Jul. 26, 2006 - Singapore Science Center and Singing the Blues
Alone. Again. This time for real. I am suspended in my bubble of 'nowhere' without a thread holding me to anything. I neither dangle nor grow upwards. I simply exist in a static vacuum-sealed state high above the myriad of tiny city lights glimmering on the empty city face around me.
When my DH has travelled before I have cushioned myself into the comforts of home life, the house is suddenly my own; the bedroom becomes my sanctuary and books get dusted off the shelf as there are empty quiet lonely hours to fill at night, soup is made for cosy yumminess, the phone sleeps under my pillow. It is like a pause button in a cosy hollow. Sometimes I used to clamber out and seek shelter in another environment, like my parent's home. I usually feel raw and hollow each time he packs his bags and looks at me deeply before turning away for the last time but I used to endure it quite successfully; apart from those heart-thumping middle of the night horrors when I am sure I can hear footsteps and heavy breathing but am too terrified to move a toe, let alone fling on a light switch.
But in Singapore this whole being alone thing takes on a completely new slant. There is no home. We stay in an impersonal apartment with nothing around us that bears any meaning to anything except that it really shouldn't be damaged because it isn't ours. There is no soup nor are there batches of scones, muffins or cookies for the kids to lick battered fingers and blow on oven hot lumps of sweet steaming cake. There are no recipe books to curl up in a patch of sunlight to flick through, no fat treasured books on a shelf, no friends to chat to over a coffee, no mum to run home to, no familiar coffee mugs (why that matters I am not sure), no tv programmes to yabber on in a native tongue to fill in the empty spaces, no garden or park to sit in and watch butterflies, no car to drive to the beach or park or just OUT. There is nothing that is dear and special and comforting, and I miss those little things.
I place incredibly important value in the warmth of the children's soft sleeping forms at night, when I go to check them and kiss their smooth foreheads before I turn in. That's when the guilt monster creeps up and tries to overwhelm me and the lack of balance of anything else that holds value to me teeters precariously before I shake myself and place myself under the authority of the Creator of the Universe. His presence is sincerely a balm to my soul as it is the only other thing I have here to turn to...what a blessing in disguise this opportunity really is.
I do pathetically long for my creature comforts and especially my bed linen. I know (sigh) so weird, but my own mattress, pillows and piled up duvets are sorely missed when I lie under a tight sheet on stiff mattress here. DD remarked the other day that her bed "felt like stone". I could not have agreed more. So we sit, like the Cat in the Hat waiting for time to hurry up and pass so that we can swirl back into the warmth of life again, mingling and blending all the delicious things that make up who we are.
When my DH is away and I am here, I regretfully seem to become shadowy. Like my sizzle has been sucked dry. I feel peace often enough, but sometimes little of anticipation of joy. Parenting becomes all of a sudden such a quagmire that I can hardly lift my sqelchy feet high enough to wade through. I am pressed in by my little people...I know...I only have two, but their piping voices and fretful disagreements and pleas for treats seem to rise in a tide that just rushes in my ears and I can hardly discern the words nor the meanings.
One great bonus of living in this building is that three times a week we have to vacate our apartment while they clean it, pest control it and strip the beds. Some days the lack of a purposeful thing to do/errand to run/person to visit is deeply unsettling and I am forced to sort through the rattle of feelings until I find a logical solution to the problem of being ousted from our quarters. The children dread this intrusion. They beg for me to tell them it is not "that day". The bonus comes in when I realise that it is such a blessing to have to get out there in that big world and actually find things to do. So far, this week has held the Science Center. Now, I am not a huge science buff...biology is very interesting I grant you, but physics and chem blur into a fog of incomprehension in my brain, how I managed to pass these subjects at school is sheer fluke. But the children have voricious appetites for anything scientific so off we went, me slightly gloomy and sitting Eyeore style in the cab for the drive there. Once there, the heat shimmered off the tarmac and we broke out into instant prickles making a rush for the right building and its air conditioning. On the way we passed a fast food restaurant. It was nearly lunchtime and a tidal wave of short little students was fast approaching. I ducked in there with the girls just in time and bought them some lunch before we attacked the center proper. What mayhem ensued with the screaming chatter of hundreds of local school children swarming about us. It was nerve-wracking and I sipped my coffee as fast as i could so that we could vacate our greasy seats in what sounded like a war-zone. When we entered the Science Center I could tell the school kids were on their way out - PTL, but it meant we had to swim upstream, so to speak, which added to the melee of the first exhibition which happened to be optical illusions and the like. Mirrors, trapdoors, peepholes, floating spheres, conical arrangements, stripes and tricks all flashed and the girls began an ecstatic yo-yo motion from one display to the next. I began to feel dizzy. I realised I could not teach them anything. There was simply too much for them to take in, so I walked slowly, calling to them everynow and again, and they scampered after me like kittens on catnip. The place is huge. I lost them repeatedly. I tried half heartedly to answer their rapid fire questions which tumbled out before the answer had even formed for the previous question in their mother's feeble brain. They were delighted with the T-Rex exhibit. I was not. By then I was clutching the handles of the (empty) stroller and focussing on putting one foot in front of the other. They had a ball. The closest I came to a morsel of delight was when I weighed myself (dubiously) on a scale in the Human Body exhibit. The results were most pleasing and not beyond the ridiculous as I have been a very good girl lately. However, this morning's soujourn down to the little gym-room to walk on the treadmill with the kids following my every move, led me to weigh myself on different scales. This was a disastrous move and put my weight nearly 10 pounds heavier than the Science Center's reading. I was hardly surprised. It did seem to be too good to be true to have started seeing any sort of result and the failure niggled at the back of my head like a burr. I realise how shallow this all is. But today was just one of those days when silly things like that are all it takes to sink your little craft as it bobs along in survival mode. I have learned not to climb on any scales of any kind while my DH is away. It is obviously a weak area that instantly crumbles my strength. Again....vanity and pride have led the way today. I sink down inside with humble crumble and offer the mess of my day to the Lord for His master craftmanship to glue me back together, so that His light can shine through the cracks. And also I have learned not to force outings that make me wilt inside - I am afraid I will not be able to protect my girls from picking up on my slack attitude towards certain subjects that might affect their own views. I should have gone to the zoo instead and walked around the majesty of God's miraculous flora and fauna instead of staggering around aviation capsules and mind benders. I will leave the science stuff to DH from now on - he would have loved that place. Perhaps another visit, another time, another year...
K-Lou and the Dino Femur
On a dig...note: they were not allowed by staff to remove their shoes. Nor was I allowed to take photos (I later read on my ticket!) 
Not exactly Miss Universe is she?
A big space-y weird physics thingy hanging in the atrium of the Science Cnt.
Felt like I was on the set of a sci-fi series.
