I believe that listening is definitely the most important pre-requisite to learning. So it was with much caution that I embarked on FB and other online sources rife with differences of opinion. It is a mad, mad world with so many madmen, some making light of serious situations, others making great fuss over nothing and yet others sweeping followers with visually moving images and slogans, whether truths or falsehoods, in the name of knowledge-empowerment. Then it is up to the individual to process all of them in the hope of forming your own sensible opinion. I don't believe that anyone can settle without having any opinion at all because then, what is the whole point of it if not to learn something valuable in making sense of his surroundings, unless one is an impartial voyeur, I guess? How does anyone cope with the onslaught of all these opinion-sharing? What are the real agendas behind all these social-networking frenzy?
This stage of the world is where my marriage has arrived at after 23 years, the marriage itself having undergone two or three stages. In the beginning we faced only the onslaught of each other's idiosyncrasies and our awkwardness in adjusting to a partnership, 24 hrs a day, 7 days of the week for the rest of our years together. Then, it was a very neurotic relationship struggling between a "me" and "you" mindsets in order to settle down to a comfortable "us", which would take at least 5 difficult more years. With familiarity came more patience rewarded with rare moments of tolerance which slowly and painfully blossomed into appreciation of each others' differences.. As the children grew, so did we. Sometimes it would take an innocent reaction from one of our children to mend our egoes. Miraculously we ended up respecting and accepting, even laughing at and expecting those differences among all of us. It helped a lot having loving children, close kins, friends and supportive observers around. Indeed my marriage of 23 years has been Blessed as we stuck through crisis after crisis of self-discovery, accommodating and giving each other our much-needed breathing spaces.
Before the internet, I shunned technology and gadgets prefering cavemen tools above modernity. You'd even catch me using my teeth to untie or unwrap stuff or use the pistle to knock in a nail. My husband on the other hand embraced technology and has been an IT geek eversince it began. We both lived through data processing using the floppy data and operating system disks, dogmatrix printer and the first Apple Macintosh at the teaching institute we were both at. However, it was he who saw the need for buying pagers, then his first mobile in the late 90s and it did not stop there. I was fighting a losing battle with technology as my husband became more engrossed in building a career around the technological advancement facing the world, more than in the modes of raising our family. Somehow or other, my relationship with my husband was marked by every landmark technological advancement.
He wooed me while helping me buy and manage my first home PC. Then we got married after we were newly full-fledged teachers each finding our place in the frontline of a knowledge-based industry where familiarity of the latest teaching tools was almost mandatory. Then we parted interests around his first laptop and degree when I succumbed to my stubbornness in the way of upbringing my boys, away from the maddening upgrading materialistic world. I quit my job and retreated into full-time motherhood and homemaker determined to raise my boys with my bare hands, as far as possible, with what nature can richly provide.
I wanted to escape the need for luxuries including tekkie stuff which were very costly in those days. l remember the pain we felt when his first laptop costing him $6000 wasstolen in campus. We were surviving on loans then as he was part of the first batch of Singapore Malay language teachers doing an overseas first degree, who did not receive any grants except a study loan and unpaid teaching leave. I limited myself to the basic necessities like using public telling machines or opening and replying emails, hoping my offsprings would learn the important and timeless values of religion and making good with god's gifts to them, and not relying on material things I was so insistent that I became almost like an extreme fundamentalist with my poor boys suffering an almost military-like home schooling; daily routines all spelled out on a weekly time-table with every possible enriching activity measured down to the minute. They were expected to follow every instrucion and complete every task according to the time-table. It was sunthinkable to lounge around in school uniform as soon as they reached home. It was straight to the bath, prayer and then lunch. Even playtime was an organised and well-planned activity with differentiated educational objectives.
It was scary and close to child abuse.
However, it toned down by my third son with more adjustments to their different learning needs and styles. Looking back, my first two, being only 19 months apart, benefitted in some ways, I believe, partly due to good intentions. By age 4 and 2, both memoriesed more than 20 daily prayers, my second learning to read by age 3 years picking up the skill while I was teaching his brother. So wwith Ilman, my third, I just let him tag me along to classes, hoping to teach by example. I involved him in every possible activity as he was tiny, very observant and seemed to thrive on personal space for self discovery which I regretfully denied my second 1st and 2nd. The obvious outcome were, that the elder boys turned out more inclined to do brazen exploration outside the home such as in school, to satisfy their curiosity despite poor consequences. Ilman on the other hand prefered to observe and ask for safer options trusting authority with easy acceptance.
My husband all these while let things run their course and seemed perfectly happy with whatever system which would make the family happy and well-provided for. I'm so grateful to him for letting me burn from overzealosness and letting me fizzled down to a more settled person at my own terms. It took me some amount of giving in to their differences, but feeling satisfied that they enjoy learning immensely. I guess I've settled down to be like an anchor to the four men of my life who seem to have their own directions. No matter how far and different theirs are from mine, I feel enriched by them and have taken enough interest as to learn the geeky or sporty or musical terminologies that would make me able to make contact and find a meaningful co-existence among us.
So as I entered my 23rd year of marriage, I'm embracing my blissful life managing a home full of the paraphernalia of tekkie geeks (all 4 men), the Malay Language and Literature academian( hubby) the wannabe bassist and sound engineer (2nd son) the climber and slacklining enthusiast (1st son) the rubrics and Lego enthusiast (3rd son) the text books and unfiled notes of a science student(3rd) on top of my painting materials and artworks, not forgetting the sewing and baking stuff on hold.
Yes my house is an eternal mess which I now embrace with much endearment as both my OCD-like cleaning urges and love for involvement and learning can be satisfied. Alhamdulillah.
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