May. 12, 2006 - Somewhere out there

Remember the classic kid’s movie, the American Tale, where the mouse is all alone in the big city?  Yesterday I was that mouse and although I didn’t sit on the roof and sing to moon about being all alone, I did have strong “I am very alone” feelings and if there had been a roof….

This week has been short, as Monday was Labour Day here and we enjoyed the long weekend.  The rest of the week flew by and we had dinner one night with a family from Gisborne who have moved here and have three kids (a daughter Kenzie’s age).   We ate at a café suspended between two floors of the Great World mall and after the kids had eaten, they all disappeared down the escalator to the floor below where there was an exercise equipment expo.  We watched over the balustrade as they tried to operate stepping machines with their short little legs and arms, and bounce on mini-tramps, and wobble on fat-shakers. 

On Wednesday night we met some special friends for dinner while they were here on stop-over.  We left the girls with a babysitter for the first time since arriving in Singapore and found that to be nerve-wracking as she was a complete and utter stranger.  We will not use her again as her lack of English and operating standard of feeding the children as much chocolate as they could consume, while spending the entire 3 hours on the couch, did not inspire us with confidence.  The kids were uncomplaining leading up to the event but very quiet and pale.  Their shouts of joy upon our return were almost embarrassing, and they clung to our legs with sheer relief at being rescued from their ordeal.  For Greg and me it was a special evening, our first short time of being just the two of us in the taxi there and back!

Then the weekend was upon us and Greg packed his bags and left for four days business in Bangkok.  I unlocked the safe in our room with our special code and got out some cash for the day, but upon trying to re-lock it, I accidentally pressed the wrong keys on the electronic key-pad and after quickly trying to press a few more buttons, the digital screen showed a countdown starting at 4.59.  Countdowns do not inspire anything positive in me and as it ticked closer to zero my own alarm system started to ring with dread, with the uncertainty of what would happen when it reached the end of the five minutes.  I rang Greg who was at the airport who told me to ring the Service Desk.  Panicking, I did this, imagining a secret alarm going off at some bomb squad centre underground, which would send a tank rumbling along the streets to our apartment to investigate the origin of the alarm.  The person on the end of the phone said I needed to speak to the Duty Manager.  I hung up.  And then wondered if I was supposed to ring them, or if they’d call me.  I then discovered if I kept pressing any button on the keypad, I could take the countdown back to 4:59.  I did this a few times, but eventually phoned the Duty Manager who told me to wait for the countdown to end.  I humbly hung up again and dolefully watched the numbers go down to zero from the end of my bed.  Maddy knelt in front of the safe sucking her thumb and Kenzie hid behind the door convinced we were about to die in an explosion.  The numbers stopped.  I rang the Duty manager back. 

“Hello, it’s me again” in a small apologetic voice.

She walked me through the process of re-setting the safe with its factory code (which I punched in wrong, twice) in her halting English and sighs of impatience on the other end of the phone as I stumbled my way through high security electronic programming.  Finally the safe door swung open and I grabbed my passports and money and held them tightly, hardly daring to put them back in for fear I find it hard to get them out again.  My heart resumed its normal rhythm after a few minutes and I re-set our pin number and replaced our passports and then gathered the kids to go off and enjoy our Saturday without Dad.

I got it into my head that I would take the girls to a new movie just released called Aquamarine.  The movies are below us in the mall, but it seemed that the day was destined for disaster and our movie was not being shown there. 

Righto I thought, off to somewhere else.  We caught a cab asking for Orchard Golden Village Plaza.  However, the driver was non-english speaking and we ended up in a seedy rabbit-warren eastern shopping centre and had to walk for half an hour before we found an information centre.  Fortunately the Cineleisure centre was across the road and not a lot further to drag the girls in the heat.  They were feeling sad about missing their daddy and were hungry and tired.  Not a good start. 

The movie complex was crammed with young locals and the Eastern pop music competed with the whizzing gaming machines to make a whirling cacophony of noise that filled the 6 storey atrium and nearly did my head in.  But I firmly joined a snaking queue thinking that we had come too far to give up now.  We had just missed the movie by 10 minutes and had to buy tickets for a show in nearly two hours.  Deep sigh. 

