Friends

 Hi friend.

Would you please pray for K as he goes for his assessment?

You're invited to I's birthday party!

How is F's exam preparation?

At one low point a couple of years ago, I told God, "Please send me some special needs mom friends. Nobody understands what I'm going through." In that month, He sent me four.

We used to pass each other in church without even a "hi". Now we greet each other with the same weary smile, and we know without a word how each other's week has been. It's like a free pass for our kids to be friends too, without exclusion or judgment. And the mom friends have kept coming.

At gymnastics class, my daughter and another boy were the only two kids making houses with foam blocks and doing dances while the rest fell in line quietly. His mum and I looked at each other and laughed, just knowing.

We don't sit in a circle and unleash our week's sorrows. We don't have time for that. But even in the being known, there is healing. 

Upside-down World

 Gut punch- 

when my debit card is declined at the SMRT gantry because I don’t even have $3.28 in my bank account.

When I pull out cash for surprised cashiers, bills found from old angpows and gifts meant for my children. 

When I don’t buy the hair conditioner because I can live with frazzled hair for another two weeks.

When I tell the therapist honestly that I can only afford one class a week for T instead of the recommended two.

And a deeper gut punch a few days later, this time cutting right through to my spirit-

When the therapist replies with, “We would like to offer Theo a subsidised rate of $15/class as both of you are full-time church workers and we would like to support your family’s mission.”

You always come back in the second round. Swoop in as the Saviour we watched the skies for. Clutch us close so we are wrapped up in You and see nothing else. Put coins in our palms and press them in. 

We live in freefall, unlike the parents I see at the school gate who have invested their way to ski holidays and are chauffeured to their children’s tennis lessons. They sleep well at night patting their belly vaults full of gold. They sip wine in serene anticipation of the retirement they’re securing through five-figure jobs. 

We freefall- with no idea where we will land when we’re 65. We celebrate birthdays knowing it will bankrupt us for the month. 

But then You come and catch us with exactly what we need and couldn’t ask anybody for.

In these mid-air moments, looking up at You as I hold on for dear life, I know what You’re saying to us. 

So I know we are actually not falling down to earth, but flying heavenward in an upside-down world.

Jams

We first went to Manila on a spontaneous mission trip. We went back five more times because of Jams.

He was a clean-cut fresh graduate with hip black specs and a laptop sticker that said, "Don't do it." Seated on the bare floor of the Pandacan sambahay with music on, he was a magnet for the kids. When he walked through the park, they ran after him and flung him high-fives. They followed him down Jesus Street like he was the Pied Piper. So did we.

His soft voice made us lean in. His eyes peeked out from above his glasses like a sad owl, always pleading. In his gruff whisper he told us of his graphic design, his silkscreened t-shirts, his skate ministry. For the first time I felt that there was a divine purpose for my design training. We made plans to return. I texted all my friends and we raised money for a desktop computer, printer and Adobe Suite. On our second trip to Manila, we slept on the floor of the livelihood office beside this computer, which the nanays had sewn a cover for. We held design workshops and computer training for youths from all over Manila.

He texted me photos when the boys had printed new t-shirts. He texted me when there was trouble logging on to Adobe. He texted me in tears when a fire flattened their block in Welfareville--photos of their sewing machines lying dead in rubble, computer and printer destroyed.

Our next trip found us standing on this fire-razed ground, wordless at seeing the once-overcrowded slum now burned to nothing. People were pointing numbly at land they couldn't buy back, greeting each other with tired pats on the back. Jams said the fire had been started by the government, and the proof was that the mayor had evacuated before it started. He said it sadly but without anger, with those gentle owl eyes.

We met his skater boys at midnight at the park. They were artists, musicians and reggae-loving rebels, and we were talking about Jesus on a street curb. They had followed Jams to our Art camp and up the mountains for relief missions. Whenever Jams picked up a guitar, they stretched out around him like alley cats and crooned in Bob Marley rasps, "Every little thing's gonna be alright!" We asked them what kind of things made them sad, expecting to hear about the fire that had destroyed many of their homes. "Girls, heartbreak," they said.

A couple of years passed while I gave birth to Theo and we made plans to move to Manila for short-term missions. We hear that something broke in Jams in those years. 

