corridors. Be very wary of what is not said as much as what was said.

I also make more of an effort to ensure I don’t take my wife for granted on anything she does for this marriage and family by thanking and appreciating her for the most menial of tasks from washing the dishes to watering the plants (although she should do this cause she’s the one who brings them back always). Lately, I’ve been telling her how proud and appreciative I am of her for carrying our unborn daughter.

The way I’ve learned to look at it is that each cut I can prevent, is one less cut that can kill my marriage. And each passing day I have no additional cuts is another successful day for the happiness of my marriage in this life. Yes, it’s a little cynical but not all forms of cynicism is bad. I’ve found some to be quite handy in difficult times. In any case the institution of marriage, in regards to the collective human species, has gone past the ‘forever yours pretty cards’ phase a long time ago. It’s been under attack for a while now. A lot, if not most, seem to end either in bloody acrimony or aimlessly shuffling around as a living dead. So perhaps trying to adorn pretty veneers is no longer the best way forward. Perhaps it’s time to hunker down, keep your heads low and to finish this race well.

After all, we are only tasked with stewarding this marriage in this lifetime so every good day is a step towards a good end.

God’s Favorite Customer

We’re expecting our first child!

Yes, cue the confetti cannons, fireworks display and tears of joy, all of them worthy of this moment of pure elation from two individuals who became one and are now excited to be a three. That saying, this was a 3-0 win where the score hardly told the whole story. Though I must preface that while this was certainly a backs-against-the-wall, huddled in, hard fought victory, it was not won thanks to a ricochet off the derriere of a defender and two goalmouth scrambles but by a sparkling hat-trick in second half extra time by the Big Guy himself. The story? Here goes.

It started on a fairly inconspicuous morning on September 2. My wife had her usual Kiwi breakfast and me my cup of coffee. We had taken the day off for our first trimester scan. The morning was bright. We had the confetti cannons loaded, ready for launch that weekend to happy smiles from family and friends. The pregnancy had been smooth thus far – a little nausea and a sudden taste for sweet drinks aside, my wife was checking more good boxes than a heavyweight champ.

I went into the scan much like how I’ve approached most important milestones in my life – certain of the best, unaware of the worst. That’s not to say I am a raging optimist, but I will concede that I can be as thick as a concrete slab on occasion. To be fair to me, in this case I was urged on by how well the pregnancy has gone thus far. My wife on the other hand is not me. She had strongly considered the possibility of the worst but hopeful that things will be okay. This is as close to a winning hand as my wife would allow herself to have in most circumstances. I took that.

On hindsight, the events leading to the scan were mostly blur and hazy. What I remember earliest was sitting next to my wife as the doctor tried coaxing our baby into a clearer position. The ‘Nuchal Translucency’ scan is to measure the clear (translucent) space in the tissue at the back of your baby’s neck to assess your developing baby’s risk of having Down Syndrome and some other chromosomal abnormalities, as well as major congenital heart problems. She was running through a list of things that she could see during the first part of the scan. Limbs, check. Brain development, check. Spine, check. Go baby go.

Then, some silence. Followed by more silence. Keep going doctor, baby is doing well right?

Right?

Next thing, like a movie with choppy editing, I found myself sat at her desk as phrases such as ‘Below 3 is normal and your baby’s is 3.95’, ‘Down Syndrome’, ‘Turner’s Syndrome’ and ‘blood test to see what we are dealing with’ started washing over us like a bucket of cold water in winter. The conjunctions and verbs did not matter. Those phrases are like zombies, and you want to keep them as far away from your kid as possible. Here they were, right in the same room as our baby and we were powerless to do anything.

It’s interesting. When you are served with the worst news possible, words become the least valuable commodity in that exchange. What said more than her assurance that she has presided over cases with these readings where it came back all okay (“1 or 2 cases”) was the prolonged silence as she combed the scanner over our baby. The skip in her voice as she relayed what her recommendations were. That painful millisecond of eye contact she avoided when she said the words ‘it is more likely to be Down Syndrome than Turner’s’.