I led the kids up to a food court breathing to stay calm and fighting a sense of intimidation and discomfort as we forced our way through masses of people to a little table in the depths of a café blaring out an adult action movie from three screens at a decibel level too high to faze out.  I sat there glumly eating the salad plonked down in front of me, another uninspiring bowl of iceberg lettuce, dry slivers of carrot and two slices of cucumber in front of me while Maddy picked the chocolate icing off the top of a donut and Kenzie discovered she did not actually think she could eat her KFC mashed potato and cold milo.  Despair was beginning to lap at the corners of my mind but I pep-talked us through the next hour brightly until I thought we had killed enough time to go and sit in the theatre and wait for the movie to start.  We queued up and bought popcorn and iced tea and Pocky sticks (long chocolate covered biscuits) and tried to get into the theatre.  But the official was extremely harsh with us and shouted at us for trying to get in and directed us over to a bench facing the wall.  We crept away with our food and sat on the bench looking at the wall, people on either side of us and behind us on the other side of the bench.  I could not stop tears brimming in my eyes at the sense of loneliness and isolation sitting there in this teeming, unfamiliar and brash environment. I did not let the kids see me cry and willed the next half an hour to pass quickly because I was longing for the darkness and distraction of the theatre to hide in. 

But things went further downhill from there though. 

When I thought I was pretty much at my lowest point, I kicked over my iced tea which I had carefully placed beneath the seat.  A puddle of what looked remarkably like urine crept along the shiny white floor towards the wall, originating from between my feet.  Maddy in her alarm to escape the liquid, dropped her chocolate into the puddle and so there I sat, tears pouring down my face on a bench surrounded by an urban sea of upmarket Asians, looking like I had done both wees and poos on the floor of the movie complex.

At that moment I wished with all my heart that we were anywhere but there and as my heart sank even further, I went back to the ticket counter, pushed into the queue beyond caring about the evil looks I was getting, and called to the attendant who was dishing up popcorn.  I explained there was a spill and tried to hard to sound casual and confident when inside there was a lump in my throat and I just wanted to melt.  The lady behind the counter wanted to see what I was talking about so the sea of curious people parted for her to inspect my accident before she bustled off to call the cleaners for the building.  I sat there in shame on my seat, a part of me wanting to stand and bow to the gaze of the crowd, point to my cup and mime how it had spilled, Mr Bean style, protesting my innocence of wetting my pants.  However, I chose to grit my teeth and keep my eyes down and mercifully a light flashed signifying that we were allowed to enter the movie theatre.  We moved fast.

When we got in I realised that I had left Kenzie’s sweater at home.  More sinking despair.  The temperature in the movies is probably about 16 or 17 degrees.  Cold enough to make you have goosebumps and your teeth chatter.  So my huge eldest child had to cuddle on my lap for the entire movie, shivering, her heavy body nearly squeezing my legs completely numb.  It is a miracle I could walk out of there.

By the time I got home I was so past it that I didn’t even feed the kids dinner but bought them a cherry pink slurpy from the 7-11 and gave them some watermelon.  The movie choice was awful and at the end of the day I was heavy with the knowledge that I had exposed the girls to such Hollywood trash, traumatised them with what they thought was a bomb in my bedroom and fed them junk food and dragged them through the streets of hot Singapore city all day.  What a disgraceful mother!  Visions of healthy farm-raised kids, climbing bare-foot in apple trees and selling home-made lemonade and becoming happy, intelligent, strong individuals were very remote.  Parenting is a non-stop responsibility that tends at moments to overwhelm me with its importance and impact.   But a day later I realise that of course there will be days of sheer desperation in my perception, and not to waste time reflecting in that way.

I am trying to stay easy-going and go with the flow but I guess I am unfamiliar with having to be brave for so many days in a row.  This week has held my most cringing moments to date – and one I will no doubt treasure in years to come was Maddy’s clear, piping little voice in the taxi on Thursday,

“But Mummy HOW do babies get out of their mummy’s tummy?  Tell ME!” 

It was pure misfortune to have our first excellently English spoken taxi-diver on that very trip and does anyone know how hard it can be to distract a four year old with a demanding thirst for information on the back seat of a car?