My Mother, Respected and Loved

By Tek Chong

Mother used to embarrass us as children. She was too overprotective of us. Her children are never wrong. When we were punished in school we learned never to let her know, for we wanted to avoid her turning up at the school to challenge the teacher for ill- treating us. This resulted in our ‘reputation’ that no neighbour kids would dare to touch us for fear of the wrath of our mother. Also, this has made us a very united family. I recall how one day I had to fight the neighbourhood tough kids. The gang of bigger boys was defeated by us eight siblings, our sisters joining in the fight with their wooden clogs as weapons.

Building a foundation

Mother was from a rich family; her father had done well as a hardworking overseas Chinese and he wanted his eldest daughter to help him run his many businesses. She was sent to Shanghai to study business management. In the university she fell in love with my father who was from a poor family. Over the objection of her parents, she married him. She worked hard to help him start their own business in Melaka. At one stage she had to look after a pawnshop in a small village town with no electricity or running water. She had to stay alone dealing with a lot of customers who were mostly Tamil rubber tappers. She mastered some Tamil and was respected and loved by her Indian customers. I used to go and stay with her after my Form 5 examination. I remember strolling with her in the semi- dark and lonely village street every evening. She would tell me of her childhood days in the village of China, her subsequent days of helping her father in his businesses and the struggle of starting from scratch with father. Inevitably the conversation would be directed to me, “Tek, it is the desire of your father and me for you to study medicine in the university. At this moment our business may not be doing well…. but I assure you if you get into university we would see that money would be sent to you to complete the course.” And she kept her promise. When I was studying in Hong Kong University Medical School, money would always come on time, albeit in small sums.

Difficult times

She wrote to us her children almost every day in her beautiful hand writing and her Chinese style unique English. I knew that she had to work hard to raise the money for us for by then there were five of her children pursuing different courses overseas. Business was not good, due to father over-ambitiously extending his businesses. I am always grateful to my sister Ming who decided to do a free nursing course in Australia thus helping two other sisters to join her in Melbourne. My brother Wai got a government scholarship to study engineering in the University of Malaya, thus freeing our family of much financial burden. Eventually my parents could send Yuan to US, Tart to Taiwan and Siew to London for higher education.