When I was small...

                           
                                         First Of May by Bee Gees - Courtesy of You Tube

This recent days, at night when putting her to bed, while she was ready to sleep, Aurora will demand me to tell stories. Tired I will, sometimes too tired to tell anything, but thinking that I want my daughter to sleep peacefully and be happy I told her stories that my mother used to tell us when I was small. Back in 1970's we did not have television nor electrics so our nights after dinner were filled with stories. My mother was an avid reader..she was an educated lady. In fact, if my grandfather was a bit open minded, she could be a teacher in her time. Sadly, parents in yesteryear's thought that girls were just girls, stay at home and be a good wife.

So, my mother used to tell us stories..funny story such as Ayam Togel, scary story such as the Giants and the Pumpkins, religious stories etc. I related the stories to Aurora. She had a good time laughing listening to my stories. Later on after few days, I ran out of stories. No choice so I began to tell her stories when I was small. How I  walked to school about three kilometres without shoes because I wanted to make sure my shoes were clean, how poor we were when there was no electrics and no running water, how we spent time in the river catching fish and small prawns, how my mother came to the river bringing "roti panjang" to chase us home. I told her we ate chickens during Hari Raya only, that my dad had to slaughter the chickens for rendang... she was not happy to hear that we had to kill the chicken for our "lauk"..she asked a lot of questions such as..why didn't we just buy the chicken from the market? I had to explain to her even she could not grasp the idea that to buy a chicken last time, was out of question. I told her story about us keeping 25 cats in the house..that we had named each of the cats. And so on...

Each night my mind wondered back to the old memories. Later, after Aurora dozed off, I continued to lay down next to her counting years that had gone by. How time changes...and I have become so old...

Till then.