Just call me auntie

17 June 2007, ST

The secret to enjoying auntiehood is to not take it seriously.

By Sumiko Tan

HE POKED his head into the bedroom and seeing that I was awake, walked to my bed and climbed up next to me.

He snuggled close. His brown hair was tousled and his body smelt sweetly of sleep. We lay there listening to our breaths. I could feel his ribcage beneath his pyjamas.

Then he got up, leaned towards my ear and whispered: 'Do you know who I am?'

'An adorable donkey?' I said.

'No,' he replied, grinning, his puffy Chinese-shaped eyes crinkling into little slits.

'I'm a penguin.'

I spent three weeks recently with my sister's family in the United States and got to know my nephew Josh.

He's just turned four and the last time I saw him two years ago, he was a babbling toddler.

Now, he's a bossy little man who carries a stick wherever he goes (he thinks he's Moses from the Bible), makes faces at the camera and likes to pretend to be some animal or the other.

Unlike his sister Michiko who's nine, soft-hearted and cuddly, he's more aloof. He doesn't like to be hugged and kissed and has a quick temper to boot.

But on the day I was to fly home, he surprised me with his morning visit. (My sister assured me later that she had nothing to do with this.)

He said tearfully that he didn't want me to go home, that I could only go 'the day after tomorrow', and we talked about him visiting Singapore and what we would do together.

As you can tell, my time with Josh is very fresh in my mind, but the thing is, life goes on. He doesn't remember that moment; it doesn't mean anything to him.

In fact, he's since more or less forgotten about me. When I call now, he rarely wishes to speak to me. It's a rushed hello-goodbye and he's off. The only people he has time for are his parents and sister.

IT'S been said that a woman isn't complete without children, but I beg to disagree.

Now that it's almost not possible for me to have kids, I can say, hand on heart, thank goodness.

I just don't know how mothers - and fathers - do it. For one thing, there's the constant worrying.

The three weeks there were stressful because I was always fearful that something bad would happen to my niece and nephew, especially under my watch.

I became the nagging aunt - don't swing too high; come down from the rocks; don't lean over the banister; watch out in the water; look out for cars; that plant could be poisonous; don't run with the stick.

And that's only from an aunt's perspective. Imagine if it was your own precious child.

Then there's the drudgery of bringing them up. For the first week, I was enchanted by every gesture and remark. By the second, the mundanity of motherhood kicked in.

I watched with increasingly glazed eyes as my sister exhorted them to bathe, brush their teeth, make their beds, read their books, eat their fibre and settled tantrum spells. It almost made me wish I was back at work in the adult world.

Most burdensome of all is the responsibility of having to be around and to provide for them for the first 20 years of their lives - at least. You need not only a lot of energy, but also enthusiasm and money.

I told my sister that the best thing about being childless is that I don't have to worry about dying young because there's no one who depends on me to be alive.

Though, put like that in cold print, that last statement does sound very sad, doesn't it?

Is that, then, the key difference between folks with kids and those without?

That while singles and childless couples can gallivant through life with much fewer worries, our life is ultimately empty because we aren't really needed by anyone?

That what we are missing is the satisfaction that comes from sacrificing your own needs for those of your flesh and blood?

SO WHAT'S the next best thing for us poor childless sods? For me, it's to be a surrogate parent - an aunt.

Auntiehood, and unclehood for that matter, is a wonderful state of being. You can decide to get involved with your nieces and nephews or you can decide not to.

If you eschew the role, no one's going to take issue with that. Aunties don't come with duties.

If you accept it, like I do, then what's important is to not take it too seriously.

You might love the kids to bits but it's best to keep it light. It's like being in a no-strings-attached relationship. Keep your distance, dip into the relationship when it suits both sides, don't demand too much and no one gets hurt.

I've adopted this carefree - some might say callous - attitude because I've learnt that no matter how much you love them, no matter how much smarter or cooler or better dressed or even-tempered or reasonable you are than their Mum, a child's love for an aunt can never come close to his love for his mother. It's just a law of nature.

This was brought home to me one lazy afternoon. We got to teasing Michiko by asking her that question so loved by adults and dreaded by kids: How much do you love me and why?

So my sister asked: Why do you love Aunty Shoes? Name 10 reasons.

The poor girl squirmed and wriggled and hemmed and hawed. And there I was, waiting and wondering, hey, what's taking you so long?

In my mind I had 101 reasons she should love me - all the phone calls I've made to her since she could talk, all the dresses I've bought her not to mention the books and toys and videos and CDs and candy and mochi, the amount of postage I've spent getting them sent over, the violin I'd just bought her, the swimming lessons I'd gladly sponsor, the hours I'd spent thinking of her and gazing at her photographs and worrying when she had to wear glasses and when she had asthma and eczema, the money and possessions that I will bequeath to her when I die. All this and she couldn't think of one reason?

After much sighing, she managed the first: 'Because she lets me walk to Publix with her.'

Publix is a supermarket and I'd let her come with me a few times. It was frankly a drag having her tag along because she walks so slowly, and I'd taken to waking up early so I could sneak off by myself.

After another bout of squirming, she managed reason No. 2: 'Because she plays with me whenever she visits us.'

So there it was, the reality check. Love equals time and, as an aunt, I don't and I can't spend enough time with her or Josh to win their true love.

But it's okay, I don't mind.

Ultimately, auntiehood is selfish. The nice things we do for the kids aren't really so much for them as they are for us, for our self-gratification and the thrill that comes from play-acting Mum.

