My youngest daughter’s school production of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was staged a couple of weeks ago and the thing I’ll miss most has almost nothing to do with the musical. It’s the twice-weekly sojourn to school to pick her up after rehearsals in the late afternoon. I’d clear my calendar, set up shop in a Zus café nearby and work until the text arrived telling me it was time to come and get her. It was a good gig.
The school production is a much-anticipated event every academic year and she had practised hard to deliver her lines in a Scottish accent. Why Scottish? Because the Turkey Farmer character demands it, she informed me, with the absolute conviction of a method actor. Never mind that neither Ian Fleming’s book nor Roald Dahl’s screenplay so much as hints that the man hails from north of Hadrian’s Wall. She had felt that he was Scottish and having convinced the production director, that was that.
And so, as the curtain fell on the final performance, I find myself quietly mourning the car rides. Particularly those long, meandering conversations that always followed the obligatory pilgrimage to Mixue for her favourite bubble tea, or to Family Mart for whatever sugar-laden contraband she’d set her heart on that day. I guess this is what growing up alongside your children actually feels like: less of a destination, more of a slow journey between places.
I feel grateful for my kids. They probably won’t read this (not yet anyway as their current consumption of online media remains limited to Instagram and Tiktok) and even when I do tell them how I feel, to their faces, they respond with furrowed foreheads and an expression usually reserved for finding hair in their food. Cheryl and I tell them we love them often. Constantly and possibly to the point of mild psychological discomfort on their end.
Times are different. From the personal and entirely unscientific surveys conducted across my circle of friends, our own parents were not exactly fountains of verbal affection. We were trained to read between the lines and to interpret the occasional grunt as a love language. When anything went wrong, we received “tough love,” administered swiftly without warning.
Growing up in an Asian household during my days, one is never quite good enough, regardless of what the exam results actually said. Pocket money arrived in drips like saline, so buying that envy-inducing legendary double-sided pencil case (the one that opened from both ends, a genuine feat of engineering for a far simpler time) required months of fiscal discipline that would impress Scrooge McDuck. A trip to the cinema had to be earned through what felt like a never-ending triathlon of household chores. And yet, against the odds, we turned out fine: good grades, a resilience that borders on stubbornness and an obsession to always look for a bargain .
Being a parent for the better part of a decade and a half, I do sometimes wonder whether Cheryl and I are getting this right. Underneath the wish for our kids to grow up happy, decent and reasonably productive is the quiet question every parent asks at 2 a.m. But then I remember: I’m raising a child who voluntarily learned a Scottish accent for a turkey farmer nobody asked her to make Scottish. Whatever we’re doing, she’s goan’ae be grand.
Our parents made us read between the lines. We just say it out loudy, repeatedly, until our kids make that face. I’ve decided that face is simply what love looks like when it’s working. So if you’ll excuse me, the production season may be over, but I’ve still got one last Mixue run left in me.