Tea by Grandma: History in a cup

Grandma is everything like the cup of tea that she just made – sweet, never sour.

She’s 88 this year and she still makes the tea and coffee daily for customers that patronises her 60-year-old coffeeshop business which she runs with her youngest daughter. And as long as I can remember – she never rued, neither has she ever complained about life, or about people, or about anything. She has married and divorced twice, on both occassions she was left by the husbands. From the first marriage came my mom – the eldest. Grandma’s second daughter died when she was three, her third passed-on last year, and the forth, was given away at birth. She lives above her shop with her youngest daughter (55 years old – the fifth and the only one from the second marriage) and son-in-law,

Grandma is born Chinese. When she was still a child, she was taken care of by a Royal Malay family in Kuala Kangsar, Perak. She never knew her real parents. When I asked her what she remembers of her childhood – she can only recollect the Red Flood in 1927. She was very young then, but she recalled someone taking a family photo after the flood. She remembered having a sister, who died when Grandma was 10.

I asked her if she wanted to know who her parents were. She’s not sure. I asked her again. She smiled. Well, maybe she doesn’t want to know the past. Or maybe, she is not too concerned, as she knows, once she leaves this world she'd know. Or maybe she has given up. Or maybe she knows and doesn’t want to tell me.

Grandma always knew that she was adopted. And I believe that in many stages in her life she must have had asked herself or her caretaker who her parents were. Why was she given away, whether the parents died or moved away. But now she is probably too old to ponder the past, and knowing that to find out who her parents were would probably seemed like looking for a needle in an 80-year-old haystack tucked away somewhere in neverland. Serving aromatic teas daily, to her regulars is probably her primary concern these days.

As most of us were born, I think my Grandma was too. She could not just have existed out of thin Perak air. I plan to find out who her parents were, while I still can and while Grandma is still alive and while her memory still serves her correctly.

Come to think of it – maybe some of us are born to define other people’s existance.

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About this video

This is an excerpt from a one-hour interview held at my Grandma’s place in Kelantan. Lucky me – she’s not camera-shy. Or maybe she’s too old to be shy, or not bothered. This could be one of the greatest moments in my life, the best one hour I spent with her, and out of so many interviews that I had conducted – the most difficult.