Little women.

If my sisters saw Yaya today, they would certainly say that “Apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree” and each of them would have found a bit of themselves in Yaya.

This morning, Yaya wore a tee shirt with the collar snipped off. Even after my kids were born, I could still wear my sister’s clothes, but I didn’t wear  my youngest sister’s tee shirts because she always snipped/chopped/ripped the collar and to me it looked pretty unsightly. If she wanted to remove the collar, she could have at least cut it off neatly, but No, she does such a bad job that the tee shirt looked like it was chewed by a rabid dog. The tee shirt Yaya wore this morning looked like it was chewed by a rabid dog without the collar and the edges all jagged. I can almost picture my youngest sister rolling on the floor and laughing because I used to get so mad at her for damaging perfectly fine tee shirts and now my own child is doing the same.

My oldest sister would have smiled too if she saw Yaya this morning. First of all, Yaya looks exactly like my sister and the way she wears all the accessories is ditto like my sister ( everything matches and she will not leave home unless everything is perfect)and like her, Yaya is a walking cloud of deodorant.

You can normally see my middle sister, when Yaya gets angry with me. She rolls her eyes just like my sister and things usually go downhill after that,because I can’t stop  laughing seeing how much she looks like my sister.

My oldest sister can’t cook. Now, I don’t believe that one can’t cook. I think it is more won’t than can’t. But the truth of the matter is, my sister will choose to  starve and die than to cook if it ever came to that. I have never eaten anything cooked by my sister. She eats out all the time and I worry about her when she is old and not able to go out for meal everyday.

As I mentioned before, Yaya looks exactly like my oldest sister and refused to cook when she was young. I remember once I had severe migraine and couldn’t cook and asked Yaya if she would make herself some noodles and she asked me to help her boil the water for her. The process involved filling the kettle and switching it on. She didn’t want to do that and it was the first time Yaya went to bed hungry.

When I became a mother, I had hoped to have a house like “little women” Where everyone was nice to each other, everyone helped each other and the house was filled with laughter and happiness. It took me a long time to accept the fact that a house like that can only happen in novels and in my house, for sure there was laughter and happiness, so were tears and angry outbursts and no one helped me with the chores. I did everything and it was a tiring job.

Every Saturday, my children have basket ball matches, one match in the morning and one at noon. Yaya works on Saturday from 9 till 12.30 and few weeks ago, I asked her if she would cook lunch. I have to be honest that I didn’t expect her to say “yes”. All I was doing was to badger her, hoping that one day she will get that cooking is not a major event, it is just a part of your life. I was surprised when I received a txt from her asking me ” What would you like me to make?” I thought of things she could cook quickly without having to use knives etc and being a natural born klutz, I was really scared that she will harm herself in the process of cutting an onion. But then I thought, she should learn to figure out what to cook looking at the ingredients we have and so I told her “make whatever you want”.

I imagined all sorts of events that could happen if Yaya entered my kitchen and decided to cook and I  planned all the things I must do if anything went wrong. I knew my elderly neighbour is home recuperating from the hip surgery, so I could call her in case of emergency. Cuts with knives, tell Yaya to use compress or raise the injured hand/fingers above the heart level..for burns I must ask Yaya to wash under running water  and for fire I hoped she will remember to drop and roll..etc etc.

Last Saturday, I came home to find lunch ready at the table. She made Szechuan Tofu, sugar snap peas in oyster sauce and Taiwanese pork mince with fried shallots.

“Where did you get the recipe?” I asked her.

“I went to the library after work and borrowed some recipe books” She said.

As I wrote before, apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree..for you see, I still borrow recipe books from the library..

 

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