We were told to take a blood test that will confirm or rule out the possibility up to 99%. The ultrasound scan only provided an accuracy of up to 70%. Let me try and put this in language that makes sense to me. 70% is a pretty decent score. I would spend my valuable weekend afternoon watching a movie with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 70% without question. The numbers were really against our little one.

We would need to wait 10-days for the results. Yes, 10 days.

Both of us experienced the moment quite differently. For me, it was like being invited to a high tea but unknowingly ending up in a shark tank as the day’s feed. For my wife it was like seeing her car crash happening in slow motion but being assured that there are air bags but being told at the last moment that, “Sorry miss, your model doesn’t have air bags.”

We were distraught and dismayed naturally. My wife took it worst than I did mainly because I could retreat into a fight or flight survival mode, a state of mind that had served me well during the more distressing seasons of my existence. I can best describe it as strapping a bullet proof vest on my emotions and preparing to take heavy fire. My wife had mostly lived a charmed existence up till this point, something I’ve always appreciated and valued because it tempers the more cynical sides of me but it did not serve her as well during this crisis.

That saying, compared to my more challenging seasons in life, this one had different taste of poison to it. It’s one thing to contend for one’s own life with some cards to play, it’s another to contend for the life of a helpless being with a pretty bad hand. The more accurate depiction is that we had no hand, no cards left to play, we were flayed out in the sun, awaiting our fate. We turned to binges of ‘Midnight Diner’ and ice cream (Inside Scoop’s ‘Cempedak’ and ‘Peanut Butter and Jelly’ the chief comforters) to soothe the days over, to distract us from a 50/50 fate with vastly different repercussions.

Terminating the pregnancy, if we were given the news we did not want, was of course not an option. Even removing the obvious Christian reason, I was never going to do it. Not after my little one raised its hand and waved during the ultrasound. Once you accept a wave, you can never take it back (I have since considered the possibility that it was not a wave but a gesture representation of The Beatles’ 1970 hit ‘Get Back’).

There was really nothing much to do but pray. I don’t want to say this like ‘it’s the last girl in the tuition class who is single so you ask her out’ kind of thing but that we were desperate for a miracle and God was really the only one who could provide it. We prayed as soon as we opened our eyes in the morning and prayed just before we shut it in the night.

Our close friends literally cried with us and called us every day to pray for us, prayed with us and encouraged us. They prayed prayers of comfort to war cries for a miracle for our little one. They did communion with us. They had calls with us to just catch up to get our minds off the wait. They recorded prayers and sent them to us. They sent us articles and stories to encourage us. They contended for a miracle for our little one. Our close friends formed a wall around us and protected us from all sides. We are so grateful for them.

Our families prayed with us. My in-laws very sweetly invited us over, uncharacteristic during this pandemic mainly because my wife was not vaccinated so they preferred to keep a distance, and awkwardly suggested a prayer session with my father-in-law penning his prayer down in a notebook. If you don’t know them, I will tell you this – it was an amazingly sweet gesture. My mom went nuclear positive and started suggesting doctors make mistakes all the time and medical machines are never always serviced properly so readings can be wrong. In hindsight, I wish I had the faith and positivity of my mom because as ridiculous as it sounded to us at the time, she was not far from the truth.

I was hopeful, my wife did not dare hope. I tempered my language, toggling between a very niche space of not giving into despair and putting on the complete cloak of hopelessness when speaking with her. My wife asked me how can I so easily have hope. I told her that if you’ve been in enough hopeless situations, a little hope is better than not having any at all.

I know the language I had used up till this point to describe the less desirable outcome can sound too negatively-slanted and perhaps disrespectful to parents with special needs children but this cannot be further from the truth for both my wife and me. All parents begin this journey wanting their children to be healthy and normal but the love we have for our child is not conditional at all. We took the week to process both possible outcomes. Our very human and fallible nature would of course lean towards God tying everything up in a neat bow for the two of us at the end of the 10 days but we also equally processed the possibility of us having a special needs kid.

