My grandparents arrived from Singapore last Wednesday.
Had a bit of a chat to gramps today and he rummaged around in his bag passing me a much crumpled piece of writing which was covered in red ink.
It was a piece of mandarin essay work that I had written when I was 16 years old. Geezus. That was 6 years ago. Gramps is a scholar in classical mandarin and who had grilled me in the language despite my pathetic propensity for the said language and in which I saw no value in my early teenage years. He said to me then that he'd kept that piece for a really long time...which he must have and asked me to read it to see if I still understood it.
I scanned through it and understood most of it. But wow.
All that time ago.
I feel quite the twinge of regret though. I wish I could have put in more effort then, I never saw the point of it for the future, but I guess I see it now. And I wish I could have treasured those years more, instead of constantly fighting him, minus all those tempestuous arguments of : Why? What for?
3 comments:
First and foremost; in re to your post: may I say, Often to Young to be taught, but never to late to learn.
I found your site via a comment you left at (Thoughts A Spinning) In Search of Isis http://eastcoastdweller.blogspot.com/ in re to the Pizza Shop. In regards to your comment, I thought you might me interested in one of my posts about this matter of Society as a whole. Of rather the moral compass is half empty or half full?:
http://bindingink.blogspot.com/2007/01/art-of-listening.html
In closing, again in re to this post of yours: may I reiterate; Often to Young to be taught, but never to late to learn.
I am slowly losing my grandfather, day by day, as he gets weaker and weaker, and deafer and deafer. A door to a vanishing world is closing and once it shuts, it will never reopen.
Treasure every second you have left with this man. He may not be perfect, and your past together may not have been blissful, but you can, as Jeane said, learn so much from him.
reminds me of the times I was at your place, rummaging through the stuff in your room and letting Isaac drool all over me.
I still remember your grandfather. I was afraid of him but I really respected him. And I remember chinese class and running late for our second shot at the chinese paper (Miss Chai waving frantically at us from some hall balcony) because we had been too busy gossiping about guys at Coffee Club, when we should have been studying.
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