Looking For the Blueprint

THE movie Philomena won the BAFTA award for best adapted screenplay. The story of a son looking for his biological mother and the biological mother looking for her son would tug any heartstrings, more so when the mother and son in question are Irish.

Stories abound where years ago, unwed Irish mothers were put away in workhouses or convents because they were "fallen women" and their children were given up for adoption or sold.

Philomena was pregnant and unmarried at 18, so she was kept out of sight at Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, county Tipperary, behind grey stone walls.

In recent years however, adoptions in Ireland have become increasingly rare. Prospective parents now look abroad to adopt a child in a process called inter-country adoption.

At some point or another in our lives, we have wondered if we were adopted, especially when we do not look like our siblings.

Doubts creep in when we think and feel that our parents favour our brother or sister over us.

Stories that our parents tell us when we ask them about conception do not help either: the stork drops babies into chimneys or babies are found in dustbins and cabbage patches.

In the process of instilling fear into us or making us toe the line, parents even threaten to "give us away" if we misbehave.

I am not adopted and neither have I adopted a child. I cannot imagine what a parent goes through in the process of giving up a child to someone else.

However, my earliest memory of such a scenario was when I was about 10. I was living above a furniture shop then and usually I would exchange pleasantries with the owner of the shop when I got home from school, before making my way up the stairs, school bag and all.

On that particular day, he looked very downcast and, even after I had greeted him, he made no response.

So I asked my mother what had happened to him and she told me that he had just "given away" his sixth daughter because business was poor and they could not afford to feed another mouth.

In some cultures, it is required by law to state that a child is adopted. However, there are cases where the names of the adoptive parents are recorded as the biological parents of the child.

I have friends who have told their adopted children that they were adopted right from the start.

I also have friends who have never told their children they were adopted. '

Among the famous who were adopted were Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Nelson Mandela and Babe Ruth.

Steve Jobs was adopted and even though he was subsequently re-united with his biological parents, he continually affirmed that his adoptive parents were his parents 1,000 per cent.

Every now and again, we read in the papers of people searching for their biological parents or parents searching for the babies that they had given up for adoption many years ago.

Sometimes, a chance meeting of siblings separated by birth but yet look very much alike, has paved the way for a reunification.

The book Adoption Healing, a path to recovery by psychotherapist Joe Soll, a licensed clinical social worker, lists down the myths and facts about adoption.

According to his findings, most people surrender a child to adoption because they lack the resources to do otherwise.

Bonding begins before birth and the child suffers the pain of separation from her mother.

The discovery of her adoption status is confirmation of what is innately felt and known by the child. Women who lose babies to adoption never forget and their loss is unresolvable.

There are reports of happy endings where families are re-united and aching chasms filled.

Yet, I have heard of those who have met their biological parents but chose not to have further contact with them. I have also read of biological mothers who had kept it a secret all their lives and felt that the resurfacing of a child given up for adoption would disrupt their present status.

There is just no generic rule that reunification spells happiness.

Source: Looking for the blueprint - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/looking-for-the-blueprint-1.503229#ixzz2w54r9wM6

The things we do that only others see

THE 1999 novel Chocolat by Joanne Harris tells of a woman who moves in with the wind to a little French town. She is a sojourner and is quite unlike any of the people in that village, with her unconventional ideas and her disregard for meaningless traditions. Despite her fair share of prejudice and pain, she ultimately brings hope to a group of people who sees change and possibilities and a different world apart from their own.

The sojourner can be anyone. He is the teacher in a godforsaken place. Totally dedicated to his vocation but unappreciated. He is the doctor in a far-flung part of the earth. Totally dedicated to his calling but feeling trapped. He is the creative worker in a multinational company. Totally dedicated to his career but feeling empty and lonely.

Sometimes, I feel like a sojourner. It is as if I am in a particular place for a particular reason. Like the protagonists of the novel, Vianne Rocher, and her daughter Anouk, the road is never easy, the path is embedded with stones that need to be taken out painstakingly, one by one, so that it is smooth again.

In the course of it, weariness bears down, oh so strongly.

I have been here for a few years now. People ask me: "What do you think of Ireland? What do you think of the Irish? Do you miss your children back home in Malaysia?"

What can I say... should I just mouth the trite answers that are expected of me? Do I tell them what they want to hear or do I tell them the good and the bad, the joy and the pain, the fun and the sadness, the alienation and the friendliness, the rejection and the acceptance, the closeness of minds of a people who know no better?

