Memories of grandparents

This morning on Fly.FM the topic of the day was what kind of a grandmother would you like? The traditional one that cooks your favourite food or the grandmother that is still wearing tight jeans, spaghetti strap outfits and goes for line dancing lessons?

Ben says as long as his grandmother gives him RM50 every day he really doesn't care or something like that. Nadia was saying that when things didn't work out between her grandfather and grandmother, her grandfather remarried and her step-grandmother was more of the hip type compared to her grandmother who was more the traditional type and she loves both of them. Had the best of both, that Nadia. Then there were a string of callers expressing the grandmothers that they preferred that I don't really care to discuss in detail here.

The reason for bringing up this topic here today (apart from lack of anything else to write about) is to talk about the grandparents I had.

I had what anyone would call the "traditional" type. After all my mother is already 77 years old and she is "traditional" in a sense, then her parents were definitely not in the hip category. And so are my dad's parents.

What I can remember about my grandmother on my mother's side is her cooking on a "dapur kayu api" and as a child I remembered how delicious her cooking was. I remember Uwan telling me stories at night as I was about to sleep (and I would ask her to repeat the same story again and again) and her favourite being "si tikus yang ingin membaiki labu-labunya". The stories that were told always had value lessons to be imparted to a 9 year old. I remember when I was down with asthma at the age of 11 and how my grandmother made sure that I took my medicine and to make things difficult, I loathed taking pills and Uwan had to dissolve those pills into a syrup drink and forced me to take that drink (which in retrospect was even worse and for the longest time I could not drink syrup because I associated that with medicine). I also remembered in her last days in the hospital I see her shed a tear when my mother and her siblings were arguing over certain things.

Uwan's name is Zabedah and to my husband she is Wan Bedah. Uwan and my husband's grandfather Haji Maakhir are siblings. Which makes me and MrM related but not by blood since both our mothers are adopted.

My grandfather's official name is Salleh but to most he is Haji Mahat. God knows where that came from and that perhaps can only be answered by my eldest sister or my own mother.
Atuk was a bit strict in that he will shout and ask me to change my attire if he sees me wearing shorts. At the age of 9, okay???

The most vivid memory that I have of Atuk was that he loved reading my report cards from MRSM. He would read every page and I am not sure what his criteria was in terms of what was good and what was not, but by the end of his assessment, he would hand out RM5.00 to me. That meant a lot to me those days. I didn't think it was the RM5.00, rather that the RM5.00 symbolizes his seal of approval on my academic performance. Mind you, I was NOT top of the class in school but I didn't think I was at the bottom 20 either. So in a way, that was a morale booster to a teenager, and you know, as parents we should be going back to those fundamentals of reviewing our child's progress incrementally and instil confidence in our kids of their abilities, boosting morale, rather than comparing them with other superstar academics of other kids. Which I tend to do, especially with Munirah.

I didn't have much interaction with my grandfather from my father's side, Atuk Kassim, and my dad's mother, Tiawan, passed away way before I was even born perhaps and I only knew of my step-grandmother, who also died when I was still in primary school, I think.

My kids only knows my mother as a grandmother and never knew the grandfather Abah was as he passed on even before I got married. Of course, my kids remember my husband's mother very well, his father as the only Atuk they will ever know and the Uwan in my father-in-law's second wife.

My mother (when times are good) is good to my kids and gives them sugar treats of all sorts (much to my horror). I guess that is her way and my kids will always check out her refrigerator to see if there is anything in stock. My husband's father comes every now and then and occassionally gives them money or just by being there spending time with us. I guess that is what my kids will remember when they get older and blog like I am right this very moment.

Of course there are influences that shaped my childhood and the values I have in life but I must say in my case, my grandparents from my mother's side had a role in that......