by Vicki Tan

Created on: December 29, 2007

My mother asked me what the earliest memory I had of her was. I said I remembered her walking me down the stairs. I was holding her hand and taking one step at a time. Years later, it would be me helping her.

My mother had given birth to me at the age of thirty-five. I was her birthday, wedding anniversary and Christmas present, and "the baby [she] so longingly wanted". She commented that I "only came out on [her] tenth anniversary". I was also supposed to be born a few days earlier but I would not come out of her womb. As a result, she had to wait for me and receive an injection to expel me. The night before I was born, she was in the hospital and she was placed on a bed in the operating theatre. By right, she was supposed to be put in the ward and then be transferred over to the operating bed in the morning. However, the nurses had wanted to have one less job. So the entire night, she was feeling uncomfortable as she could not turn her body on such a narrow bed

The most recent time I saw my mother was when she flew down from Singapore to Australia in early December to celebrate my birthday. (Twenty years ago, she was heavily pregnant with me. When we talked about the old photos that were taken, she said she was at her prettiest moment because she was glowing with happiness.) On the first day of her arrival in the airport and an almost three-hour drive to the town I was in, we went to a restaurant of my choice to have lunch. After which, she paid the bill and I held onto her as we walked down the staircase.

A few days after her departure from Australia, I was going to get my learner's license so that I could start taking official practical driving lessons on the road. I text messaged my mother to inform her that I would be taking my theory test and that I would be using the family credit card to pay. Her reply was, "Sure, my love."

Before I started my current college degree course in New South Wales, I was in boarding school in Western Australia. We had been advised to get my possessions labeled, so my mother used a marker pen to write my name on all my things. She did an amazing task. When I took over, I realized that I did not do a very good job, as the ink had gone through my clothes to the other side. I told my mother about this, and she said she had labeled my things "with love".

Prior to studying abroad, I was educated in Singapore, and every morning, my mother would wake up earlier to drive me to school. Some people insisted that she could make me take the

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