The Skeptical Optimist

My childhood babysitter has just passed away. She was in her 90s, a strong indomitable Hakka woman who made her way from China. My mother always recounts a story where when asked about the traditional Chinese practice of confinement, she said, “what confinement? I was back to work in the fields the day after giving birth”. She took care of me before I started kindergarten, for a good 2-3 years if I’m correct. I have very few clear memories of my time in her apartment. I remember she tried to get me to eat porridge and vegetables, I remember how she held my hand to lead me away from my mother when I cried at our morning partings. Most of all I remember her Hakka, a language that I learnt and then lost when I stopped going to her place. It was the first dialect I mastered, so much so that my own grandmother had to speak in Hakka to me, because I refused to speak Hokkien. To me, Hakka is the language of my early childhood, almost of my infancy. It’s like babytalk in the most comforting way.

I continued to keep in touch with my babysitter; every Lunar New Year I would visit her small flat and bring oranges and treats. When I got married I gave her red packets of money and when I had babies I brought them to see her. Even my husband would ask whether we were going to her place if we hadn’t gone by the second day. She became frailer at each visit, grasping my hand each time though, recognising my changing face. Even when she was bedridden she remembered me in the haze of her pain and medication.

I can’t quite describe how I feel that she’s gone now. Her life at the end was difficult and not something I’d wish on anyone. But I can still hear that calm singsong Hakka in my head, comforting me, lulling me into naps, coaxing me to eat, gently scolding me if I did something wrong. I can still see her freckled wrinkled face spreading into a gap toothed smile each year when she saw me, pushing the plate of biscuits or tarts and a packet drink into my hand.

Now that I have my own two boys, I sometimes wonder about the memories I’m leaving for them – how they will remember their early childhood.

I often get asked why I had children so young and how I cope with my work and childcare. Well, the short answers to both questions are because I wanted to and planned it that way, and well, it’s hard to cope but I have help from my mother and daycare.

It’s sometimes crazy, infuriating and downright frustrating having a 1 and 3 year old. Sometimes the office seems like an oasis of calm compared to the controlled chaos at home. And juggling work and family life is challenging and tiring but rewarding ultimately. I’m glad that I’m working because I feel I’m able to filter down the richness of my experiences to my kids. My learning on the job contributes to their learning too. And of course I am financially independent and dependable – should anything happen to our ability to have a two income household because of illness or unforeseen accidents.

My husband recently took the kids by himself to Italy for slightly over 2 weeks to visit the grandparents and have them run around in fields and get the hands into the vegetable patch and fruit trees. Some of our friends thought he was kind of crazy to do so, but really, that’s the kind of shared parenting that makes our marriage really precious to me. And even though the house has been extra peaceful and quiet in the past weeks – I can’t wait until I have my boys back at home, bringing the house down and my messy noisy life back to its normal wonderful state.  I hope my old babysitter would be proud.