And is there anything wrong with that so long as everyone is happy?

Speaking of race

06 May 2007, ST

Of all the foreigners here, I feel least comfortable with Caucasians. Am I nursing a colonial hangover?

By Sumiko Tan

AN INCIDENT occurred last week which I'm not proud of, but here goes.

I'd got into a minor run-in with a motorist over a parking lot, and when I realised that the driver of the other car was Caucasian, my immediate reaction was: 'Stupid ang moh.'

I went on to rant to my mother who was with me in the car: 'Who does he think he is, lording over us Singaporeans? If you don't like it here then go home.'

I continued in this vein for a bit before I stopped, appalled at my outburst.

As a Singaporean of a certain generation - I grew up in the 1970s before Special Assistance Plan schools and community self-help came into the picture and made people more race-conscious - I've been trained to be colour-blind.

It was ingrained in us in school that there were four main racial groups - Chinese, Malay, Indian and 'Others' - and that it was just not the done thing for you to point out how different others were from you.

If we were asked to describe ourselves, the answer would be that we were Singaporean.

If this sounds to non-Singaporeans as if we were being brainwashed, we weren't.

Many of us accepted the fact - even revelled in it - that living in a multiracial country meant being extra-sensitive to how others felt.

We understood that you shouldn't make a big deal about another person's race and, heaven forbid, pass snide remarks about it.

So even today, you will never find me flinging 'stupid Malay/Indian/Eurasian' at a fellow Singaporean of a different race - even if he did snatch a carpark lot from under my nose. It's just not the thing to think or say.

So how have I now become a person who, in a moment of stress and duress, defines a Caucasian by his race?

EVERYWHERE you turn these days, you are bound to see a 'foreigner'.

Although I've been drilled not to be race-conscious, the influx of foreigners has reached a point where I can't help noticing their presence.

There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners working and living here and I sometimes get the surreal feeling that I'm a stranger in my own land.

I feel it most when I'm at Great World City or Tanglin Mall over the weekend when it is packed with Westerners, or Little India on Sundays when foreign workers from India and Bangladesh congregate. As a Singaporean I feel outnumbered.

Of all the foreigners here, I am the least comfortable with Caucasians - I don't really know how to relate to them.

It's puzzling, really.

I'm at home with the English language that many Caucasians speak.

I'd friends in school who were half-Caucasian - I even went out with a boy whose father was Australian.

I've an aunt who married an Australian and cousins who married Caucasians, or ang moh as we call them (red hair, literally in Hokkien).

Goodness, my sister married one, too, making my beloved niece and nephew half-ang moh.

I have Caucasian colleagues and we have no problems getting along.

If I were someone born in an earlier era, you might attribute this discomfort to a hangover from colonial days. It's a curious condition where one suffers from either an inferiority or a superiority complex towards whites, sometimes even both at the same time.

But by the time I came into the picture, Singapore had already shrugged off its British colonial past and so I don't carry that baggage - I think.

Yet why is it that I don't feel as comfortable with Caucasians as I do with, say, Indians or Indonesians?

Is it language? That because English isn't my mother tongue I think I can't speak it as well and so lack confidence in their presence?

Is it because I've watched too many Hollywood shows and read too many Western magazines that my definition of beauty has become bound by Caucasian standards, and because I don't meet the blonde-hair, blue-eyes ideal, I don't feel attractive enough in their presence?

Or could I actually be harbouring lingering anti-colonial resentment?

Or is it simply that I haven't known enough Caucasians to feel at ease?

When I meet an Indian from India, for example, I instinctively feel comfortable because I have many Indian Singaporean friends (the irony, of course, is that the Indian from India might not reciprocate my feelings, not having grown up with the Chinese).

Or could my discomfort be that there are so many 'types' of Caucasians - Americans, Australians, Brits, New Zealanders - all with their own codes of behaviour that I don't even know where or how to begin to communicate?

Or maybe their tendency to insist on their rights scares me?

As a Caucasian colleague herself notes: 'Caucasians take things so personally and the 'I am an Individual' schtick must be a pain to deal with if you come from a culture of doing things collectively and not making people look stupid in front of others.'

Whatever the case, I do realise that the loss is mine.

If only I weren't so wary, I'm sure there are friendships to be made.

IT'S one of the sad facts of life that there will always be people who believe in a hierarchy of race - and they don't even necessarily place their own at the pinnacle.

Most of the time, people keep a lid on their prejudices, but when under stress will lash out at those they have the least common ground with.

But race is a complex thing. While being too dissimilar can bring problems, so can being of the same race.

Take the way Chinese Singaporeans view the Chinese from China.

Twenty years ago when China was impoverished, many Singaporeans either took pity or looked down on their mainland cousins.

Ten years ago when they started coming here in droves, especially the women, Singaporeans started resenting them.

Now, with China prospering and the Chinese making billionaire lists, the tide has turned. They are admired, feared and even envied.

So what is to become of Singapore as more foreigners make their home here? Will society change and will race be an issue?

Given how so many Singaporeans buy into multicultural tolerance, my bet is on how it won't, although the concern about whether foreigners are taking away jobs from Singaporeans is another matter.

Every once in a while, tempers will flare and base thoughts will flash in people's heads. I've no doubt that the motorist last week saw me as a 'stupid local'.

But in the end, that run-in - like so many quarrels between people of different races, or even the same - wasn't about race.

We were just two stupid motorists, from the same human race.