Lessons from my parents

To maintain a relationship is to practise tolerance and acceptance

OUR neighbours used to joke that when mother was cooking in the kitchen, our father would run to the back of our house just to steal a glance at her, my grandfather would say whenever my siblings and I asked him about my parents’ courtship.

There came a time when I was extremely curious about how my parents, Gan Tian Chin and Lee Gek Szi, had met but when I tried to extract more information, they wouldn’t divulge much.

Unlike my parents, my aunts and uncles were more than willing to share all that they knew. What you’re about to read next may sound like a picture-perfect story spun out of a novel but trust me, the characters are non-fictional.

My parents met when they were just six. They were schoolmates who lived one house apart from each other on the same street. While they grew up together, their personalities and interests were poles apart.

Back then, my father could be found catching fish in the stream at an oil palm plantation whereas my mother stayed home to practise Chinese calligraphy. When my father ran around climbing trees and flying kites with my uncles, my mother dealt with the household chores and prepared dinner.

Their relationship didn’t blossom until after they graduated from secondary school. Oddly, at that stage of their courtship, they were 700km apart from each other – my mother was studying in Penang and my dad was working in Singapore.

Upon graduation, my mother found a job in Singapore, to be closer to my father. Later on, when she opted to work closer to home in Melaka, my father followed suit. Four years later, they were married at the age of 28. This October, they will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.

Yet, their journey hasn’t been all sunny skies. As their eldest child, I have witnessed their cloudy days and even hailstorms. My mother’s biggest challenge presented itself when it was time to enrol me in primary school.

She insisted that her children be educated in mission schools, emphasising the importance of being proficient in the English language. My father and most of my extended relatives, on the other hand, firmly believed that we should be educated in our mother tongue. My mother won the “war” but she had to make sure we could speak, read and write in Mandarin, for the sake of appeasing my father.

Of course, there are times when my father is on the winning side. My mother would turn a blind eye as my father buys supper for all of us or relent when my father wants to have roti canai at the mamak stall in the middle of the night. My mother is an extremely health-conscious person, so such occasions only happen once in a blue moon.

Throughout their marriage, my parents have taught me the meaning of tolerance and acceptance. They understand each other’s shortcomings and allow us to grow up in an environment where forgiveness and love matter above anything else.

They have also taught me that marriage and love is a lifelong lesson. When times are good, they kick back and laugh with each other; when times are bad, they hold onto each other and find their way to steer themselves forward.

I look up to them a lot and hope that in time to come, fate will lead me to my special someone, just like how fate brought my parents together!

This article was published in the Education column of The Star Newspaper dated 20 January 2019