I have two parents

This may come as a shock to people who only have a hi-bye relationship with me. After all, they only ever lay eyes upon my father, who is always with me as he is my full-time caregiver.

But it's true: I have a mother too.

In other words, my family is not an atypical one.

Read that sentence again so you fully understand it.

I had to structure it in such a mangled way so as to avoid being labelled insensitive towards people who grew up in single-parent families or orphans.

That's the political correctness movement for you. It's troublesome for everyone.

Anyway, I decided to make a post on this just to clear the air and make sure people don't get the wrong impression of the kind of family I have.

Okay, there's actually another reason: My mother has had a very interesting life and I want to tell some of her stories here.

No, I didn't ask for her permission. When she sees this post, she will get an unpleasant surprise at the violation of her privacy. Then she will frown and growl at me, two seconds after which all will be forgotten. So no worries, all's well that ends well.

Story #1: One person's trash...

I followed in my mother's footsteps when I decided on getting my degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS).

A testament to how disgustingly old the FASS buildings are is the fact that they are in exactly the same state as they were when she was studying there in the 1500s1980s. They have not been refurbished at all. Even the doors haven't changed. The ones along the third floor corridor in the first block still have their trademark oval windows and counterintuitive handles that unlock only when you pull them up instead of pushing them down.

My mother majored in English and Sociology. Obviously she no longer has the faintest idea what either of them are. I learned some linguistics in FASS but was disappointed when I mentioned concepts like "Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness" to her and was met with glassy eyes. When I complained that these are basic sociolinguistic theories that she should know if she had been any kind of decent student, she retorted that those concepts didn't exist during her time. Yeah, right.

If I have made my mother appear like somewhat of a dullard, I do apologise. Actually, no I don't. Because the fact is that she is a dullard. No better anecdote illustrates this than the tale of the Honours fiasco.

The story goes that she was offered the chance to take up an extra one-year Honours programme which would have allowed her to upgrade her basic Bachelor's degree to a Bachelor with Honours, a symbol of academic prowess which goes some way in impressing employers, friends, and the neighbourhood stray.

She received a letter inviting her to opt in. After careful consideration which consisted solely of an unquestioning acceptance of my father's (who was then just some random guy from the same church) two cents, she declined the university's offer in favour of graduating immediately to begin what she thought would be a glorious career as a banker. (No, not the type that makes a lot of money. Don't be daft! How can an Arts graduate get that kind of job? We're lucky if we don't end up in McDonald's. In this case, the word "banker" simply refers to someone who works in a bank. My mother was one of those poor sods who sit behind the counter and talk to whiny customers all day for a living.)

Most people would hesitate at this juncture, gripping onto the offer letter from the university with white-knuckled fists and second-guessing themselves. Even if they didn't eventually change their minds about not doing the Honours programme, they would probably keep the offer letter for posterity. Not everyone got the chance to enroll in the Honours programme after all, so it was kind of a big deal for those who did.

But my mother is a remarkably unflappable woman. Having made her decision to go into banking, she casually folded the offer letter into a neat little square, dropped it into the nearest dustbin, and sauntered off without a care in the world. No second thoughts, no looking back. It took her decades to realise that she should have kept that offer letter so she could prove to employers that her lack of Honours was by choice and not because she couldn't make it into the programme. But of course by then there was nothing she could do about it. The paper probably decomposed years before her epiphany.

My mother certainly isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, as we have now seen. But we have also seen that she is calm by nature. She has good emotional skills, allowing her to work well with difficult human beings such as the mentally ill, barbarians, and irascible men. Perhaps this is why she has found a decent measure of success in the preschool industry, where she has been for the past twenty years and now works as a senior teacher at a very expensive childcare centre for snobbish expatriates. I, on the other hand, wouldn't last a day in a preschool. Kids are such hateful creatures that I'd probably wring one of their necks before lunchtime and get frog-marched away to jail in disgrace.

I like to think that I'm a nice blend of both of my parents. My head comes from my father and my heart comes from my mother. Sure, some bits got lost along the way. For example, I can't manage other people's emotions as well as my mother can. She can calm people down with a soothing word. In contrast, I can barely manage myself and often get into trouble because of my impulsiveness. But overall, I think I got most of the best parts from each side of my parentage.

Story #2: Guts and glory

Very few people know this, but my mother is completely devoid of reproductive organs. Wait, before you jump to conclusions, no I'm not adopted. She had reproductive organs when she made me but subsequently lost them.

You see, she had had an ovarian cyst many years ago which was supposedly treated by the surgical removal of the affected ovary. But just when Singapore was in the throes of ecstasy over its Golden Jubilee, a routine scan to check for cancer revealed cysts all over her reproductive organs. Further investigation yielded a shocking discovery: the ovary which was supposed to have been removed years ago was still there! Action had to be taken swiftly or the cysts might have mutated into cancer.

So on 9 December 2015, she underwent a laparoscopic total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. In English, that means the surgeon made small punctures in her belly, threaded a camera on a stick through one of the holes and some small grabber arms through the others, tore my mother's cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries into manageable chunks, and yanked the pieces of viscera out through her birth canal.

Because her ovaries were abruptly removed, cutting off the supply of a very important chemical called estrogen, my mother immediately went into a critical state known to medical professionals as menopause. She began monopolising the fan at home, complaining about hot flashes which are apparently a side effect of this affliction. Given Singapore's hot and humid climate, my father and I felt the loss of the fan keenly. We each shed about 70 pounds in water weight over the few months before my mother's body restored equilibrium within itself.

This is just the most dramatic and exciting run-in out of a slew of encounters my mother has had with doctors. She drew the genetic short straw when it comes to diseases, unfortunately. Her bladder literally bleeds into her urine. There is a blood vessel in her bladder wall that, by some genetic abnormality, leaks tiny amounts of red blood cells into the bladder itself. And she has had plastic lenses embedded in both eyes because her original ones turned cloudy due to a condition called cataract and had to be replaced. She still has to go for regular eye checks though, because she has another condition called glaucoma which may lead to vision loss in old age.

I, too, have had my fair share of experiences with doctors because of my ailment. But this post isn't about me so those stories won't be found here. Maybe next time.

Before then though, let me just reiterate the most important point in this entire post:
I have a pair of parents. We are a well-adjusted little family of three. Just because you don't see the third member doesn't mean there isn't one.