Auntie Rose.

 Sun 5.12.2021.

There is urgent need to complete the first 1,000 km on my brand-new scooter. So yesterday morning I rode to the park in S 2. After about an hour of walking around the lake, I decided to give Calit a surprise visit. Not that he's easily surprised.

With my crash helmet on, on my scooter, I honked at Ina who I saw behind the house gates. At first, of course, she couldn't recognize me. Then she quickly did, and opened the electric gates. And after I had sat on the arm chair, Auntie Rose suddenly popped her head from the kitchen. I didn't expect her there. Ina didn't say before that. Calit, too, didn't say when I was with him Thursday, just 2 days before.

My mother called her Kak Rose. So naturally I called her Auntie Rose. Officially she's Mak Lang Rose. The late Pak Lang Taufik was her husband, Ina's father, Calit's f.i.l. Calit, my youngest brother, married within the extended family, actually. Taufik was Wan Umi's son. Wan Umi was my late grandfather's cousin. Their houses in Bukit Temensu are only separated by a small village road. It used to be an unlighted dirt road from the main KP-Tampin road all the way to the old Tebat Kering village houses about a kilometer in. When dad built the family house at the end of grandfather's land, our postal address became also "Tebat Kering" (dried pond). At golf until today this has become a joke of which I'm the butt.

For a late 80-year old, Auntie Rose looks healthy. Her memory is still intact. She did not know me then but remembers my visit to her PJ house in 1969/70 when I went to pick up Kay for a date one evening. "Semi-detached bungalow. Section 22" she said, of the house. I can't remember the house-type or the part of town. She beats me there.

Kay's mother was Taufik's sister. Other brother-sisters of Kay also stayed there, Auntie Rose said. Kay and I went to the Rex cinema in KL for a movie. Those days driving in PJ-KL was easy. I can't remember the title of the movie, but remember I had the car pushed because the battery was weak and the car wouldn't start. We knew each other because Kay and sisters would visit my grandfather when they visited their grandparents, Wan Umi and Mai Godang (Big Ismail, because he was, for a Malay). The last time I spoke to Kay for any length of time was on the phone, when she called from the Subang Airport before leaving for studies in England. Where she met one "Syed". In her letter from England she mentioned this. "That's why" I said to Auntie Rose when she asked why I didn't marry Kay. Now Calit had taken over that matrimonial linkage.

Mom was fond of all her relations, and Auntie Rose was no exception. Calit's eventual marriage into that family certainly had her blessings. She'd be happy if she was present now, to see how Calit has settled down.

Auntie Rose said the children disallow her from driving now. I said I would agree, looking at the traffic in Seremban now. But Auntie Rose allowed, with a mischievous look, sometimes she "curi-curi" drive. That's just like her. In the past I would often bump into her all over the place in Seremban - in the bank, in the shopping mall. She was so active, she became a committee member of an ex-teacher group when she was never a teacher ! 

She has her own house in England Garden where Calit got married. Now the children want her to stay with any one of them. So she would move around among the girls. Right now she's with Calit.

I told Ina I haven't eaten breakfast when I came. I lied. She quickly laid out a nice one, and all 4 of us dug into it, including Auntie Rose. Her appetite seems good, and that's good.

Auntie Rose said Mak Cik Zizah, Taufik's younger sister, is helpless like a baby now. There's apparently a paid maid who feeds and washes her. She's in her 90's. Ani, her neice, now widowed after Mazlan died, is also suffering from Alzheimer's. Apparently Kay is in charge now. Through her, Ani has built a small cottage in the very large compound in the Bukit Temensu home. It's completed, but Auntie Rose said they haven't moved in yet.

Everybody sent me off on my SD198T. "Ride carefully" I heard Aunti Rose admonished. A true policeman's wife.

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