BACK TO THE PAST

To give our contractor space to renovate our home on Coombe Road, the family has moved out for a period of no less than 3-months. Dora and I are now in a small 1-bedroom apartment in Happy Valley, reliving the early days of our marraige which can be summarized as : no space, no helpers, no pets, no $ but above all, no kids! The flip side is we had lots of time together, lots of creativity entertaining at home on low budgets, and lots of love .... I meant 'love' that goes beyond the bedroom, like looking after each other. The picture shows Dora in her side of the study, which doubles as the dining room, with the open kitchen/pantry at the back, and our state-of-the-art surround sound home-theater to the left. My study is the other half of the dual purpose table. Imagine facing your wife while screening dirty photos and clips from my global network of less-than-respectable pals? It is, without any question, something new in my life.

I love playing the role of our helpers and not to blow my own trumpets, I am quite good at it. Dora is served a different style breakfast with accompanying choices of her favorite teas, every morning - in bed - with the 8am news. When she leaves to 'earn bread for us' I make the bed, tidy up the flat, wash the dishes, take orders for 1-pot dinners (if we eat at home) and humbly bite my tongue when she hands down critiques eg too much oil, needs less salt etc as she is seriously health conscious these days. I enjoy looking after her in this way, probably the result of guilt from all these years of neglect. The apartment is serviced 3 times weekly and one of the staff said, 'there is hardly anything for us to do except changing the towels and vaccum the floor'. I think I might have paid too much. You see, everybody has a boss and it looks like mine is you-know-who these days. Being in such close quarters is both good and bad. We may spend more time together, we might even 'understand' each other better, but that creates more opportunites for friction too. Worse yet, there is no place to hide! I cannot even take Kaya out with my Petit Robusto to avoid a potential fight which, to Dora, is always just a different angle of looking at things, never a fight. 'You can learn to be more patient and less easily irritated by small stuff, and they are all small stuff, right?' .... yeh, dear, you are always right!

'EVERYTHING IS FINE'

We went to this Robert De Niro movie over the weekdn thinking it is a comedy, which turned out to be a quality family drama that speaks volumes about the pains of loving parents with adults children. Remember a previous blog I did about our grown kids who are really adults? This film is apparanetly a remake of an old Italian version 'Stanno Tutti Bene'. The operative words are, naturally, 'loving parents & adult children'. De Niro is extremely impressive playing a lonely widower who tries to seek solace from his grown kids, only to find that their lives are far from picture perfect. They lied about their issues at home in order not to upset him. Being a loving father he could see through every charade, and kept asking each child, ' ... but, are you happy? .... ' Tears welled in my eyes every time he asked that as I, like all you loving parents out there, can identify with De Niro. We will never stop asking our grown kids that very question. I will not give the plot away but once they crossed the bridge together as a family, Dad concludes that 'Everything is Fine'.

I believe the western interpretation of this approach is 'take hold & let go' or 'be philosophical' or 'just karma'. To the Chinese we like to believe 'prosperity & fortune are innate to all our children & grandchildren'. This is where the classic Aussie jargon becomes most relevant ' ... They'll be Right!'

To all loving parents, reagrdless how young or old your offsprings are : let us stop worrying, let us give our kids the space to create that state of happiness only they can define, let us remind ourselves we did the best we could to bring them to where they are, let us accept that we cannot reshape what we did, let us bestow confidence on our kids, and simultaneously on ourselves that things will work out. Finally, let us join in unison .... 'Everything is Fine'!