I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream

This is a post about old memories.

That day, I went with my grandmother into the exact house that she, my grandfather, his mother, my father and his brother and two sisters stayed in from 1973 to 1980. How did we manage that, you might ask. When they moved out of the flat, they sold it to a neighbour who was sharing their own house in the same block with a relative. And that neighbour has lived there for the past 29 years. It is a small 2-room flat in Queenstown, and coincidentally, I was sent to photograph for a crime at the block just next to it a few months ago when I was still working. The flat is tiny, and my grandparents shared one bedroom while my father, 2 aunties, uncle and their grandmother shared the other room, with my great-grandmother sleeping on the lower bunk of the bed, my father on the upper bunk (I guess he got the privilege from being the oldest) and the three other kids on mattresses on the floor. It is somehow a magical thought to me, to imagine this in my head. My grandmother wanted to take me there to take a look and so she could chat with her neighbour, whom she was almost sure would be in, even after all these years of not knowing her old neighbour's schedule. We were lucky that day; if the old neighbour's granddaughter hadn't been sick and had gone to school instead, she would have been out sending her granddaughter to school. When we went in, I tried to visualize my family inside there. My father would have been 13 when they moved in and 20 when they moved out. My aunties and youngest uncle would have been between 12 and 7 when they moved in. The tiles were green and somewhat mosaic patterned, and they were the exact same tiles. I felt...heavenly stepping on the same tiles that they'd stepped on then! And the room tiles were the same too. I tried to rub my feet more on the floor to feel the floor they had stepped on. I imagined my grandmother cooking dinner in the kitchen as the sun set, and the children sleeping in the bedroom, or doing their homework in the living room. One thing I know did happen was that my father watched the historic Borg vs Mcenroe tennis match there till his tv smoked and died and the next day he realised the match was a historic one (head slapping). Also, my grandmother went jogging every morning nearby. She said the lift used to break down so often that sometimes, after she cooked dinner and was wondering where my grandfather was, he would call home, sounding very angry (he is a very impatient man, just like my brother) and say that he'd be home late because the bloody lift broke down again and he was so mad he didn't want to climb the stairs and would wait till it was repaired. Anyway, that day, my grandmother chatted with her old friend, and I resisted the urge to take photos and instead told myself I could only take one, and in the end I got one of her and her friend with as much of the living room as I could squeeze into the shot.

Today is the 9th anniversary of my grandfather's death, and it still feels surreal. National flags everywhere are like little trumpets that sometimes remind me that today is his death anniversary.

Today my mother and I spent nearly all day packing (once and for all, she said, or she THINKS!) childhood things (of me, my brother and sister). Though we didn't pack every single thing and touch every single box, anyone who has done anything like this can say that it is somewhat like living your life again in a day and seeing it from a funny point of view. One minute you're up, floating in the marvellous clouds of magical memories, the next you're sailing along melancholically in the sea of nostalgia. And all the while there is a feeling of soft delirium. Though our packing was actually noisy, with gasps and shouts. We were quite thorough and organized a whole cupboard-under-the-stairs, mainly sorting old games, toys, art supplies and clothes, HEAPS of them.

I found my old pink knotts berry farm shirt, old winnie the pooh shirt I wore to speech and drama on sunday mornings, the red sailor shirt I wore one national day and have a photograph in outside the house with my brother when we were a few years old, when national day didn't mean anything more than a public holiday and trip to the zoo, my sister's abc pajamas, and a hundred (literally) other items of clothing, each of which trigger some memory and feeling. Needless to say we kept a lot and my mother was at times found to be madder than me, keeping cloth diapers ('of course lah!') and other things I wanted to put in the to-throw-or-donate heaps. Our keeping quite relies on the idea that I will someday have children and then can let them wear some of those clothes and also a brilliant idea I had today called The Quilt, which shall someday be sewn from pieces of these old clothings (those that cannot be worn anymore) and then I shall have a blanket of my old memories.

We found packets of our milk teeth, sorted into three packets for the three of us, each tooth wrapped in a small piece of paper, and upon opening, my mother's drawing indicating which tooth it was and recording of roughly when it dropped and maybe a detail on where it dropped (in class) or how it dropped (removed by grandmother).

We also packed things like my super sticker factory box (yes, just the box, which I can't bear to throw), my first colour pencil set that came in a slim tin holder, my old band uniform (hurrrrrray), flowery dresses I used to wear on special occasions. I wonder how much of one's childhood things influences the growing and adult mind. Do I like flowery clothes now because I used to wear them in childhood? Is it because the colour of the cover of the tin colour pencil set is dark pink (and I used to look at it a lot) that I love that colour now? I really wonder whether our loves and hates and longings now can somehow be traced through microscopic nerve connections in the mad human brain to something far back in childhood that we're trying to get back to. What a sad idea though.

And hoarding is something I just can't help. Sometimes I wish I could part with my things, and be free in that way. But the truth is I sometimes cannot bear to part with even a strand of hair. Ah well, clutter clutters up the mind, says the woman who kept the cloth baby diapers of her children.

punch-drunk

And all at once, I knew at once, I knew he needed me

Until the day I die, I wonder why, I knew he needed me

It could be fantasy oh... or maybe it's because...

He needs me He needs me He needs me He needs me He needs me He needs me!

p

The same song was in the 1980 Popeye movie with Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall.

p

This is the marvellous magical moonlit bit of He Needs Me in Popeye:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEWswHtQUkc

For the part in Punch-Drunk Love, I'll leave you to watch it yourself.