I won’t lie, the start of the process was difficult for the two of us, owing mainly to having a metaphorical carpet being pulled from under our whole lives. We were mostly reeling from that. As the days flipped by though, we started coming closer and closer to a place of beauty about having a special needs child. I told my wife that in some moments when I think about our family in the future, our kid in that picture is a special needs child and it looked so beautiful to me. I told my wife that if God’s plan is for us to raise a special needs child then I can’t think of two people more qualified for the job.

We were encouraged by stories of people who raised a child with Down Syndrome and how the whole experience was like a positive atom bomb of happiness and love being detonated in the middle of their lives and their other children’s lives. I don’t want to sound condescending because I really am not, but I truly came to a place of such respect for people who have raised special needs children with love and hope. It’s a thing of such pure beauty in this world where the word ‘love’ is sometimes thrown around so cheaply.

But God had other plans though.

At around 3.45pm on September 13, 11 calendar days and 7 working days after we got the news and submitted for the blood test, my wife burst into my work room while I was on a work call with tears in her eyes. Fearing the worst, I haphazardly got off the call and walked up to her, intending to comfort her that everything will be okay because God has a plan when she showed me the message from the clinic that read …

“Good day, your screening blood test report is low risk. Do you want to know gender?”

And just like that, nonchalantly, we were delivered the news. No screeching ring of the phone. No dramatic build-up or necessary verbal gestures over a call. Just a by-the-way message in mid afternoon from a nurse who has probably presided over hundreds of these tests with low risk results, unaware of the week we’ve had. And with a snap of a finger, God had tied the destiny of our little one back into a neat ribbon and restored the carpet back under our feet. It was both a thing of unbelievable beauty and pristine tidiness. God is indeed good and God was indeed willing to give us that miracle. And so He did.

September 13 was in many ways a culmination of a journey that God brought my wife and me on to land us at this perfect place. From my reservations about being a father, my wife’s mental hurdles regarding unrealistic expectations of her and our slight travails during conception, God managed to bring to attention and answer each of those things for us with sharp, emphatic gestures. It’s been quite an adventure but one I am glad to report, brings about the satisfaction of a happy ending. I say this in a way that encapsulates the entire journey and not to suggest that any outcome besides this would’ve been an unhappy ending.

I think God quite wonderfully brought us to a place where we were assured that any outcome would’ve inevitably been a happy ending. We reminded ourselves that despite the scare at the scan that by all accounts our baby was developing well in all other areas and that no matter what hurdles we would have to jump, we would have provided a refuge of love and protection to our child.

I guess for those of you that do not accept stories of the miraculous without a fistful of salt, I unfortunately have no well-drawn charts, roll of citations or 10-point arguments to offer you. It’s always been a struggle of mine to explain the personal relationship I have with God in a way that satisfies a skeptic’s penchant for not wanting to believe. I know, my wife knows and our child is now well despite all the numbers and statistics working strongly against us. There is a strong emotional connection that is form between you and God when you cry out to him in despair, against the odds of the world and he answers in a way that makes it so clear to you that He hears every word.

The beauty of this miracle that God was willing to do for us is none more perfectly incapsulated than in the smile that returned on my wife’s face the morning after we received the good news. She had asked me if it was a dream, during the harrowing 11-day wait. I had said unfortunately, no. She asked me again on the morning of 14 September if it was a dream. I was so glad that I was able to tell her, “Fortunately, no.”

I’ve taken to challenging myself to sing my little one a Beatles song a day every night before we sleep until birth day. On September 13, I sang ‘The Long and Winding Road’. I had told my wife days earlier that no matter the outcome, I would sing that song on that day anyway …

‘The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to your door‘

Pull over now

I watched a documentary called ‘After So Many Days’ yesterday about a little-known husband and wife musical duo called Jim and Sam who embarked on an adventure to play a show a day for a year and how that tested their resolve as a band and as a couple.

I found many aspects of this film moving and affecting at quite a fundamental level. The scene where Jim declared them the ‘Unluckiest Band in the World’ after their highly anticipated but failed SXSW show and started reading out a list of imaginary emails from publications and shows that they wished had invited them for interviews and meetings was painful to watch. Only because I absolutely know what that feels like. I’ve been at that end of that barrel before. Anyone that has every tried to bring their art into a public space knows what that feels like.

