I miss you

Yesterday Jah and Izzat took grandma Opah back to Teluk Intan, and suddenly I miss her very much. I go to her room and stare at her bed, it's empty. You know, grandma Opah is the only person in the household who throws rice, chicken and durian seeds to me under the table, even though Jah complains it'll make the floors sticky and shima says I'll get a stomach ache. If I go sit on the chair next to grandma Opah, she will put her hand on my head and softly whisper Payyyyyy áh. I don't feel too bad. She doesn't remember Ocu sometimes either.

Grandma opah likes to tell stories and she tells them all the time. When she was young & beautiful, seven handsome eligible young men asked for her hand in marriage. And they were all denied because, well mostly because they couldn't afford her. One of them even went out to sea and died of a broken heart. Poor guy. Then along came Grandpa Lope, the head of two villages, all experienced and established and successful and according to Grandma Opah, with three other wives in three different parts of town, two of whom she would never meet. The first time she met Grandpa Lope was on the bridal pelamin itself and she said to herself, oh-- so this is my husband. Then she went on to give him 11 kids. How cool can grandma Opah be. I can imagine shima running off if she met her husband the first time on the pelamin, good looking or not. Ini would probably disappear before they could even get her to the pelamin, she wouldn't give the poor guy a chance. Jah would crash and burn the pelamin, she wants to scare him away and Adeq would lose her breath and pengsan, then wake up and then pengsan again. Hopefully some of grandma Opah's other grandchildren have inherited her cool genes cause I'm not seeing any signs of it here in this household.

Grandma Opah is pretty generous with advice too. She gives them out freely during dinner. If you eat on two plates at once you'll be honey-ed. If you sing while you cook you'll marry an old man. If you change places at the table while you eat, you'll marry more than once. Shima must not have been paying attention to that one when she was younger. The whole table is like a merry-go-round to her.

[Grandpa Lope was 20 years older than grandma Opah, but greatgranpa Tok was 10 years younger than greatgrandma Onyang. I don't know who these people are, but old men shouldn't be wearing necklaces. Unless that's a tag with his mom's number on it.]

Then there's the more horrifying words of wisdom: if you lie on your belly and point your feet to the sky your mom will die. If you sharpen a pencil on both sides your mom will die. If you take a picture of three people one of them will die. If the food you cook is too salty you're getting married soon. Who was the creative git who came up with that one.

I'm so glad I eat pre-packed food on my little mat at the corner of the kitchen. It's so complicated to be human with all this superstitious nonsensical-sounding knowledge passing around. I'm still missing grandma Opah though, and the durian seeds.