little bitty girl

You can never underestimate the preciousness of the written word. In the past couple of months, I have received very lovely long letters from my two best childhood friends. Receiving a letter is such a luxury these days. I, however, did not treat it as such as I just wanted to get to the goods. I usually rip the envelopes open and do a quick read through. And the second read is more leasurely, my fingers slowly running through the words, trying to capture the moment in which the words were formed.

I think in some subconscious way, that these two girls are one of the reasons why one of my tattoos is the symbol of a dragon. Both Mae Fong and Jo-Ann were born in the year of the dragon.

Mae Fong is my neighbour, my blood. She has been there since the day I was born. We have lived as sisters almost all our lives (or at least for as long as I lived in Malaysia.) She taught me to be tough and to play sports. She let me (I don't think she really had a choice in this one) mutilate one of her fingers (when I bit it) when she had borrowed my skipping rope without permission. I told her I would call the police. We went to school together and how I looked up to her and still do in many ways, even today. Gorgeous and always popular, she was always example of how cool kids should be. Cool, without all the bullshit.

Jo-Ann, is honestly my all time favourite cousin(Trust me, this is an honour when you have close to 20 ought cousins that you know and like). Jo-Ann honestly makes me feel for people who are not close to their cousins at all. She is everything a cousin should be. A sister, a best friend, a constant companion. And even though she may not remember as much as me (according to her older sister, Grace but then again I have a memory of an elephant so it really shouldn't count) about our years together, she must know that I have cherished all those years like precious gems. Jo-Ann is just the cutest thing alive. Freckles, sweet round cheeks with a smattering of freckles, a smile that could melt snow on a cold winter's day and a propensity to laugh with so much joy.

I am so glad that we all still take the time to manually write one another. (I PROMISE you will get replies sometime soon!!) I love to imagine them sitting down, thinking of things to tell me just as how I think of them when I write them.

Then, there is also my friend Ming from grade school who has also kept up this very lovely tradition. What I want to know is why everyone's handwriting seems to improve with age while mine is slowly digressing into some unintelligible chicken scratch? I mean, we were all brought up in the same system....

Anyways, it is times like this when I feel a little sad that I live so very far away. Both Ming and Jo-Ann recently got married. (It completely boggles the mind!) Although by the looks of Ming's wedding, she had invited the whole city so I doubt very much that I would have seen her but still, it's a big life event and I wasn't there.

In some ways, as much as I love my life here in Canada, there is still a tiny part of my essence that belongs to Asia. But that part is trapped in the memories that I have then and not the reality of what is now. It is, as if, there is a piece of me left behind.

I wonder whether that is why I am so often restless and feel the need to be never be static? Maybe it's because I have such vivid memories and so it is all the more bittersweet? I really don't know.

I also wonder whether every other imigrant child feels the same way?