Living with a Heavyweight

This lovingly, rich and vibrant post was brought to us by Shal at Jasmine & Ginger. She is a daughter, mother and great blogger who is sharing a look at her life with us from her home in Hong Kong, China. Enjoy! -MPGodfrey, Team Malt-O-Meal

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My mother is a heavyweight mother. By this I mean she’s always been there – one eye on us, one eye on the pot bubbling on the cooker. She was a stay-at-home mum for most of my childhood, with a brief spell as a working mother when I was a ‘tween’. She cooked 98% of meals in our home and did most of the household chores, though as soon as my brother and I were old enough, she roped us into this task. She was the ‘bad’ cop, the one who shouted, who doled out the punishments, and the one who chased us round the dining-room table to tickle us and cuddle us.

My mother and my son.

I’m sure by today’s standards her methods of discipline would be severely frowned on, and in some places, no doubt, she would have been locked up for child cruelty. But this was back in the 80s and 90s, in Hong Kong – a place where people still smack their children’s bottom in public without people batting an eyelid.

First, a word about my background so readers can understand the context of what I talk about. I am the product of a bi-cultural marriage – East (Hong Kong Chinese) meets West (British : English, Irish and Scottish). This was in the 70s, when Hong Kong was very much a British colony and the British ruled it with the desperate fervor of the last (almost) abandoned outpost. There were football (soccer) clubs and cricket clubs in place of country clubs, and few Chinese were admitted as members. My childhood was a heady mix of hanging out by the club pool or going on company junks (the company boat used for senior employees to impress clients ) with my parents, or going to the wet market with my mother, or visiting my Chinese relations in the most densely packed part of the world – Mong Kok. My father’s job meant I had a privileged upbringing – going to a private school and living in a large, airy 4 bedroom flat in the expensive part of Hong Kong. This sat oddly when I visited my grandmother and uncle’s family, who were squeezed into a tiny 2-bedroom flat above a market, just big enough to allow people standing room when we came over. And yet, nothing was said about, and just taken as a part of life. Chinese people are immensely pragmatic, and perhaps it was just felt that my mother had done well for herself and ‘good for her’.

Hong Kong Skyline

For us it was second nature, and we assumed most kids grew up the way we did. But I guess my mother had more foresight than most, and saw how other kids of a similar background were being raised by the amah (the domestic helper) while parents worked or played all day long. She made us go to the wet market with her, a place we hated, at the time, for its smells and grime and rawness. We saw how chickens were chosen while alive, and then taken round back and dispatched, cleaned and plucked. The same with fish. It always grossed us out, but we grew up with a far stronger connection to our food than most kids. Food fussiness was not tolerated well under my mum’s roof. My brother was once served the exact same dish for breakfast, that he had turned his nose up the previous dinner. It was the last time he messed around with his food. As soon as we were old enough, we had to do chores, even for the brief time that we had an amah to help us, because my mother thought there was no excuse in not knowing how to clean up after yourselves (and everyone else). My favorite was always helping her prepare dinner. I graduated from washing vegetables and rice to chopping, dicing, slicing and mincing before most kids knew how to dress themselves. My brother and I took great pride in making our parents tea for breakfast in bed at the age of 6.

Chinese Banquet Dinner, Hong Kong

Words meant little in our household. “I love you” was rarely said but often shown. Food was our strongest conduit. I could tell when we had displeased our mother if she regularly served fish (which I hated) or one of her ‘medicinal’ soups that looked and tasted like brackish water. When we were in her good books, it was:

• Stir-fried garlic snake beans,
• Green carrot soup,
• Pork and mushroom stew… all the dishes we loved.

I still remember coming home from school at lunch when I was five. There was always a plate of sandwiches, a cup of milk and a little chocolate Club bar waiting for me, under a napkin so it wouldn’t dry out, which my mother would insist I eat as soon as I came in the door, while telling her about my day.

She was harsh with her criticism, letting us know straight away if we were doing things wrong. When I was 14, I smart-mouthed her in front of the relations at a big Chinese banquet reunion. She picked up a chopstick and hurled it across the table at me, smacking me right in the forehead. No one blinked. Even today I can see her trying to bite her tongue, as she watches me cook or parent my two-year-old, knowing that she’s itching to tell me how to do it. Sometimes it slips out before she can stop herself – ‘Ai Ya! Is this how I raised you? What kind of Chinese cook are you? This is not Chinese cooking! What will your husband say? Ai Ya!”.

She also had her own “secret, Chinese mother ways” of not letting us eat bad things like Coke, or hamburgers, or sweets, or making us eat food that was good (like fish). The biggest whopper was pointing out a man on the street who had a neck brace on (presumably for whiplash) and saying ‘You see?! This is what happens if you don’t eat fish! Your throat swells up BIG and then you can’t eat! Better eat fish now…”. Or another time, “Don’t drink any Coke, it excites your glands. Make you lu-lu (crazy)”.

3rd Birthday Party!

With hindsight, I see how hard it must have been for my mother, juggling East and West, entertaining Dad’s colleagues on their junk trips, or cooking Chinese banquets, being a kind of trophy wife then running back to Mong Kok to spend time with her brother and mother in their tiny flat with 5 people crammed in. All this while simultaneously raising two kids in two cultures, helping them find their feet and their independence. When my Por-por (grandma) passed away a few years ago, my mother had spent three or four years by her side watching her decline into dementia and finally slip away, frail and fragile as a feather. At the time, my parents were going through a difficult divorce after being married for 30 years. She wobbled badly, but never crumbled. I can only conclude that she has a will of iron and a diamond-hard core.

Being back under her roof now, with my son is both a blessing and a curse. She is exactly the same with him as she was with us… Uncompromising, determined, loving, raucous. He now knows where to put his dirty clothes, loves to sweep the floor, helps his Por Por to load and unload the washing machine and hang up clothes, and is generally a little messenger boy between rooms. They adore each other. She is his absolute best friend. And yet, with me it’s still the eagle eye, and the odd “Why are you doing it that way? My way is better!”

So I listen, watch, observe quietly and remember how she kept us in line, how she showed us love. I too have mastered her thousand yard stare – better known as the Eye of Death, for its laser beam intensity. I practiced it to perfection as a teacher, and now only have to release a fraction of it, to scare my kid into picking up his toys. If I turn out half as good and tough as my mother, I will be happy in the knowledge that my son has been raised well.

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When I was asked to guest blog for M-O-M, I was absolutely gobsmacked and almost fell off my chair. Who’d have thought that my little blog would garner any attention? I feel very much a minnow in the blog world, compared to the big-hitters of Skip to My Lou, Smitten Kitchen, Bakerella, Steamy Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman, to name just a few. How to stand out amongst the crowd of giants? Because, to be honest, there really isn’t anything special about me or my blog. I’m just an average Joanne, struggling to make things work – food, love, life and motherhood. But after reading M-O-M’s blog, I realize that I’m in great company – the women featured are all average Joannes making sense of their world. The things they blog about are universal – food, love, life and motherhood. That’s what makes it so relevant to me, keeps me hooked. How many times I’ve read something and laughed out loud, thinking ‘Hey, me too!’ or ‘Wait a minute! I thought I was the only one!’. My guest blog is hopefully one that resonates with all of you too. Enjoy!

Warm Regards,

Shal
Jasmine & Ginger Blog
www.jasmineandginger.blogspot.com

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 am and is filed under Blog, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.