This is my first blog on #hivesilverbloggers by @lizelle who is one of my most cherished hivers. Hopefully I am within the guidelines. I know that I meet the age requirement which is 4o to 100. I am not 100 quite yet.
Today is Mother's day and although I have a daughter I never feel like I am the mother who needs this kind of attention on such day. We just aren't like that about any occasion.
I knew my mother for much less time than I know my partner Marc. It will sound bad when I say that I don't feel any kind of sentiment for her but I do have interest in my past with her. I only have photos and certain memories.
I will now tell the tale of a kid that started life in Bangkok and got captured by Canada.
I was born in Bangkok Thailand. My father was Canadian. When I had just turned four he brought my mother and I to Canada. He had left Bangkok for Canada, when I was around two or three, to prepare for my mom and I to join him. I don't know exactly when. I'm just guessing by my age in the photos that he took of me. There is nothing after around the age of three. My mother did not have a camera.
I looked at the photos of myself as a child and noticed that ninety percent of them showed a very miserable child.
Was I born knowing that life would end up the way it is now. I don't need to clarify I'm sure.
Before I was born, my mother had a full term miscarriage. It was a boy. Now I wonder if it was me.
Perhaps I backed out at the last minute. Then I tried again and ended up being thrusted into a world that was so screwed up, yet possesses so much beauty at the same time.
I had a babysitter that made a terrible mistake when I was a baby. She left a hot iron on the floor and I crawled around it and burned the inside of my thigh. I saw the scar when I was older but have no recollection of it. The poor girl was fired. I feel sorry for her. I guess it was grounds for dismissal but I still feel sorry for her. She was holding me in the photo below. I was smiling for a change. I must have loved her.
There were a few moments where I smiled like below. Water can do that to anyone.
There are so many photos of my earliest years in Bangkok, where I look like I am a grumpy little you know what.
Why? My father was crazy about me. I don't have any unpleasant memories of my mother.
I have a distinct memory of walking in a market with my mother and having people yell out things towards us, referring to me being a child of a white guy. I think it was the way she dressed me after my father sent her money.
One of the most vivid memories is seeing my mother down the outside stairs of our house in Thailand. I tumbled down and next thing you know, I was being carried away somewhere. I guess I went to get my head stitched up.
My mother had to endure another of my accidents later in my first year in Canada. We rented an apartment from a family that lived downstairs. They had three boys. One was a teenager and the other two were around my age. One day they were playing with their older brother's air rifle, which he killed birds with.
The two little guys were in the back yard. I looked out the window and they called to have me play with them. My mother said no and begged me to stay inside. I didn't listen to her and ran down to the yard.
The boys were playing cowboys and Indians. They wanted me to be the Indian of course. The five year old had the rifle and pointed it at me. I got scared. He said it was okay and pointed at his shoe. He pulled the trigger and said "see"? I saw nothing happen so I let him proceed with the shooting of the Indian. He pulled the trigger and hit my eye. I screamed for my mother and she looked out the window to see her four year old with a bloody face. She ran so fast and tumbled down the stairs. I spent two weeks in the hospital but didn't lose my eye or go blind. I had less vision in that eye but it wasn't so bad at the end.
Below is my father whose face you can see. He was a freelancer before he met my mother. He worked wherever he could, and took photos of his travel journey documenting them. He lived in Australia and New Zealand for a couple of years before he met my mother. He wrote articles for local magazines even though he had no formal education.
My father had a house built somewhere around or in Bangkok. He was not rich so I don't know how he afforded it. I wish I had asked him more questions. I was a fool not to.
The man in the photo below was a visitor.
My mother had sisters. I don't know if these below were her sisters or not. She stands at the end being the shortest not smiling.
I had very straight Asian hair but my mother seemed to have wavy hair. I don't know if she just put it in rollers everyday or not.
Around this time my mother was told by a fortune teller in Bangkok that she would die in four years time.
My father was angry about the whole thing. I guess it's not cool to be told you are going to die.
The fortune teller was on the mark.
My father left for Canada before us. He needed to make preparations for my mother and I to join him in the north land. Hamilton Ontario Canada. This is where I grew up. I had just turned four when we landed at the Toronto airport.
My mother had a bunch of Thai silk shipped over to Canada so we would go to Toronto often to a place where she would sell it. I loved those trips.
Below is a photo of us at Toronto city hall.
We lived in between Toronto and Niagara Falls so we went to the Falls a lot as well. The photo below is of my mother and I with my dad's younger brother who became like a second dad to me.
We also drove a long distance to Montreal for the 1967 world exposition. I was five and didn't realize that one day Montreal would be my home and that everything at the expo grounds would look different.
Below is me with Miss Thailand and my mother.
I think we spent several days in Montreal. There were many pavilions of countries in the world and my parents wanted to explore them.
The folks that took us to Montreal were friends of my father originally from Montreal. They came over a few times to enjoy my mother's cooking. I don't remember most of it. It looks like she made some tasty dishes in the photo below. It was someone's birthday. Not mine.
My mother must have found it difficult to smile. At this time she had already been diagnosed with cancer. We had spent the summer before at a doctor's house/clinic in Nyack New York. Her and I stayed with this doctor who was known for curing cancer by unconventional treatment. My mother was not allowed to eat meat, dairy, sugar, etc. and had lots of juices. In those days the word vegan didn't exist. It started to work. She had been bleeding and it stopped. She had uterine cancer. After the summer she thought she could do it herself. It had cost my father quite a bit. He was a blue collar hard worker.
My father was obsessed with his garden in the backyard of the home I grew up in. The garden had so much love and care put into it. He used to collect the fall leaves that people threw out after raking. He would dig them into the soil. Our tomatoes were huge and juicy.
My father enrolled me in a ballet class. I hated it so much. I didn't want to go somewhere and dance on command. We were practicing a routine for a show. The was song was Oh you beautiful doll. I finally convinced my dad to let me stop going. I am thankful that my father didn't force me to keep doing it.
My father raised me pretty much from the age of six when my mother spent the last two years in and out of the hospital. She was the women I had to visit every other day.
He was my mother and my father. My uncle Eddy was my second parent until he passed away last year. My father almost made it to the year 2000. I am kind of relieved that he didn't have to endure life the way it is now. I would have felt so sorry for him.
He used to drive me to ride horses in the country (which I would not do anymore) and let me use his camera. I took this photo of him when I was about twelve.
I will end this with a photo of my daughter and I in 2015 when she came to visit from Vancouver. My father was so crazy about her. She made his life.
Happy mother's day to the mothers of the world!
design by: @KidSisters