Half and half: a true story about you and me

 

I am not a purebreed. I am a rojak mix of blood, cultures and legacies of a multitude of the best of what the world has to offer.

Well, maybe not all of the best all the time.

There are not that many ingredients in my rojak anyway. It’s a rather thin gruel of mostly local material with a bit of imports, as well as a smattering of this and that from here and there.

You see, I am a halfbreed. A half-and-half mixed blood. A muggle. A kind of a mongrel.

I’m half my father, and half my mother.

That’s the nature part; here and there, I may get a bit more from my mother (the bum knees) or from my father (wheeze wheeze … the asthma part).

Of course I exaggerate. Those bum knees have taken me to lots of places, including some breathtaking landscapes all over the world, and much else besides. One ACL operation later, they are still holding up.

And if it hadn’t been for the asthma part, I wouldn’t have quit smoking.

Good looks and charm

I got all of my mother’s good looks and charm, and all my father’s too. The numbers come up to 200% because, while I‘m over-endowed with the good stuff, I’m also under-endowed with modesty (and maths skills).

I don’t understand why people get excited about those who are different from them when their cases are all identically similar – they are all equal parts of their mother and father.

It’s funny how fathers get to be the big guy. You can always tell who the mother is – she’s the one who gave birth to the child – but you can’t always tell who the father is!

So, in some ways you are actually more your mother than your father. While mothers give half of our regular DNA just like fathers, almost all our mitochondrial DNA comes from the mother, with little or none from the father.

Among other things, this makes the practice of carrying only the father’s name a bit ridiculous.

Maybe the very small number of societies which are still practicing matrilineal kinship got it right in the first place?

Take a bow, those of the “adat perpatih” matrilineal clans in Negeri Sembilan and elsewhere, but only if you’re not actively trying to kill the practice! And remember, you are a dying breed.

Not stealing, just repurposing

There are some things, possibly from nature and possibly from nurture, that I got from both my parents, and there are some things I got more from one than the other. As I get older, I think more about these, and about what these gifts (or curses) mean to me.

One thing I get from both is a strong sense of what’s right and wrong, especially when it comes to our responsibilities to others. The word “amanah” floated around a lot in my family when I was growing up.

It wasn’t something I understood from the get-go. Growing up, anything not nailed to the ground around me was fair game. We didn’t actually steal things, because there was hardly anything worth stealing around us, but we repurposed lots of things away from their intended purposes.

And also relocated them away from their original location. Such as the Y-shaped branch of a guava tree that often makes a better catapult in our hands than, err, a nice living, flowering and fruiting branch on that tree in somebody’s backyard!

That aside, most other things were clear.

A member of our family was once in prison for drug-related offences. My father said the relative stole for his drug habits, but he’s paying the price for it to society, and it’s not like he’s a politician who stole people’s money and betrayed their trust.

Being a good neighbour

Another memorable incident involved the wedding of our Chinese neighbour’s son. Many were invited, including a lot of their Malay friends and neighbours.

The neighbour came and asked my mother to prepare and serve food to their Muslim guests. My mother said, “Sure, no problem”.

The wedding day came and went, and all went well. My mother was famous for her great cooking, and I bet many of those at the other tables wished they were at the tables served by her instead.

Later the neighbour came to talk about payment. My mother gave him a bunch of bills for the stuff she took from the local sundry shop and asked him to settle them.

OK, of course, but how much for her service?

No charge, my mother said. She said her Prophet had commanded that she must take care of her neighbours, and hence no payment was necessary.

That left our neighbour very surprised, but also very moved. We were told in no uncertain terms to just call them any time we needed their help. And they were true to their word.

My parents didn’t leave me any money, because they had none to leave as every single day was a struggle to make ends meet. They did leave behind a pretty consistent, clear-eyed view of what it means to be a human being, even if I feel it’s a bit of a burden trying to live up to that standard. But then it’s not a bad thing at all.

After all, half of the burden came from my mother, and half from my father. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.