However, when I brought Luke with me there that Friday, I looked more like a weary single mother who was seeking day care service for her child. ACC usually only took in children under twelve. That school holiday week, the chairwoman Caroline's two visitors from New Zealand happened to be there to run some activities with the children. As Siew Hong needed my service as an English-Mandarin interpreter, she gave permission to my thirteen-year-old "son" to stay with the rest.
Even though I did not fully understand Bryan
and Valery's kiwi accent,
some children were already familiar with the game which the old couple had introduced the previous day. Ten players were divided into five groups. It consisted of drawing the different parts of an insect according to the number of spots of the dice each player got. The condition was that one must always start with the head or body before he or she could continue with the eyes, mouth, legs or tail.
Whoever completed the insect won the game and remained seated. The loser would have to move to the next desk.
Luke was unlucky with the dice. The first two times, he did not have a chance to even finish half of his insect. Diana and I urged him, "Luke! Pray! Pray before you roll!" Finally he won over Siew Hong's son Nathanael.
The toddlers were too young to join. So they were doing their own drawings in the next room.
After lunch, I stayed with Siew Hong in the office to help her to key in data. In the middle of the afternoon, she received a call from a depressed lady. As Siew Hong was going to do a visitation to this client's place, she invited me along as an assistant counsellor even though I had neither qualification nor experience in the domain.
Siew Hong explained briefly the case. SC, a Taiwanese, had been married to a Malaysian JX in Taiwan and gave birth to a daughter who was currently thirteen years old. JX was not very committed to their marriage and returned to Malaysia alone five years later. SC who was bound by her working contract in Taiwan only flew to Malaysia with their daughter to visit JX during the following seven years. Last year, she was finally released from her job and decided to save her marriage. With JX's arrangement, SC and the daughter came to Malaysia in January and settled in a flat. Upon arrival, she realized that JX had no intention to play the role as her husband aside from being a loving father to their daughter. And he seemed to be having an affair with another woman whom SC suspected to be pregnant. At SC's place, when Siew Hong asked her daughter her feelings, tears began to drop from this quiet teenage girl who at first seemed to be uninterested in our conversations. So we encouraged SC and her daughter to express, either verbally or face-to-face how they felt about JX as a husband/father and what their expectations were towards him.
Siew Hong and I knew that this family needed a miracle to be restored after seven years' physical separation. I thought of Jacob who had worked for Laban two terms of seven years to get his daughter Rachel because he loved her. I felt sad for SC who had not realized earlier that her family was much more important than her career.
When we were back to ACC, Valery left us her collection of old articles about crafts and showed us one by one while giving explanation. Lack of sleep and rest, my mind was no longer receptive to any words which I had to make effort to listen and understand.
It was 5.30pm. When the single mothers came to fetch their children, I also took my "son" Luke who had enjoyed his day with his new friends. And he had been well fed with Auntie Gek's chicken pie for lunch and snacks for afternoon tea. As a "single mother", I was proud to hear compliments that my "son" was a pleasant boy.
Luke, Mummy will bring you to ACC again next time eh!
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