The Last Day

This is the last day.

I am aching all over and grouchy and my suitcase is 10 kilograms over the limit. Book loans long overdue sit on the dining table, which has been a war zone of unpacked leftovers fighting for attention for the last few days now, and I tell myself I have to find a way to send them all to their respective homes at the airport. My handphone is jammed from the flood of affection the nanyang girls undammed last night, and I leave it choked in case the love I am still waiting for isn't as substantial as I need it to be.

We rush out to our favourite fishball noodle shop for breakfast, then visit my grandparents. My grandparents are beginning their day like they have done for the last half a century. We tease my grandfather and ask him if he wants to go to England with me - he laughs and says in doddering Hainanese he does not speak English. I laugh. Then I catch my father's eye and remember that it was my grandfather who took me when I first started Primary school. He stood outside the classroom the whole day, looking at my seven year old self through the brown window panels. I say in my carefully rehearsed Hainanese (at a speed of 3 words per minute), "Gong gong, I am going to England tonight."

Then we do our last minute shopping - instant noodles in my favourite flavours, more health supplements, more food. My brother insists on getting a pair of new shoes for himself as well, and I am glad that the focus is no longer on me (or my stomach).

The last errand for the day remains, we have yet to buy enough English pounds. I forgot all about money. My parents take the car out and leave me to collect my life. So this is my last day.

My sister gives me a silver, heart-shaped locket with photos of the whole family in it. It is a beautiful. My brother gives me a spork - a spoon and fork combined, with a knife's edge, he explains. I wonder why "knife" doesn't get featured in its name. It could've been called a sporfe, I guess, but then even I know that it sounds much less marketable than a spork. Some things have to be left out. I leave all my pajamas in the closet, and I place my favourite sneakers-with-three-holes by the door. They will be here for me when I get back.

I am dreading going to the airport. There will be those who will cry, those who will make me cry, and those who will wave cheerily and overlook the knife's edge.

This is the last day. But it is also the day before tomorrow.