Jim and Sam’s adventure, while looking like magnificent copy on paper, was of course, anything but. There were shows that were cancelled cause of weather, shows where they had to just pitch up and play literally anywhere (pizza parlors, salons, barber shops, liquor stores, etc) cause there were no official shows on those days and shows where they had so much hope for which crashed and burned.

Yet, I can’t but feel that at the end of such an arduous year that most people would call pointless (they may have gathered a few new fans along the way but their Instagram followers numbers suggests that they may not have blown up the way they were hoping to) , that the most valuable thing that they have are the memories of that adventure together and that is something that will remain special when the lights are dimmed and the curtains are slowly drawn on their lives.

Sure, experiences like in the Northeast in that mussels restaurant on day 55 was probably painful to endure. No musician enjoys seeing their art being ignored on the account of shellfish. But there was also that wonderful experience of singing at that convenience store on day 110 to a bunch of people who appreciated their music. That show on day 224 in the UK where because Sam was bedridden from stomach flu, they invited some neighbors over and sang a song to them while she was in bed. That spontaneous song they played on day 258 in a bakery in honor of Jim’s aunt who passed away that day. That show in Poland on day 332 where they played to an appreciative crowd and the owner made them fish after the show. That song they sang to two appreciative Starbucks drive-thru staff in the States. Or that show on day 204 playing to a herd of cows in Sweden. Yes, even that half a song they played to that delivery guy in Iceland. The shows in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, etc.

I watch a film like this and it just makes me consider so many things. So many deep feelings about so many things. The life I’ve led. The chances I’ve not taken. The things I could have experienced. I do not envy people who have more things than me in life. People who pursue wealth so they can afford richer food, nicer cars and larger houses. If they are happy with that then it’s great for them. I feel mostly apathy towards people who have more stuff than me.

But I watch an experience like what Jim and Sam just went through in the film and I am seething with envy. Seriously seething. Envy for the fact that they found someone that was equally willing to leave their conventional lives behind momentarily in pursuit of something insane. Envy for how they had the lack of self-consciousness to even attempt an experience as nerve-wrecking as this one. Envy for the fact that for now until the end of their lives, they will always have this amazing adventure that no one will ever be able to take away from them.

And that is really just amazing. So amazing.

In darkness lights are out

There’s been a storm brewing in Christian circles recently, with the recent allegations and unearthing of credible evidence of sexual misconduct by reputable late evangelist/apologist Ravi Zacharias. It’s evidently sad when something like this happens, not the least because of how this would affect his family and the people close to him. Relational redemption is difficult to be sought given he passed away in May last year of cancer.

What is left is probably a lot of questions, anger, emptiness and the remnants of the moral bloodbath that was left behind for everyone to pick up. There are a lot of people I know who have been shaken to the core from these developments. People who have spent countless hours pouring over every word he wrote and spoke.

I have always been wary of ‘hero-worshipping’ Christian personalities and leaders. This is not by any grand design of mine or even a momentary spot of revelation but because of my personal experiences. I’ve seen first-hand the dark rabbit hole that one can spin into if this notion is left unchecked. The church I attended in my youth was led by someone who took advantage of the fact that people looked up to him. He revered in it and manipulated it for his own purposes. The fallout from that was a church divided between people who wanted right to be done and people who refused to see their hero fall. In the ensuing madness, there were voices and hands raised, bibles were thrown and lives that have probably never been the same since.

I mostly wish that I had not gone through those things. They have caused some long-term damage to my perspective on the institution of the church and it’s no fun battling these things while trying to honor God’s word about being a part of his house. A house that if I am honest, I am still sometimes wary of.

Except on days like these. Days like these, I am thankful for that wariness.

Why? Because it keeps me on my feet when a lot of people around me are wobbling. I don’t say this feeling superior. I am just trying to end this life on the right side and there are enough things out there that will cause me not to. I hardly want to start looking for things in my own home.

