Maybe Daddies

(dry-blogged from Sydney a few weeks ago)

So I was telling my mum how I semi-fancied Pharm Guy, but didn't know wtf to do and my instinct was to run away (yep, my genes are doomed). Anyway, we got to talking about her conquests. Dudettes, she started at EIGHT. Boys were chasing her from then. One guy followed her home from school from age 11 to 16, waiting years before even talking to her. She was a svelte little thing, with enormous doe eyes that gave her a look of perpetual innocent wonderment, it's little surprise that they were all trying to woo her. I dunno how she spawned the clumsy lu

She named three people who were her "might have beens". First was that stalker suitor. They'd finally started talking and things were going well. Except then the Communists came in and he was thrown into jail for years, because his family was wealthy and owned a chain of petrol stations. She too was sent away. It might also have been because they were involved in some fledgling anti-VC activities - student meetings sort of thing, hardly La Resistance. She got out soon enough, and didn't wait for him. He's now married to a friend of great-aunt #9 (my great-grandparents were busy!). Rumour has it that he told his wife he would've married my mum if she'd waited.

The second was another boyfriend who vuot bien'd (boatperson'd?) before she did. He arrived at the same Malaysian island as my other great-aunt #8, the one my mum is closest to (she's only about 5 years older). Unmindful of the spies and not thinking that my mum would soon escape as well, he chased skirts all day long. Needless to say, my great-aunt passed on word of his behaviour and her disapproval. When my mum arrived in Australia, he camped outside her door for days but she refused to speak to him. Turns out he is the brother of my childhood GP, married now as well. Mum says she saw him once in a pho restaurant - I was there too apparently, but she didn't say anything!

The last was the most serious. He was in the same engineering course as my dad and to hear her tell it, they were almost on the brink of marriage. He'd already asked her. However, great-aunt #8 disapproved of him, and mum didn't like his horrid mother. At the same time, my father was courting her shamelessly. He'd invited himself along to one of their picnics - later he cut out pictures of himself and her from that day and grafted them together. My great-aunt was very keen on him, possibly because my grandparents were very charming. My grandfather, a supplies officer in the war, hadn't yet lost the plot and was very gentlemanly, even if he looked down on less educated people like my mother. Grandma is and was an awesome mother-in-law, not to mention woman. More on her some other time. Anyway, things came to a head when a false rumour spread that my mother was pregnant. Knowing that it couldn't be his, and that my dad's side were making a move, the guy backed out quietly. Mum was angry he didn't even put up a fight, so she let him go. She found a photo of them all on that picnic day, in a boat. It shows a lanky, geeky fellow looking at the camera, as is my mum. She's blocking the faces of the two other girls there who were invited because of my dad's presence. He, of course, is looking at her. The rest is history. They married when she was 20, he 25. Six years on when she was pregnant with me, she saw the guy on the tram, then never again.

I'm not sure how reliable these stories are. I'm sure they're coloured by the bitterness of what came to pass. The photo-graft is interpreted as a sinister portent and the ruthless courtship as a sign of caddishness. She blamed my great-aunt. I told her to take some responsibility, because she did make a choice. I don't know though. It's impossible to compare her and me. While she was more knowing about boys and had to survive in the more dog-eat-dog world of Vietnam, it sounds like she really was a wide-eyed ingenue at age 20.

We ended up looking through some of the other photos as well, from my mum's childhood. Pretty amazing that they've survived war and crossed oceans. They speak of a different world. Black and white mostly, some garishly colourised. There are many of my uncle Lanh, who was lost at sea. He was the second-youngest, practically raised by my mum, the eldest child and only daughter. She says he was the best of her brothers. Their pictures are there too, features hardly changed over the years. I see echoes of my cousins' faces. There's a cute one of them all lined up, with the youngest still in my grandma's belly. Five kids and widowed at around 30. My grandfather is absent from the album altogether.

It's amazing how much the world has changed in basically a historical eyeblink. My mum describes an old-fashioned society. Even though this was the 60's, boys and girls would hardly kiss before marriage. They went on bike rides together, that was courtship. Who could envision internet dating then!