Happy Mother's Day, Mak

i miss my mother. right now i miss her nagging more than anything else. i miss her smile, i miss the way she scolded me and then said "mengerti?" in that p ramlee style of language on silver screen.

i know i can't bring my mother back to life, and i don't want to tell sad stories. but i want to celebrate her life as a mother, by telling the readers of her legacy, of which now i'm continuing.

my mother loved fragrant flowers - we used to have the cempaka telur and the cempaka keling trees, we still have the ylang ylang tree (kenanga) and gardenia (bunga cina), we used to have tikar seladang covering the orchid house (am not sure what it's called actually, but the small off white flowers bloom in clusters), bunga melati and there are 3 types of jasmines at home. she used to go into the garden in the morning and search for cempaka telur by using a galah (it's a tall tree) because she said she could "smell" its fragrance from far away. now, i have a pot of jasmine plant at my house. i plan to have more plants, but since i'm going to travel next month, i dare not add to my collection.

for the family tahlil yesterday, i made puding buih, which my late mother always made during fasting month. despite the migraine it gave me (because at 11pm i was still beating the meringue and the jelly), i'm happy to report that the jelly is a nostalgic food for my siblings as they reminisced eating the jelly during their childhood.

the other legacy is the briyani recipe which she learned some 40 years ago from a penangite. the recipe is the one that my family lovingly keeps and cherishes, and my sister made the briyani during the 4th tahlil at her house.

but food and flowers are not only her legacy. whenever i do something, sometimes i can hear her voice in my head, admonishing me for my mistakes.

my late mother should have won the award for the best mother. she gave birth to my eldest brother during the Japanese Occupation and ran for shelter to Setiu when the bombing started. she had 9 children, and fed us well. all her children are doing very well in life, and i know she was very happy with our successes. and we owe it to her.