The moral component is crucial in Christian leadership and it is because of this that I find the concept of hero-worshiping within Christian circles so detrimental. Why? I have come to realise that none of us would pass the test when held to the light. No matter if you are Ravi Zacharias, the pastor of my church or you and me. If you think otherwise then you need to read your Bible again. You may argue that there is a societal difference between caught telling a white lie and being caught with your pants down, but that’s just a bi-product of humans making layers of concessions for things they find increasingly acceptable. God has always been rather simple with these things.

My personal alarm rings when people celebrate that incredible Christian writer, that new talented and charismatic worship leader or that pastor who is leading that dynamic church. This is no fault of these personalities, they are doing what they can and in many cases are called to do.

If there is any fault to apportion, then it would be on you and me who ‘worship’ them.

A ‘god’ is after all given power by the people who worship them. Bad things usually happens when they start believing in that power we’ve given them. It’s the main reason why I am frankly quite uninterested to know who wrote that song we sing in church, who is that new pastor for that exciting church in Australia or who is that new incredible Christian author that all us should read. It’s my tiny bid to try and keep that power away from people who can’t handle it. Yes, most people can’t.

I’ve learned to keep my relationship with God pretty simple. I hear from him through his Word and I speak to him when I pray, and I try to do that every day if I can. All the cultural and fashionable stuff within Christian circles is just not necessary for me. I mostly treat it as being detrimental to me, so I stay far away from them. It’s probably why I try and keep myself low in the food chain in church. I find that it is easier and more meaningful for me to be accountable to people I work with everyday in my cell, people who are entrenched in my life. There is that girl who helped coordinate our wedding and that boy who I journeyed with through a horrible relationship. None of them are faceless. There is a danger, at least for me, when they become faceless.

While I am generally happy to sing the songs that are presented to me in church, when I really want to hear a good songwriter, I pick up a Bruce Springsteen record instead. Why? Well, he’s a better songwriter than most and it hardly registers for me when he is caught doing something improper like that DWI recently. Mainly because he never said he was beyond these things and moral integrity is not exactly part of his job description. Now, endorsing a line of rugged luxury cars in that silly Superbowl ad when he constantly sang about being a working class man, that I took issue with. But I’ve since forgiven him, cause he wrote ‘Thunder Road’.

And yes, I do respect the office of leadership in Christian circles. I have not reduced it to a tadpole. But I have worked hard to separate between the office and the man. I always revere the office and what it does and stands for, but I am quite uninterested in the man in most cases. Just as long as he walks the talk, he has my vote. And if he/she was someone who was truly doing everything they do because of God, then they should be happy to have someone like me on their side. At least, they would be in an ideal world.

I was asked recently how I feel about what has happened and how it has affected me. It would be untrue if I said I didn’t feel anything at all but it would be the same feeling I have if someone told me that a pastor of a small church in Klang has been caught with sexual misconduct. I hardly bat an eyelid when Christian personalities ‘fall’, not because I expect them to, but because I always reserve some subconscious notion that everyone, and I mean everyone, has the possibility to. At the same time, I do feel sad for anyone close to him who was caught by the wayside because of what has happened. The same way me and family were when it happened to us.

These things shouldn’t happen, but they unfortunately do.

You fear the wrong thing baby

I was asked by my wife last night what my hope was for 2021.

I gave the usual answer with a side of ‘peace on earth, mercy mild and God and sinners reconcile’. Rather telling was that nowhere in my succinct list was there a hope for things to go back to what they were.

Buried deep in my heart, I’ve not been very eager for things to go back to what they were.

Of course I say this without any prejudice towards people who have struggled financially through this pandemic or people who have had loved ones taken by it. I have nothing but respect for you who have soldiered through 2020 under those circumstances.

It’s unfortunate that it took a ravaging pandemic for humanity to take stock of its decisions and to just stop where it was heading. My deep wish was that it was a white paper by a very smart person, a rallying call by the leaders of the world or heck, a song by Bruce Springsteen. Instead it took a pandemic.

