Anomalos

"Zhok fan ah, fatt siew zhong yam kopi!"

Translation: WTH do you think you're doing drinking coffee when you're feverish?

She walked like a baby penguin, with unsure footsteps, as she went to the loo. I found her cup with coffee in it this afternoon and to my horror, proceeded to grumble and nag like a fishwife on menopause, completely unaware that I was doing it.

For as long as I have known her, my granma has never been sick. Well, except for that one time she was hospitalised for a uterus operation thingy, but that was back when I was still at the age where crying was acceptable, and it's not technically an illness.

You know the disconcerting feeling you get when you're tossed into an unfamiliar situation?

I won't exactly say this is out of my comfort zone, but it's weird that I'm the one checking on her when she's sleeping in her room, and refilling her thermos for her. Most of all, I understand now why she nags me to go see the good doctor in Pudu instead of Pertama whenever I'm ill (Pertama has quack docs, depending on the time and day of visit) and tells me to stop shovelling ice-cream down my throat when I'm having some mild coughing (it would develop into something worse, like the bout of bronchitis I got earlier). I also know why she worries when I don't have an appetite, and why she forces me to eat even though everything tastes like cardboard. I've known she cares a lot about us, I just didn't comprehend how it feels like to be on the other side.

It's funny what it takes for me to realise that she's well into her 70s.