Seldom a day goes by that I do not remember my dear mother..I love doing most of the things she loved doing particularly handicraft and gardening. In my little garden I have plants she used to have and nurture and since I am in the garden almost everyday, it is just as often that I think of her.
At the side the sireh thrives on the garden fence. When I was little chewing the sireh was a favorite past time for my mum and her peers. I never liked the smell of it and the orange stain it left on her lips and tongue. When she went to my school for any school function I would warn her not too chew the sireh because it would embarass me. Of course she wasn't happy with that! She'd feel so idle! In any case our neighbours used to come and buy the sireh from us - maybe for 10 sen a bunch. The sireh seemed to come in handy too whenever any of us were unwell. As kids we sometimes ran a fever in the evenings and after a day of running around we'd lie down weak and with a temperature. My mum would take a leaf , draw lines on it with the slaked lime ( kapur), read a few verses and chewed the leaf and then she would rub the orange stained juice (her saliva really, yuks!!) behind the ears, on the forehead, at the back of the hands and perhaps on the knees and ankles too. Miraculously it worked ...always!!
Then there is the fragrant jermin..now people plant them to ward off mosquitoes but my mum planted them for their beautiful leaves and fragrance! My jermin do not seem to last as long as the ones my mother planted so I had to buy a new pot each time the existing plant died.
Another favourite of my mum's is the bunga tongking. I found a pot at the pasar pagi in Subang Jaya many years ago but the plant died after a few years. Some time ago I found another pot at one of the nurseries at Sg Buloh. I planted it on the ground and let it climb on the fence. My mum used these to grace the bun in her hair. She would keep a few flowers in her hair oil ( she prepared the coconut oil herself!) . She did not have a lot of hair but the style of the day was the bun. To increase the bulk in her hair she would take a few pandan leaves, strand them length wise and line them up with her hair, put a little bit of oil as a binder and twist the hair into a bun which she secured with a pin. As a finishing touch she would put in a small bunch of the bunga tongking.
Our Kampung house is set on a piece of land, slightly less than 3 acres and purchased pre WW2. Naturally we had many trees and some like the pokok sentul and pokok cermai were not found elsewhere in the village. At the western corner of the front steps we had a pokok belimbing buloh and on the west side of the main house we had a pokok cermai. Once when the cermai was in abundance my uncle from Kuala Lumpur visited with his family. My cousins who had never seen the cermai in the lives tried figuring its name and finally one of them 'baptised' it 'cucu buah apple' the 'grandkids of apples'. Just out side the kitchen we had a tall pokok turi bearing white flowers. My mother would make masak lemak with these. The belimbing made good sambal and the cermai we ate raw and sometimes with some sugar and salt. Now in front of my house I have these three plants and I plan to keep them trimmed to control their heights.
My mum was the first teacher I ever had. Those days the kindergarten was only a word we found in the dictionary if we bothered to look it up. She did not teach me to read
( though she could read both jawi and rumi ) but she taught me how to add and subtract - a skill that was very difficult for a six year old to master. And she taught me to read the Quran, making sure that I pronounced the alphabets correctly especially those that sound almost alike. It is only natural that whenever I read the Quran she would be on my mind. Her values have shaped me into the person I am today and I pray that whatever good I do will benefit her too in the after life. Mak may Allah bless your soul and place you with his chosen ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment