Lessons from Both Ends of Life.

Last Saturday, Suhui and I popped down to Grandma's to learn the sacred family art of making Soon Kueh. It was fun, and I can't remember the last time I spent so much time alone with my grandma (alone being not hiding in my mother's skirts, mute and bashful in the presence of a strange tongue). Grandma made me tell everyone I gave the kuehs to that Su and I made them, because according to her, they were so goddamned ugly they would ruin her reputation as Toa Payoh's Soon Kueh Soh. But I think, secretly, she was really proud of her two grandchildren. Even though she refused to let us do the frying, steaming, preparation and cleaning up, the bags of new flour arranged for display weeks before our arrival whispered her enthusiasm at having us.

Somehow, word of my soon kueh endeavour got around to all my aunts and quickly translated into a newfound enthusiasm for cooking. Now I've been invited to bake scones at my little aunt's place, cookies in my big aunt's place, and sample turkey and blue cheese with my cousin. I assure you being Martha Steward was never my intention. I don't want to cook, I want to cook certain things - to understand how they're made, to ponder their making. But I do realise now, that cooking is a great way for bonding with the matriachs of the family, who while sometimes scary, I suppose, can also be quite endearing.

Any interaction with my grandparents wrenches my heart out. When I made an independent suprise visit to my paternal grandparents last week, my grandmother was so pleased I had to go back again in two days, just so I could sit and let her look at me. These wizened, weathered figures, whom I should be closer to than life itself, either talk too fast and too much in a language I cannot understand, or speak too little and are equally incomprehensible. They have lived lives that I do not understand, and live lives I will not understand. No earnest but helplessly ignorant ear or anxious but inevitably careless touch from their foreign grandchildren, I have learnt, will take away the pain in her back, stop him from shrinking in his cot, or remove the tiredness in her eyes. I am envious when my friends tell me about the things they do with their grandparents and how their lives intertwine so intimately under the same roof.

If the elderly are a puzzle, the young are not straightforward either. I do not understand when people say they love or hate children, with such grand sweeping statements. They are little people, and I love some people, and dislike other people. I think I like my little seven year old cousin, hyperactivity, loud voice and all. Today, he asked me how onions were grown. Then he asked where the bulbs were obtained. Which led to the question of where the first onion came from. I told him, maybe God made the first onion, like how people think God made the first human. (Su told him evolution made the first onion). But I wish now I had said nobody really knew how the first onion came about. It would have been honest, and more importantly, it would have been exactly the kind of answer I loved as a child. God and evolutionary science! - bah, I'm starting to think like a parent. (I will not!)

Amazing, isn't it. Life's greatest questions summarized in one brown, dusty onion.