One of the married men in the community he served had started an affair with his little sister. Jams wanted to call the police on him, but the man's mother begged him not to. Frustrated by the absence of justice and his leaders' inaction, he left the people he once loved and asked to be sent to Samar, a disaster-stricken village flung as far into the wild as he could go. 

So when we were finally living in Manila, he was not there. We grew close to his girlfriend and their circle, and we talked of him so often at our parties that he ascended to the status of a legend.

The legend returned six months later as a gaunt hippie, with naturally-seeded dreads in his hair and a wispy beard, preaching the gospel of mushrooms. They made him calm, he said, and more creative. Packets of this "medicine of nature" lay in his pocket, which he ate throughout the day while doodling strange flowers. He had self-tattooed the chemical structure of mushrooms on his limbs. These hallucinogens had been his defence up in the mountains, immunising him against grief and anger. He talked to me of activism, of standing up against authority and false structures, of living a money-free life. He started painting objects wrapped in bandages, from cats to vaginas--his attempt to depict a world healed. His skater boys followed him all the way. 

I listened to him speak in that old winsome softness, but I could see that the Jams we'd known was gone. The undertone of everything he did now was an unfamiliar anger. His softness was a thin veil for a heart hardened to defiance. He whispered tensions against his mentors and leaders, and convinced his circle that church should be held at home in simplicity, not in fancy clothes and fancy buildings. He was the proud poor, the resistance, the truth and the way. By Singaporean standards we were by no means rich, but in our last interactions, I had the sad feeling he secretly looked down on us.

We left Manila abruptly when Covid shut the world down, and we never said goodbye to him.

January 11, 2022 was the day I found out I was pregnant with Reia. 

That was also the day I woke up to multiple messages from Jams's girlfriend. He had suddenly collapsed with a blood clot in his brain. He had then spent too long at the ER, waiting for a transfer to a hospital that had the facilities for surgery. 

"Ate, Jams is gone."

--------

In my mind, we are standing together on the fire-flattened ground of Welfareville. The rubble is white hot under the sun, and we have lost all our efforts to build something good together. What took it away? A world rigged to be broken from the start.

But this time I would tell you this will all be rebuilt. You are right, our hope should not lie in great men or money. But the bandages you tried to give the world were also too frail for these wounds. You left us suddenly, but where did you go? I hold on to a hope that you found yourself in Jesus's arms, where sorrow ceases not as a hallucination but as touchable truth, and where every anger, every question, finds silence in a full-stop.

Every little thing's gonna be alright.

38

And why do I really want a $40 plush toy dangling from my bag,
Or the $16 dolls gracing my bookshelves instead of books
My small fortune displayed as what I got in life instead of a car and going-out money
And why do I still want to make stickers for laptops
And gacha keychains for my non-existent clientele
Why, oh why, do I queue for Tiktok-viral keychain makeup
Or think about the sneakers of 2025

Instead of the things that mean anything to me
Like the children I used to cry for after camp
And the material I studied to counsel youths
Or Marilao and its floods
Or the difficulty and joys of raising a special needs child
And what about the real job I have

So many deadly serious things are happening
So much so that I just want to drown myself in hobbies

Living a Dream

 This 6 am alarm, the hundreds of dollars on textbooks and uniforms, the trek up the hill--they are the dream. I now know that one can do anything difficult if it was hoped for.

But this sweetness would not have come without the hard, bitter seeds of those first days. I love her endless story-echoing and yapping in the middle of the night because she once could not speak. I love the idea of homework and school because we so nearly had to send her to a vocational school for autism. I would have loved her anyway. But these things now are celebrated.

So much that this morning, marking a week of real school, is celebrated with overpriced coffee at a cafe I will bear in mind to skip in future. I feel that I might wake up any day now. That they will tell us studying is just not for her. That we will have to pull her out of this neatly woven cocoon of excellence and polite little girls, and tell her, I'm sorry, we have to change things up again. 

But for now, for as long as we can, we are living the dream we had given up on.

Inconvenient Children

 A friend pulled her family of five out of church this week because her ADHD son was too disruptive for sunday school. Too embarrassed to demand that they accommodate him the way all schools are expected to, too tired to be defiant, she chose to leave quietly and find a better church for them.