There was this nice and elderly English gentleman whom I used to meet on the street where I live. He probably did not have many friends. But what struck me was that he never failed to talk to me whenever he saw me. He thought I was on a long vacation as I stayed on after the summer holidays and he continued to see me again in autumn and winter. He used to carry a bag slung across his shoulder. One day, I saw him walking without his bag. I stopped and asked, "Where is your bag?"

He was taken aback and said that he had left the bag behind. He must have gone home and thought to himself, why, this lady noticed that I carried a bag every time I went out for a walk. The next day, he saw me again from afar and waved merrily at me, holding his bag high up in the air, to show me that he was carrying the bag. After that, our friendship grew -- albeit circling around his health, his bag, my health and my bag. Finally I asked him whether he would like to come into my house for a cup of tea.

I wished he had accepted my invitation that day to come in for a cup of tea to escape the stormy weather. I wish I could have talked to him more. But I couldn't because John passed away and it broke my heart that I did not even know about it and I wondered if there was anyone at all at his funeral.

As I sojourn, I find myself in several very varied circles of good friends, maybe because I listen more than I speak, I reflect more than react and I empathise more than gossip and judge. A number of my friends have mentioned that they are glad I have come into their lives. I feel humbled by such an honour because of my own imperfections.

I am reminded of the story of the monk carrying two buckets of water from the well to the monastery every day. One bucket is perfect and the other has holes. The bucket with holes asks the monk why he continues to use it. The monk asks the bucket to look at the side of the road where the perfect bucket passes over and it is barren. He then points to the flowers growing on the other side of the road and says "See, these flowers are here only because of the water you sprinkle on them". 

As we sojourn, may our imperfections be the channels that allow our gifts and talents to flow to where they mean something to someone else.

Source: The things we do that only others see - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/the-things-we-do-that-only-others-see-1.490817#ixzz2uLvyqa00

Appeal of teddy bears

WHAT is it about teddy  bears that makes most of us go soft in the head? I for one have collected a number of teddy bears from different countries and have sat them all down in a cupboard and then carefully cleaned them whenever they got soiled.

Among the well-loved bears are the Paddington bear from Peru, Rupert the bear from England, Biffo bear from Beano, Yogi bear created by Hanna-Barbera (who claims he is smarter than the average bear) and the hand-raised Knut the polar bear that I saw at the Berlin Zoo. But these names are quite lost on present-day children, who are probably familiar only with Pooh, made famous by Walt Disney. But truth be told, the Disney version of Pooh is again rather different from the original A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh of Hundred Acre Wood.

History has it that the first teddy bear originated from the States after President Theodore Roosevelt and some of his friends went on a hunting trip to Mississippi in November 1902. After tracking down a helpless bear, one of the guides asked the president to shoot it but filled with compassion, the president could not bring himself to do so. Shortly after that, Clifford Berryman, a cartoonist, drew a cartoon of the event. A store owner in Brooklyn saw the cartoon, and true to the American spirit of entrepreneurship, decided to create a toy and named it Teddy Bear.

Teddy bears have gone a long way since. They are endeared by children and adults alike. In fact, I have even walked into a Teddy Hospital that specialises in bandaging that torn-out limb or re-stuffing that well-loved shapeless lump. Visitors to the hospital are asked to stay quiet for the patients.

Like doll houses and miniatures, they are also much sought after by beary (pardon the pun) many collectors. Sir Robert Clark, who died in January 2013, was recruited to Churchill's Special Operations Executive. He had a teddy called Falla, who was with him even when he parachuted into enemy territory in Italy and became a prisoner of war in World War 2. He later became a collector of more than 300 teddy bears.

Recently, Travelodge, the hotel chain, carried out a poll among 6,000 British adults on the significance of teddy bears (there seems to be polls on almost anything). More than half of the respondents still have a childhood teddy bear and 35 per cent sleep with one. Because of the great attachment between the teddy bear and its owner, the loss of one creates great distress. Travelodge said that in 2011, staff had reunited more than 75,000 teddies and their owners. And it is not only children that we are talking about but "frantic businessmen and women" calling the hotel about their forgotten teddy bears. In Teddy Bear stories for Grown Ups by Catherine Taylor, we have 23 fascinating stories of relationships between teddy bears and their owners, including the one about how a teddy bear survived the Titanic.

So what does a teddy bear provide that other toys do not? The respondents of the poll said sleeping with a teddy provided a "comforting and calming" way to end the day. In fact, 25 per cent of men said they even took their teddy bears away with them on business because it reminded them of home. Now I understand why Mr Bean does not go to sleep. I think deviant artist Begemott captures the idea of teddy the protector best in his drawing Sweet Halloween dreams where a teddy bear fends off a monster with a sword while a child sleeps on peacefully.

