My Wonderful Ah Soh

I remember, with much affection and above all, admiration, my sister-in-law, who died of breast cancer many years ago.

Ah Soh was one of those women who could be said to have come from a long line of strong, resilient, resourceful women going all the way back to the ancestral country. They were the true pioneering, frontier ‘daughters of the soil’, who have been celebrated in literature and film, as in Pearl S. Buck’s beautiful novel ‘The Good Earth’, for their amazing stoicism in keeping the family intact through the greatest misfortunes and crises, requiring no greater reward than the success of their sons and daughters.

Ah Soh brought up several children with limited resources but unlimited energy in stretching these resources to ensure they were properly fed, clothed and educated. With no formal education, she saw its value in securing a good future for her children. She watched over their progress in schools like a hawk, scanning their report books for the one sign she understood that told of bad school performance: red ink . Nodding with approval over blue ink, she went on a rampage of maternal fury over each red mark, cuffing heads, tweaking ears, rapping fingers, till the squealing culprit promised to do better. Her loud scolding voice, laced with the colourful expletives of her dialect, was daily heard by the neighbours in the kampong.

Ah Soh’s intolerance of rebellious offspring could be extreme, sometimes resulting in primitive forms of punishment that required intervention. Once she held a recalcitrant child over an open well, threatening to drop him into it if he did not behave! But the severity was matched by a love that was unparalleled in its selflessness. She would wake up before dawn, regardless of state of health, to make sure that the housework was done, the food cooked, the ironing completed, the children fed. There was nothing that Ah Soh wouldn’t do for her family.

I can still see her, clad, like most kampong women as they went about the housework, in a cotton sarong pulled up to the armpits and knotted securely above the breasts, her hair gathered into a tight bunch at the back of the head with a rubber-band, her face and neck dripping with the sweat of chopping wood and drawing water from the well.

During meal times, she made sure her husband and children were given the best of whatever modest food they could afford. On festive occasions, when chicken was served, she insisted that she liked to eat only the head and the feet, so that the best parts of thigh, breast and wings would go to the rest of the family.

Today her children are enormously successful in their various professions. They remember her with so much love it hurts, and the mere mention of her brings choking tears.