As I sit here typing this, I just witnessed a well-dressed man trying to enter a building, without a mask, confidently walking in and gesturing to the guard that he’s just heading up a floor and he should be allowed an exception. He was subsequently pulled back and told that he needed to check-in, get his temperature taken and was asked to put on his mask just like everyone else behind him. Turns out he did not have a mask with him. He was denied entry and was told to head to a store across the road to buy one. He stepped out and just stood there for a few minutes. Occasionally shuffling around his pockets, looked back at the door, wrestled with his ego a little before walking across the road to get himself a mask.

It felt a fitting analogy to the minute good that the pandemic has had on society. For too long the agenda of humanity has been organised not by severity, but by class. And while inequality continues to exist in any civilised society driven by capitalism, there is a slight warmth that comes from having the entitled among us reined in a little. It seems almost poetic justice that it should come in the form of the one thing that levels the playing field for all of us – our impending mortality. I guess it has to be that for everyone to take notice of it. This was not a ‘poor person’s problem’. It was a disease that crept into the highest halls of society and government.

For too long we’ve been a society that ignores the plights of the marginalised, underappreciated the ones who worked unseen to keep the pillars of our lifestyles in place and rewarded the people who continue to sink us deeper into our mire. Something desperately needed to change.

Again, I stress that I am saddened that it took the lives of millions.

I guess we had gone so far into self-destruction, it required something equally devastating to stop us.

Sleeps with butterflies

‘There was no party, there were no songs
‘Cause today’s just a day like the day that he started
No one has left here that knows his first name
And life barrels on like a runaway train
Where the passengers change
They don’t change anything
You get off; someone else can get on …’ – Ben Folds

I’ve been thinking a lot about death.

I know, it’s hardly the appropriate tidings for the season but it is what it is. Don’t get me wrong, I also in equal measure enjoy staring at our lovely Christmas tree and recently, watching ‘Love Actually’ as the token yuletide movie of the year. So it’s not like I am growing moldy sitting alone at home on a wing chair in the dark. But at the same time I have also been thinking about death, a lot. I see it even in songs that are really not about death (The Ben Folds song above is about someone being laid off).

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the precise moment when it happens and how that would feel like.

As a Christian, I’ve been conditioned since young to focus on what happens after that moment. The bright light, the rejoicing, the yellow brick road and Oz. Just kidding. Jokes aside, I do fundamentally believe in the moment after of course. You can’t exactly subscribe to only a portion of what you consider the truth. But it won’t stop me considering the flip-side to that which is just a big well, nothing. No big party. No bright lights. Just, nothing. The cliché often employed is that it’s like going to sleep but not waking up.

I must confess at certain points of my existence that has sounded somewhat, comforting. Lately it hasn’t been though. I’ve been thinking a lot about what ‘nothing’ feels like.  Yes, it feels like nothing, of course.  But that just seems so stark, so brutal. That the amount of energy and force-of-will that it takes for us to go through life is just snuffed out in an instant and there is just, nothing.

If I am being honest it feels a little lonely. Not that you would be conscious of that when it happens because you are just in that big nothing, but that’s my sentiment on how the nothing would feel like.

In this age of almost unmitigated popular culture saturation, one can become a little desensitised about death and to be fair, for a long time, I was. But lately, I’ve been processing every death I read about or even see on screen. I consider what it would’ve felt like for them at the point of death and how it would’ve felt like if they had indeed stepped into the huge nothing. Even reading about people who have long gone sparks bouts of rumination. Like how I recently read about the making of Bowie’s 1971 record ‘Hunky Dory’ and I started thinking about how it’s been already four-years since he’s died and how he would never been experiencing new things anymore, new sounds and new words and everything with him has just come to a grinding halt. And this is a man who literally rewrote the rules of rock music. What more me, some random guy living in Kuchai Lama?

“Every human is a little bit sad all the time because you know you’re gonna die. But that knowledge is what gives life meaning.” – from TV show The Good Place.

