The Wordsmith

Every once in a while on that little path called Life, you meet people who just touch you in some divinely profound way that words just don’t do justice to. The only way to own the moment is to smile, nod your head and feel the love.

This amazing 94-year old used to take care of my breakfast buddy when she was a kid. She is, hands down, the jolliest, smiley-est, bounciest septuagenarian I have ever met. Wait. I take that back.  She’s the jolliest, smiley-est, bounciest person above 50 that I’ve ever met. And I don’t know how she does that, considering that when she was about five years old she was kidnapped from her home in China and shipped to Kuching. She more or less became a slave to the family who ‘adopted’ her. Since the age of five, she had to carry buckets, scrub floors, do hard labour for the people she lived with.  She was treated badly and made to feel unwanted and unworthy (to this day, I heard). At 20, she was married off and had one son. She lost both her husband and little boy to the War and disease. She remarried but again, her man died. She had a daughter and a son though, and made ends meet baby-sitting other people’s children.

Popo is a bit hard of hearing but it doesn’t matter. She flashes her beautiful smile and the world seems brighter. She draws strength from her unwavering faith. Her kids aren’t exactly model offspring to their mum and at her age, she should be getting old the TLC she can get from her family. But she isn’t. Does she complain though? Nope. She prays and sings hymns in Hokkien, which I love because Hokkien is such a fabulous language to sing in. Her memory is pretty formidable too. She remembers what my buddy used to say when she was a toddler.

I love hanging out with happy old people. They’re living historians of the way things were. My buddy Gelzie absolutely adores Popo. I only met her once. We had a beautiful conversation. But it was more the energy that she exuded that had me at hello. And of course, there was her story - a beloved 5-year old who wandered too far from home and was taken away forever. I gathered that her brother from China actually did manage to track her down after decades. But, what do you do when you’ve lived half a life in a different country, torn apart from your own family at a young age?

She’s more family to Gelzie than she is to her own kids. Gelzie’s gone to live in another country now but she makes sure I know how much she misses her old nanny. So here’s to Popo and you, Gelzie.  Groetjes uit Kuching!

Photo: Ong Say Moi, 94. Photo courtesy of A.O.