As a curious girl of five or six and together with a mischievous cousin brother who was a year or two older than me, I would often crept quietly across the wooden floor to where grandma was having an afternoon nap.
The old lady loved to sleep on her hard and square-shaped pillow made from porcelain. Fanning herself slowly with a straw fan in one hand, she would drift off to sleep under the Rediffusion box fixed to the wall.
Afternoons are Chinese-opera and napping times for old ladies.
“Can you see that her feet are so small?” I whispered softly to the young boy giggling beside me.
We gently lifted up her feet and examined them with amused eyes. As little kids, we have no idea why our grandma has a pair of feet as small as ours. It looked strange for an adult to have such small feet. Grandma’s dainty little feet never ceased to amaze both of us.
My cousin brother slowly put her feet to his nose and I followed suit. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! We were almost thrown off by the smell. Her small feet smell like salted fish!
Grandma’s feet brought her a lot of pain and tears but pride too. You can read my book to find out how it was to grow up under the care of an old lady who walked with a pair of dainty little feet in my book, “The Stories of the Scissors Sharpener’s Daughter.”
To be continued…..
I don’t want to read this before makan.
Hahaha…..read it after makan then.
Dear IpohGal,
Thank you for sharing the memory of your grandmother and the porcelain headrest. Happily it brought back memories of my own nyonya maternal grandmother. She too used the hollow rectangular porcelain ‘pillow’ to sleep on. So used to soft pillows we kids then could not understand her choice. It looked so punitive to us. We were grateful that she did not insist that habit upon us.
Recalling her also makes me remember that she got along so famously with my father, often chatting away into the night when she stayed over with us whenever the Chinese wayang (opera) was in the neighbourhood. With my mother showing no interest in this cultural stage show, my father and his mother-in-law would attend the wayang each night. Or was it my mother’s ploy to encourage harmonious relations between a mother-in-law and her son-in-law, and consequently maintain domestic peace? I am just sorry I cannot find out any more.
Best wishes
Hock Yew
7 Feb 2013
Thank you Hock Yew, for reminding me that this porcelain pillow is not square shaped but a rectangular one and it’s hollow inside. My grandma, however, is not a nyonya but a Cantonese. Guess this type of pillow is popular with most old ladies in those days, irrespective of their dialects.
If you do not mind the hardness, it is cooling. Even CPUs need cooling. Surely, the brain, more powerful than any man-made CPUs, needs that too.
Usually no problem between mother-in-law and her son-in-law.
But lots of problems between………I think I’ll continue after CNY………