I write all this in the expectation that weeks from now, I won’t remember that I wrote a single one of these words. That like most existential crises, it just fades away to the background because something else just becomes louder. That quote from The Good Place sums it up nicely. That the very concept that our expiry clock starts on the day we are born should be enough to render us unwilling to do anything and just give up altogether. But humans are resilient and we just get on with it, by minimising this dark inevitability into the background of our lives and to just kick this bucket decades down the road and occupy ourselves with things that gives us meaning and happiness today. If you think about it, life is just a series of distraction tactics.

I am also cognisant of the fact that I appear to be writing all this rather atheistically. Like I personally believe there is just a huge nothing after we die. But that’s not what I believe. I believe there is something more awaiting us at the other side.

At least, there has to be.

Can’t buy me love

I was having a conversation recently with a friend and she raised a point about whether she was doing enough with her life, given many people have earned millions by the time they were her age. It’s a logical thread of thought. The human disposition, and in many ways, its sickness is often that it feels it doesn’t have enough and as such, should pursuit more. We quickly concluded that we are just people that don’t love money and success enough to give up just about anything in pursuit of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the little comforts that money brings. Like having a stable roof over my head with air-conditioning (my wife still doesn’t believe I was born in Iceland and dragged forcefully into a tropical hell but the truth will always remain the truth), having a spacious couch and a TV in front of it, taking my wife out to a dinner she deserves on occasion, having the ability to buy a vinyl I really want on some months, rewarding myself with a decent cup of coffee when I feel like it and buying a slightly more expensive book that I really want to read, off BBW season. I do enjoy these things.

Except personally, I really don’t need much more beyond these things.

I still drive my 11-year old Toyota even though we can probably afford a nicer car. The day I change it would be because it can no longer practically fulfill its function for me, and not because I want to drive a newer, sexier car. I have no desire to buy more expensive music equipment. I still play my trusty Peavey because I’ve always managed to make it sound right to me.  I could upgrade my sound setup at home to something slicker but the hand-me-downs I have now works just fine so why change it? The clincher of it all is that lately, the chorus of ‘let’s change our TV to something nicer’ has been coming more from my wife’s end than mine, the supposed ‘TV addict’.

We did spend on traveling. We did it because we agreed very early on that if we were going to spend on anything, it would be on experiences. Things that enrich our lives in a way shinier possessions could not. For the rest of our lives, me and her will always have that drive we took on the Northcoast 500 in the highlands of Scotland with Mazzy Star playing on the car stereo back in 2018. No one can ever take that away from us and it most certainly won’t end up in a landfill.

I’ve always seen traveling as a privilege anyway, and not a right. I am grateful for everything I experienced but if I experience nothing else for the rest of my life, it’s fine. A person with an upbringing like mine was not supposed to be able to walk the beaches of Paros. At some point, I might’ve accessed a cheat code and honestly, I am just glad I managed to get away with it.

I’ve always felt like this – that money has no hold on me beyond the basic comforts I require. Except for the longest time, I had not enough of it. I was labelled by someone once close to me that I was calculative when it comes to money. It’s quite hard not to be when you are splitting pennies. I wasn’t doing it because I loved it so much that I was not willing to part with it. I was doing it because I was trying to ensure I have enough.

These days, I am firstly thankful that I have enough. This is important to me and I take not a day of it for granted. Which is why I tell my wife that I hate it when we waste food unnecessarily because I don’t want to forget the days when my family had not enough of it. How I almost never buy clothes that are above a certain price, no matter how much I like or can afford it. How I almost always eat at the same ‘Yong Tau Foo’ place near my home when I am having dinner on my own. And I actually do still get the tingles at the prospect of eating baked beans and luncheon meat with rice (it’s the best). Some of these things I do instinctively, some of it I do intentionally; to remind myself that while I am thankful for where I’ve ended up, I am also grateful for where I came from. I don’t ever want to turn soft from comfort and become ungrateful and entitled.

Yes, on most days, I am thankful I have enough. And on some days, I am thankful that because I do, I can confidently say now that money really has little hold on me.

There is a deep comfort that comes from knowing that.