Every year, Nana fights with Mother’s Day in order to celebrate her birthday. Perhaps it is apt that her birthday falls in line with Mother’s Day because what a Mother she is!

I asked Tok-Tok recently why he loved her, a simple uneducated ‘kampung’ girl…. and he said that she was an incredibly amazing woman. Sophisticated, sensuous, truly remarkable. Even from such a young age. He is right. She is. Words cannot do justice on why I even think that but let me share a story with you that my Mother recently shared with me.

When I was a baby, my mother was the house maid for 11 people (because my biological father had left us). My grandmother would lock me up in a room downstairs and made my mother do all her chores before she could see me, her baby. She was only allowed to see me when it was feeding time, for a very brief period, just to feed. All day, I would be stuck in the play pan in a room all by myself wailing and wailing and wailing whilst my mother RUSHED her housework as best she could (and perhaps this is why she is so good at it!) just so she could finally have her own baby in her arms. It was pure AGONY for her to hear her baby crying and crying and crying, yet there was nothing she could do except finish up the housework to my grandmother’s standard (which was very high as she was a sterile nurse), get all the laundry done, iron all the clothes et al before she could have access to her own baby. Her own little screaming baby. It’s amazing I still have my vocal chords. How cruel!

Every single day after her chores, she would run to me and carried me to her room without even bothering to shower first as all she wanted was for me to stop crying. And then she would cry together with me alone seated in a  little corner. One day, one of her brothers came into the prison where I was, to play with me for awhile so I would be quiet. This was when my grandmother was out, of course. Otherwise, no one dared disobey Grandma.

And when she was telling me this story, her voice was slightly jittery. If you knew my mother, you would know how she never cries, how she is a woman of steel, how she can be unfazed with the most traumatic of events and how she is a sea of calm even if her son crashed her car (haha, brother are you reading this?). Seriously, my mother is a lady who can take on a lot without tears. Like when she first discovered she had cancer. It was all the rest of us who were crying, not her. She was just making jokes out of the situation. That’s my mother for you. So for her to have a jittery voice, it was obviously something that had a real impact on her. And naturally, when she told me, tears flooded down my pastel cheeks as I imagined T2 being locked away from me crying for hours on end. How cruel!

I don’t think I would have stood for it for I don’t know how long but in those days, you just did not disobey your mother. But the abuse and torture was so bad that eventually, after months of heart-felt anguish, my mother ran away with me, her baby – the only other person in the world who loved her.

And this is when she started her new life……

And there came us, her new family. Her own family.

To this day, my mother does not have a relationship with her mother but she does respect her by buying her jewelery and ensuring she is OK. Apart from that, nothing. They don’t talk short of the very banal monologues. I used to think that if only she would forgive her own mother for what she had done, perhaps she would have a better life and not have cancer. But when her own brothers who were there to see for their own eyes how my mother was abused, don’t even suggest to her that she should form a relationship with my grandmother, I realise how much more had happened and how it is perhaps almost impossible to forgive. And even if my mother has forgiven my grandmother, she has certainly not forgotten. It is not something one forgets easily. Even after more than half a century.

So today, we celebrated Nana’s birthday with her loved ones.

Tok-Tok’s eyes blurred out cuz my camera gave him the red eye effect and he looked like a monster.

No prizes for guessing who the entertainer of the evening was!

Doesn’t she look happy?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NANA. You’re home with us now……..

Our wish for you is that you continue to fight this cancer that has taken half your teeth away, tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of dollars into the medical profession , pharmaceuticals and air tickets, this cancer that disables you to eat properly so that you have to depend on yogurt and Haagen Daz, that disables you to talk or even move sometimes because you are in so much pain despite the morphine, which sometimes removes your will to live and continue the fight; our wish is that you conquer this. So you live long enough to see ME become a grandmother. I frigging kid you not.

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Who is Mamapumpkin?
Mamapumpkin is a former Design Architect turned Multi-Million Dollar Digital Entrepreneur. She sets out to prove to all that you can have anything and everything that you want; if you have that fire of desire burning within and the drive to work hard. Even better with much love.

Mamapumpkin has not only grown corporate businesses successfully in the past and doubled her salary 5 times over 5 organisations but has grown THREE BUSINESSES to 7 FIGURES within an 8 year period. She now shows others EXACTLY HOW after retiring her own husband from employment. He is now the official dog walker, family driver, chef and THE BEST FATHER to their two girls and THE BEST HUSBAND to the woman who CHOSE HIM!

Mamapumpkin is the girl who has nothing but fights for everything including YOU. She is idealistic in her desire to put unbelievable amounts of money and extrardinary happiness into the lives of good people so we can change the world together believing in happiness for ALL. She strives to impact lives authentically wanting to reduce poverty cycles and enable quality education for all and always supports the voiceless. She believes we can all have a life of our own desires to enable real contribution into the world. But first, one needs to understand what this all means.

A beautiful life without limits.

If you wish to learn how to propel your life forward guaranteed, be brave to take action. Mamapumpkin's purpose is to build people. Her gift is to help them UNCOVER their HIDDEN GIFTS. She operates fairly and always leaves an impression. You either love her or not and she is alright either way.

She is a living testimony that women really can have a lot. Being financially and time free has enabled her to travel the world anytime, anywhere, doing anything with anyone, as she spends most of her days with her children, having fun, supporting others wherever she can. Also having fun.