So with Valentine's Day just around the corner, I think teddy bears make excellent gifts.

They do not wilt like roses do, and unlike chocolates, they give great comfort without the extra calories.

Source: Appeal of teddy bears - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/appeal-of-teddy-bears-1.479943#ixzz2soKaSecE

Our Wishes Evolve as We grow Older

Chocolate maker Cadbury has developed a temperature tolerant Dairy Milk that resists melting in hot weather.

The bar can withstand 40oC heat for more than three hours and the product will be sold in warmer countries.

This delightful piece of news means that forgotten chocolate bits left in pockets will no longer turn gooey, for sometime at least.

Certainly one of my childhood wishes come true.

We seem to carry with us a never-ending list of wishes in our hearts and if we really sit down and try to remember, I do believe that many of them have come true.

Why, even Jiminy Cricket (after singing When You Wish Upon a Star in Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio says: "Pretty, huh? I'll bet a lot of you folks don't believe that, about a wish comin' true, do ya? Well, I didn't, either.

"Of course, I'm just a cricket singing my way from hearth to hearth, but let me tell you what made me change my mind."

Jiminy was talking about Pinocchio, the wooden puppet's wish to become a real boy.

One of my earliest wishes when I was 6 was to get a baby doll.

Then wishes for good school grades, for the ability to enjoy food without growing sideways and for a world without mosquitoes or flies or cockroaches followed.

Sometimes, I wished for the appearance of a fairy godmother, like that in story books who could grant you any wish. To outsmart the fairy godmother, I wished that anything I wished for would come true. In that way I would have what I wished for any day of my life.

When a wish comes true, we are over the moon. We have finally arrived as we have got what we wanted and strived for. We smile and we re-enact the 'happy scene' again and again in our minds.

Yet strangely the period of exuberance and jubilation experienced does not seem to equate the long suffering involved in waiting for the wish to come true.

The thing about wishes is that they evolve over time.

Physiological wishes give way to wishes for safety, for belonging, for self esteem and finally, for self actualisation.

Strangely, wishes mirror Maslow's hierarchy of needs represented in a pyramid with physiological needs at the base and self actualisation at the apex.

Just the other day, I was filling in a form to become a member of an organisation.

One of the questions listed was "What are your wishes?"

Simple enough I thought and began to pen a few lines. Then it dawned on me that my wishes this time round were so different than the wishes that I had before.

It is a strange phenomenon to realise that you are wishing the best for others and hardly any more for yourself.

With time, hopes and dreams fall into place. We have attained some and forgone others. Our perspectives have also changed.

What bothered us before may not irritate us so now. What seemed to be so attractive before has paled in its significance.

As Michael Phillips a film critic for the Chicago Tribune newspaper aptly puts it: "In all His purposes for the world, The Creator allows time to accomplish them.

"Whether it be in an individual heart, in the relationships of a family, or in the history of a nation, time teaches, time heals, time strengthens, time deepens roots and gives perspective.

"For time is an essential element of growth and a necessary catalyst for the development of maturity and wisdom."

It is not so much what I want for myself any more but what I want for others to achieve.

They are wishes for a lack of prejudice and an acceptance of fact. They are wishes for morality, for creativity, for spontaneity and for solutions to problems.

With a whole new year ahead of us, I live in hope that every good thing that we wish for will come true.

source: Our wishes evolve as we grow older - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/our-wishes-evolve-as-we-grow-older-1.470712#ixzz2rfd9F7qx

A Day Off for Mums turns them back on

When my children were young, I would read to them every night before they fell asleep.

One of their favourite books was about a stay-at-home mother who would cook, sew and do practically everything until the father came home. Once in a while, her friends would call over and she would go out with them and the father minded the children.

A simple story but it reminds me of the times when mothers, whether they are working full time outside or at home, need a day out.

My mother had her own days out. She used to go to the Orchid hair salon every Saturday to "set" her hair.

She never missed an appointment and would come home with beautifully coiffured hair, resembling a pineapple, stiffed with hair-spray. Such was the fashion then.

And every Sunday, she would hang up her pots and pans and there was absolutely no cooking done.

Interestingly enough, there are church-run Mother's Day Out programmes, especially for stay-at-home mothers who do not have domestic helpers or relatives to help them mind their children.

Teenagers and young adults run the programme. There is no real structure to the programme, no curriculum or schedule of events.

