Drink A Cup Of Tea

This won’t be easy because I am going to tell a story that is strictly not mine to tell. But my mother’s story has such a profound influence on my life that my own story will not be complete without an understanding of her story.

My mother is my father’s third wife. Before I continue further, it is important to remember that, at that time, polygamy was not such an unusual institution. In the sixties, polygamy was legally recognized by the State and all the wives had official status – this is evident from the fact that my mother and the other two wives all received a share of my father’s pension from the government after his demise.

But when I was young, it was beyond my capability to rationalize, as I can now, the state of affairs that gave rise to my conception. I just knew that I grew up in this family that was vastly different from those of my friends, and I (figuratively) just wanted to curl up and disappear from the face of the earth... forever.

This is the story as I know it from my mother’s perspective and which I would tell as objectively as I could.

When my mother met my father, she did not know him as a married man. Later, my father told my mother that he already had a wife and that the wife was barren. They had so far adopted two children, a boy and a girl, but he craved to have his own biological children. It seemed as good a reason as any to take a second wife.

My mother was “officially” accepted by the first wife, via a tea ceremony. In Chinese tradition, the cup of tea is strongly symbolic. It can represent acceptance, forgiveness, filial piety or respect, depending on the situation. In this case, the cup of tea sealed the matrimonial arrangement and thereafter, my father and mother attended all official functions as a couple.

Soon after, though, some of my mother’s cronies told my mother that they have seen my father with another woman and two school-going boys. The final beans were spilt when my father admitted to having a second wife prior to my mother and that this second wife had already borne him two biological sons. The first wife had “colluded” because she never did like the second wife and had hoped that my mother would dilute the second wife’s influence on my father.

My mother naturally felt betrayed and angered, but there was nothing much that she could do. The rice had become broth. My father treated all the wives well and apportioned each with a fair share of time. Each of the wives lived under separate roofs and essentially led their own lives.

All the above were told to me, not in one setting, but in bits and pieces over the years by my mother. She cherished her memories and she usually talked about my father, whom she called “fei lo”, with great affection. I remember for years and years after my father's death, she would still shed tears during Qing Ming and other occasions of significance. I sense, from what she told me, that she was convinced that she, and only she, was the one true love of my father.

I am not attempting to do a character study of my father here but all I know is that growing up in those first 6 years of my life, I hardly knew my father at all. My memories of him were dim - he just did not figure in our daily lives. Perhaps this was not as unusual as I had thought, given that I now know many fathers of that generation who hardly spoke to their children, even if they were there physically.

As a child though, I could feel the immediate repercussion of my complex background. When I was in primary school, I would stammer or turn red, whenever a friend or a teacher were to ask me a simple question: how many brothers and sisters do you have?

I did not know how to answer. From my mother’s side, I already had two elder sisters who did not share my surname. Not that I knew its significance – it was not until one day when a friend in primary school asked me why my two elder sisters did not have my surname, that it dawned on me that something was amiss. I just did not know that siblings normally have the same surname - it was not built into my mental schema of things.

If one were to think about it, my answer to that dreaded question could be any of the following:

A. One brother and one sister
B. One brother and three sisters
C. Three brothers and one sister
D. Three brothers and three sisters
E. Four brothers and four sisters

Whatever I answered, I was afraid that my story and my younger sister’s story did not jive - for we had a number of friends in common. Or that my answer might not be consistent with what I might have said before. Oh, what a mess. Perhaps, that's when I started my anti-social behaviour and avoided conversations altogether.

When I finally got my act together, I tended to favour the response (D). I did not include the two adopted children of the first wife because we did not have any dealings with them and I had never met them until a few years ago.

Under (D), I am ranked fifth in terms of birth order. My friends, especially those in Singapore, would go "Wow, such a large family!" and I would smile and change the subject. But in reality, I have always been brought up as a firstborn and had the responsibilities of a firstborn thrust on me early in life.

It might be interesting too to evaluate the psychological impact that my father might have had on me in terms of my relationship with the opposite sex or my view of the world, but I am not about to do a Meredith Gray here. Anyway, psychoanalysts would just normally encourage the analysee to talk about the past – so my blogging about it should do the trick and save me from paying the moon to get an answer. Not that an answer is important, always remembering that it is how we live our lives today that's important, not the past.