old times

So Hanna, Yingxiang, Nat and Lui and I had dinner tonight. As we sat in Siam Thai (I think it was) giggling and squabbling over the right (non-Anglicised, mind you) pronouncement of “Siam” it felt like it could have been only yesterday when we were a bunch of gaga-eyed JC girls back in our perennially stinky, freezing container classroom… was it TS 7? Memory fails me. The revelation that some of our ex-classmates would rather have minimal contact with us comes as mildly disconcerting. Sure, it was an angst- and acne-ridden time, but was it that bad? Maybe I have plain forgotten how cruel children and teenagers can be. (But hey, never underestimate the proclivity and capacity of the “mature”, fully-grown, “sensible” adult to mock and hurt and scar.) Maybe we all have some apologies to make. How many times have we wounded others by simply not caring enough? By the sympathetic word not uttered, by the empathic hug not given, by the truthful assertion unpronounced?

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He is curled up on the parquet floor, sound asleep, lips parted. In his sleep he looks like the little child we all loved, loved and wanted from the very beginning. He is starting to love, too. But his pure, simple devotion is one that will go unnoticed, bouncing lightly off the tip of a scrunched-up button nose. One can only hope that the day he realises this remains a long, long way off, floating, fading. And that it will come together with the realisation that he too is deeply loved by the one who first showed us how to love.