These volunteers sign up to supervise the children who play, do crafts, learn letters, numbers, shapes, take naps, and eat with their friends. These are typically between three and six hours and are usually two to five days a week.

This gives the mother the much needed break to go grocery shopping without a crying baby, get her hair cut, take a nap, blog or do anything she wants.

The greatest obstacle is the mother's difficulty to deal with the "guilt" of leaving the child with someone else. Whatever form a mother's day-out can take, it is certainly therapeutic. It helps preserve sanity and breaks the mundane cycle of things.

I was in Dublin recently as my daughter was receiving an award from the university. I did not want to drive and thus I took an express bus. It was actually quite fun because I had not travelled leisurely on my own for a while. I had the whole day to myself as the ceremony was at night and my daughter had day lectures.

The bus stopped near Grafton street, which was perfect. All the mannequins in the window display were screaming at the shopaholic in me. I read somewhere that we should not shop on an empty stomach so I took a turn to Georges street where most of the Asian restaurants are. I was spoilt for choice and sat down at a Nepali restaurant for a three-course lunch of piping hot mountain rice topped with well-stewed lamb pakuwa.

I was not disappointed as I imagined myself somewhere in the Himalayas and tasting the food of gods.

There were pigeons everywhere pecking breadcrumbs from off the sidewalks. Obviously, they were not subjected to any signs of a recessive economy as they were so fat, I could not see their legs.

I chuckled when I saw a bus with a big chocolate chip cookie advertisement over it "Chip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" (an ingenious twist of the song from the Disney 1946 animated movie Song of the South).

I thought of my bills that have been paid. I thought of the house mortgage that has been settled.

I thought of no more car loans or any other outstanding loans. I thought of my older two children who are working. I thought of my youngest daughter's education expenses at Trinity that have been taken care of.

It was time to go for the award ceremony. As I walked towards the university in my new dress and matching shoes and handbag, I felt like a million dollars.

It was indeed a mother's day out, a good beginning for a new year.

Source: A day off for mums turns them back on - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/a-day-off-for-mums-turns-them-back-on-1.460352?cache=03%2F7.206773%3Fkey%3DMalaysia%2F7.288059%2F7.308059%3Fkey%3DKuala+Lumpur%2F7.320411%2F7.320411%2F7.330034%2F7.330034%2F7.480850%2F7.480850%2F7.480850%2F7.480850%2F7.490557%2F7.490557%2F7.490557%2F7.490557%2F7.490557%2F7.575117%2F7.575117#ixzz2qDDm5Win

About time

It never fails to amaze me how many films there are on time travel. Time travel has long held a fascination for many of us. Apparently, even famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes humans are capable of time travel into the future. There are at least 150 well known short stories and novels dating back to 1733 about time travel. As for television series on time travel, early recollections go way back to 1951 where Scientist Captain Z-Ro,  had a time machine, the ZX-99, both to view history and to send someone back in time.

Popular movies on time travel include Back to the Future,  Groundhog day, The Lake House, The Time Traveller’s Wife and recently About Time. The main thrusts? Reliving past events, returning to yesterday and even the possibility of changing what had been.

Then I ask myself if ever I am confronted with such a possibility, would I do it?

To satiate my curiosity I would certainly like to see how Van Gogh painted his sunflowers, how Beethoven composed the 5^th Symphony or how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Nearer home, I would like to see how my parents lived as children. Maybe I would like to see again all the good stuff that happened to me in the past. I would like to see what would have happened if my life choices were different: careers, relationships, ambitions, values. But I certainly would not like to travel into the future because I am not brave enough to see unfavourable events unfold, especially if they concern the people that I care for.

The possibility of ‘altering’ the sequence of events is also very tempting. Just imagine that I had done something totally awkward and because of that one incident, my whole life had been ruined. Or I had uttered one wrong thing and lost my good friend in the process.  Unkind words, like feathers tossed from a roof, float everywhere and cannot be gathered back. How simple it would be to travel back in time and undo what I had done.

Or we may also be laden with the ‘save the world’ responsibility where we could stop evil from happening. I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up very tired with all the travelling into the past to repair the errors of world history - to stop despots and bad emperors from ruining the lives of their subjects.

What if we travelled into the past and befriended some cave men and they decided to follow us back to real time? Imagine the amount of adaptation they would have to undergo.  

