TimeOut

Going back home to visit is like being sucked into a time warp.  I'm brought back to the days when my parents nagged me about getting enough sleep, enough to eat and enough to wear...even when it's 80 degrees out. 

I'm reminded of the time when my mom's craftiness was nothing out of the ordinary for me, revealing itself in my daily wear...a custom sewn plaid shirt or a hand crafted book bag.  The best quality about the items was also the least desireable one too.  One could marvel in the uniqueness of the hand crafted designs, the materials used and the slightly off-matching colors and trims.  For a 7 year old however, uniqueness is a downfall, especially when everyone else has a Disney licensed back-pack. 

Now I go home and marvel at my mom's creations, which are a part of who she is, in whatever quirky, offbeat, backwards way that is.  They make me smile and give me pride - that my mother's unique fixins make her unique.  And I get it.  She came from a time when the shoes on one's feet were the only pair one owned and people left the dinner table with tummies that weren't full, and not on purpose.

Give me that book bag now and I'd carry it proudly...

 

This message has been edited by pingtsai on 2010-08-27 18:05:39

and the exact opposite of me.

cen@jkt

That's what your mom is doing to save the earth.

cheers

PAt

very refreshing non-horology posts!!! my mom has prob around a hundred or so recycled milk plastic bottles for her orchid saplings

Hello Ping,

Looks like you had a great trip visiting back home with your parents.    Your folks remind me fondly of my grandfather, as a dentist he had excellent manual dexterity so he was always resourceful in making and fixing things (kinda like a MacGyver!).

-MW

The handle from the broom is your walking stick you brought home from when you climbed Manchu Picchu.

Where the heck did your parents find the cement board for the lawnmower storage?

- AT

. . . they came from places and times when putting food on the table was an accomplishment.  Homemaking was not just an aspect of life . . . it was vital for their existence. 

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening with my folks; we cleaned out the garage, and in the process, found a bunch of my scrapbooks from kindergarten and primary school.  I was about to throw them away, but Mom insisted on saving them, and we sat down together and looked over those relics and reminisced about the good ol' days.

Family is everything.

Wonderful post, Ping . . . thank you.

Touched, Art

Get out the scanner! ;-)

brought a smile to my face...reminded me of home...

just a different generation where people make do with what they have...

My mom is totally the same and my aunt is even worse, er, I mean craftier.  Actually, all kidding aside, I love that my mom is crafty and that she gets some pleasure out of finding solutions for her storage, etc. by recycling things.  My mom can make anything out of duct tape and string. 

She once made me a poodle skirt for a 50s themed sock-hop in junior high that I wish I still owned today, just because it was perfect.  I looked like Sandra Dee in it...except Asian.    I can barely sew a button, so props to our moms.

Cheers,
Daos 

Craftiness...Mum can sew (like really sew, as in Wedding/Evening Dresses...), Knit (like really knit, as in Fair Isle vests in 3 days...), Felt (bags, slippers, ugly hats....), Lace....

As for contraptions, she leaves the Rube Goldberg stuff to me. But Ping's stuff reminds me of my Grandparents place. Especially the broom and bucket scoop...

But the thing I'm most scared of missing out on is her cooking....my sister and I are doing our best to learn as much as we can. My grandparents (Singaporean/Shanghai) were fantastic cooks and Mum takes after them. Now they're gone, we only have the one reference to learn all the recipes we can...not that she going anywhere in a hurry, but there's a legacy there to protect!

...so my cousins who grew up here (Out of 9 siblings only my mom and one of her sisters emigrated to America; the rest of her family remained in Thailand and raised their families there.), and I have been campaigning to try and get my mom and aunt to write down recipes in English.  It's tough because their directions are quite cryptic like "add a big pinch of pepper" or "fish sauce until it tastes okay."  Um, what?  My mom is "Isan" -- the peoples of northeastern Thailand, and her cuisine (and dialect) are somewhat different than my father's people, so it is interesting to learn about these differences through her food. 

Cheers,
Daos

...I fear that once it's gone, it's gone! Well, I'll have to catch a plane to get the taste from the source.

Keep trying to get those recipes, they're one of the few real tracks back to our roots.

That's the same issue that I've been grappling with. They have no idea of measurements, I don't cook with measurements either....so no idea of what 100ml is...a cup? a small one? So until I've cooked the dish with her....it's all just guess-work for proportions. Too busy to spend much time learning, but she does write down the recipes when I remember to ask. Then they get distributed to my friends. When I was in the Philippines, I got to cook for the Dive Shop crew. Who already knew it as B's Mum's Rendang, B's Mum's satay and B's Mum's chicken.

My grandparents had different cooking styles as well. Kung Kung did seafood (Mudcrab!) and Shanghainese stuff....Po Po did the Malay/Chinese (in addition to having a strange attraction to KFC. )

double cheers,

BDLJ

All that stuff we grew up with that now makes perfect sense.
Love ours moms. Their quirkiness made us who we are today.

Now we know where your handiness comes from!

I didn't have a kiddie slide when I grew up.

... i remember when i was young, we made use of all these left-over or old materials to recycle or transform into meaning and useful stuff.

nowadays, resources are so cheap and convenient to get, we are almost getting to forget all these good practice.

thanks Ping, your post can remind us about this.

stefan