Dear Rockstar,
You and Mummy just had our umpteenth fight for the weekend – and it’s already Monday. The fighting started Saturday night when you attended your first Chinese-style Wedding Banquet at Nikko Hotel. Usually, you love grownup events and it’s enough to tell you that if the grownups can’t have a conversation/ dinner party with you around, we will have to have it without you around. Not this time.
1) Mummy is glad she will never see the people at the wedding dinner again. Too bad they’re your father’s basketball buddies. These 20-somethings (many of whom probably don’t like kids, just like Mummy didn’t, in her 20s) pronounced you Supercute – until you opened your mouth. If we hadn’t already met Daddy’s friends there, we would have pretended we were at the wrong wedding (there were 4 banquets conveniently going on at the same time.)
Us, going for the wedding dinner. Mummy threw on the Anteprima outfit (the same one she wore at her own wedding) and Prada snakeskin shoes without planning her accessories or even changing her bag because it’s the only matching one that can hold a few Secret Weapons to distract you at dinner – and we were stretched to get you out the door. (This is you, hiding behind said door.)
(Don’t be fooled by that smile – it wasn’t easy getting you out of that corner, even though you were smiling all the way.)
You are wearing a Jacadi shirt (bought during Mummy’s retail-therapy-workdays. Not that you care what you wear, branded kiddie clothes are for the pleasure of mums, not kids), nondescript casual linen blazer and Kiki Lala pants.
Each time, Mummy managed to stem the tide of “Iwantogohome, Iwantogohome, Iwantogohome”s for a grand total of 2 minutes, by offering to rent you out to the kitchen staff to wash dishes for your own cab fare home. But, she soon learned, somewhere along the line while she was distracted by a bumblebee you have developed the memory of a goldfish and the hide of a rhino.
Attaching a wish for the happy couple…
(Clockwise from top left,
a. Daddy signing the guest register
b. Looking at wedding photos
c. The stage is completely covered in white fur!
d. Some random picture you took during the dinner – and Mummy still hasn’t figured out what it is)
2) Approximately 2 hours since we arrived, we called it quits because you were “tired”. In the car, you then perked right up, declaring with unmitigated gall you were “no longer tired”. We finally got you to sleep at 12.30am that night. And not without a fight. If you had not been Mummy’s flesh and blood (and she had a supplier), she might have considered drugging you.
3) At church the next morning, you loudly asked your parents “Who’s that guy?” – when our pastor took the mike. This was followed by “What God?” and “Isitoveryet?Isitoveryet?Isitoveryet?” At which point Mummy committed the ultimate crime of bribery by silencing you with a marshmallow. She still feels lousy.
4) This morning at approximately 5am Mummy turned around in bed to see you staring at her with beady-looking hamster eyes in the darkness. She doesn’t know how long you’ve been awake. You wanted a glass of water. Then a banana. Then cereal. At which point you had a coughing fit and got a round of meds in warm milk. Then you wanted the bedside lamp left on.
Then Daddy got mad and told you to shut it and go back to sleep. So you did. After gabbling to yourself in the dark for goodness knows how long.
5) 3 hours later Mummy turned around to see you again staring at her. You were hungry. You considered the fresh beef-and-broccoli noodles jie-jie made before taking JD for her morning walk and the cheesey scrambled eggs Mummy was having before settling on last night’s leftover thin-crust Hawaiian pizza (with extra pineapple).
Then you threw a hissy fit because we were out of bananas.
6) 5 hours later, Mummy found it impossible to put you down for your short morning sleep before school. We had another giant fight after Mummy found you jumping up and down on her new magazine on the bed. You also climbed up and took some pictures off the walls and put them on the bed, along with your entire Mr Men series.
Mummy is almost sure when you come and meet her in the café later, she will find a reproachful note in your parent-teacher diary saying you fell asleep in school/ sneezed your brains out (because you’re tired and still recovering from last week’s cold.)
Your mother hasn’t been doing a very good job handling you this weekend. She’s been yelling. Despite knowing that you, like your father, have a very adverse reaction to yelling.
Mummy wants to tell you she’s sorry.
She’s supposed to be the parent, but she’s still learning how. The one silver lining is, during our fights Mummy notices the self-assuredness you display in your whole carriage and attitude:
Never does it cross your mind you could lose your parents’ love no matter how naughty you get.
And, you’re right – you can’t. (But you’re really driving us crazy.)
Love,
Mummy
ps: But if you’re 30 and turn to a life of crime Mummy would probably call the cops on you.