But then again comes the trap of not being accountable for our deeds. We make mistakes and hopefully, in so doing we learn, grow and change for the better. If we could always go back and make good what went wrong, then it would be like a short cut to life. What we learn would be getting into a machine, fixing the problem and then coming back to the present in the machine. Imagine the chaos if time machines were easily available to all and sundry! Then there would certainly be great congestion in space, maybe some kind of space-jam.

 Like everything else, time travel has its repercussions. Changing the time line is a paradox. The elimination of your ancestor for example would mean you no longer exist.  We might even accidentally disrupt the normal course of various events, setting off a chain reaction that turns the future into a dystopian society – the horror of it all.

The whole element of the antithesis will be absent if we could time travel. We cannot see light without darkness. We cannot appreciate good unless we have seen the bad. We cannot hope if we are always fixing the past. Then we cheat ourselves of the joy when we see expectation realised and anticipation fulfilled. With time travel, we are in control and we sit and watch how we would like things to be. That certainly deprives us of the element called spontaneity.

Opting for the alternative – which is living in real time might not be such a  bad idea after all. By living in the here and now we learn to notice. Noticing imbues each moment with a new, fresh quality. This is called the ‘beginner’s mind.’ By acquiring the habit of noticing new things, we recognize that the world is actually changing constantly. And that is fun.

This is the last Sunday for 2013 and we will embrace the next Sunday in a new year. Where did all the time go? So, for the moment, I will just be content with Uber Morlock’s statement in H.G. Wells  The Time Machine.

“We all have our time machines, don’t we?  Those that take us back are memories…And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”

Source: The New Straits Times, http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/the-present-moment-is-always-enough-for-now-1.380330

A Partner Need Not Suffer without End

I WAS at a wedding recently and as with most weddings, the atmosphere was enough to move one's heart to bits. So I listened with interest as the newlyweds exchanged their vows.

Interestingly enough, the list of vows the bride made to her groom was twice as long as that of the groom's.

I do not know whether they wrote the vows themselves or whether they lifted them from a book.

I am not a feminist, but I thought it strange that while the groom promised to honour vows one to seven, the bride promised to honour vows one to 14.

This included honouring his dreams, his vision, his hopes and his forever while nothing was mentioned about honouring hers.

I could not help feeling that there would be a long road of sacrifice ahead for her.

She would have to give up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy, sometimes even negating her own dreams and desires.

Here, I would like to borrow Yeats' line in the poem Easter 1916: "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart."

The poem was written in the context of the long, turbulent history of British colonialism in Ireland as well as alluding to the great psychological cost of the long struggle for independence.

May I be so bold as to stretch this concept to that of domestic bliss?

The question I pose is: who determines when the suffering will end and when the sacrifices are considered sufficient?

Some will smile to make it seem easier. They will put on a front because admitting it is hard. It can be seen as a weakness and many spouses feel they need to be strong for their children or be regarded as a stigma in society.

There are great husbands and wonderful husbands out there, but a cursory glance at the role of mothers and wives across cultures shows that responsibilities are certainly not shouldered equally.

I am not talking about instances where a calamity strikes the household or a spouse suffers a tragic event and is left incapable of taking care of himself.

In some societies, we see the women walking miles to the wells early in the morning to carry water in vats for their households. They then return home to cook and clean and take care of their babies while their husbands are idling away.

We are familiar with countries that "export" wives and mothers to work as domestic helpers while their own children are being cared for by some other relatives.

There is even one country that sees it as the norm for married and single men alike to have a "free Friday" where they can go to town and have non-committal sexual relationships and then return to their households for the rest of the week as if nothing has happened.

I welcome the blogging era because I find that many (women and men) can pour out their thoughts and inner feelings when before they were trapped.

I was reading a blog that went: "I'm wondering lately when enough is enough? There comes a point when you've been sacrificing for a little too long.

"I don't mean it in the general sense, because we all have to make sacrifices, but a specific situation where you give, and give, and give with nothing in return.

"I think we've passed the 'appreciation', sensitivity, compassion, beautiful point and have become desensitised, bitter, frustrated and exhausted.

"I don't think this is a permanent state of mind, or unusual, but we all have a limit."

We are human, lest we forget. There is this innate cry for some normalcy, love, companionship and a co-parent to absorb the never-ending stress of holding a home together.

To this end, I believe that every marriage should start on an equal footing, of love and respect, of bearing responsibilities together, of honouring mutual dreams and of working towards a common goal where no one is expected to shoulder more than she should.

Certainly, a good start would be to let the number of vows made on both sides be equal.

A Blessed Christmas to all Christians.

Source - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/a-partner-need-not-suffer-without-end-1.432848#ixzz2nZKgSYwD