I feel like we have failed them as a church. The world is getting better at being inclusive, so why is the sunday school so far behind? Why was she made to feel like her son was a problem for not being able to sit down? Why was his experience of church a rejection of how he was made?

And yet, what is this familiar knot in my conscience as I sit here in Rainbow, trying not to be afraid of the anxious children screaming and flinging themselves to the floor? That same knot when we received the rejection email from Pathlight, telling us our daughter needs to be in a special school? That stone of guilt in my throat, guilt that I'm fighting my impulse to reject her too.

"I'm afraid I will love her less," I sobbed as the guilt wrecked my body. "No, you won't," K sobbed back, holding me tight as our child slept on obliviously. 

It's convenient to have a classroom full of attentive children who can memorise Bible verses. It's convenient to have a child who remembers what she learns in school and understands how to do her worksheets. It's marvellous to have an impressive child.

But convenience is not what we are called to. There was nothing convenient about how You loved us. Nothing marvellous or impressive about us that You should make us Your treasure.

Help us to learn that the "inconvenient child" is precisely who You want us to love.

Pathlight, PSLE and Pencils

 Today my daughter went for a School Suitability Assessment at Pathlight, Singapore's premier school for autism. "The RGS of special schools," a friend warned. More accurately, Pathlight was the first of two autism schools to offer mainstream education and PSLE, and boasts highly developed creative programs. Instantly regarded as premium (hence the reference to ol' Raffles) because Singapore's primary school education is notoriously challenging, rumoured surmountable only with a full schedule of enrichments from the time a child is three years old. 

As parents hoping to send our children to Pathlight, most of us have already let go of a dream of sending them to other schools: alma maters, brand name schools, schools walking distance from home, what have you.  We are no longer in denial of our children's special needs, as many still are. We have had no choice but to deal with it, to get that autism diagnosis, to reluctantly step onto a path different from our friends. Pathlight remains the last hope that our children might still make it, in that very Singaporean academic way, but with a much gentler environment and pace.

So you can see why anxiety was high among the parents at the assessment briefing today. While our kids were in the classrooms being observed, we endured a Q&A that killed my hopes of grabbing a coffee. 

Will we get the performative scores from today? If there is exemption from mother tongue, what score will be given? If we can't get into this campus, can we get into the other one? If we're not successful this year, how do we apply again next year? What is the prioritisation criteria? Will you favour someone who lives closer to campus? Since we're so few, can't all of us pass??

I sat there smug and annoyed, thinking about my coffee. Theo had woken up bright and happy, excited to come to "big school." She had waved at the teachers and called the girls her "new best friends." She had bounced on her seat patiently while another kid was wailing for home. She would breeze through this assessment. There was no need to get all ruffled like the rest. 

True enough, she came out joyfully. "Today is a special day!" she declared, obviously having heard that from the teachers. "I think she will probably get in," I told my husband. "I'm so glad she woke up in a good mood."

Only when brushing her teeth before bed, when asking her if she had listened to the teacher, did all her bad memories flood back. 

"NO! I am ANGRY with the teacher! I did NOT listen to the teacher!"

Mildly panicking and trying to soothe her stomping, huffing body, I asked with a nervous smile, "Oh, why were you angry?"

"Because SHE TOOK MY PENCIL!"

Okay. Calm mothering, gentle parenting. "Did someone borrow it? Did they give it back?"

"Yes, but I am ANGRY!"

"Uh, you did what the teacher told you to do right?"

"NO, I did NOT listen to the TEACHER!"

"Did you...do writing?"

"NO!"

"Did you play with toys?"

"NO! I. AM. MAD!!"

Oh dear. 

If we're not successful this year, how do we apply again next year? What is the prioritisation criteria? 

-----

There is competition and anxiety at every level. I discovered I am no better than any of the parents there today, nor any of the parents who move mountains to send their children to elite schools. We all try to secure what we perceive to be the best future for our children, and scramble to stay afloat when the plans feel fluid under our feet. 

It's all out of our hands. And thankfully so. God knows what's best for her, and that will be a school that can deal with her melting down over a pencil. Pathlight or not. PSLE or not. Her life is bigger than that.