STI: Yesterday, when we lived in Singapore...

Sep 22, 2004

Yesterday, when we lived in Singapore...
by Paul Zach

RECENTLY, my four-year-old son Sean began starting some of his sentences with a new phrase.

'Yesterday, when we lived in Singapore...' he says, whether he's asking questions or making statements.

My natural inclination is to respond: 'Was it only yesterday that we lived in Singapore?'

It's actually been less than a month since I uprooted my wife and son from their birthplace and moved us back to mine.

My wife is still reeling from the arrival of the Crown Line movers when she had barely begun packing late last month.

Even I am trying to catch my breath from the logistical nightmare of it all although I've spent most of my adult life moving from one end of the earth to the other.

I've gone from Israel to Indonesia to Jamaica and elsewhere to do stories for dozens of newspapers, wire services, TV and radio stations.

I've covered a hurricane in Florida, a war in the Middle East, a mass exorcism of the earth in Bali, a hotel collapse in Singapore.

I've flown over an erupting volcano in Hawaii, written a few books and appeared in some films.

But I did all that while I was a 'confirmed' bachelor without a care or responsibility in the world.

All of it pales in comparison with the emotional adventure of moving my family, and myself, from a country I'd made home for 20 years to a city on the other side of the world that I'd left behind even longer ago.

Singapore was the place I found the woman I knew would be a wonderful wife and mother, and where I became a father.

I first set eyes on my beautiful boy when a nurse put him on a scale at Mt Elizabeth Hospital, and wondered why I had wasted so many years being a childless bachelor.

It was in a house in Serangoon Gardens that I spent sleepless nights just watching Sean sleep.

There I also spent countless nights dancing and singing and rocking him back to sleep under cut-outs of a giant Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck I'd stuck on one wall and farm animals I'd pasted on another, and still felt exhilarated the next morning.

The Botanic Gardens was where I proudly showed off Sean on Sunday mornings at breakfast, and pushed him around the pond in his stroller. There too I later followed him closely as he rode his first bike to make sure he didn't steer it into that same pond.

He also loved the zoo where his eyes always widened at the sight of the giant pythons and crocodiles and he hid behind his Mum's knee, or mine, when a lion roared.

In Depot Road, he often spent weekends with 'Nenek', hiking up the cliff near Alkaff Mansion with her.

In Woodlands, he spent days playing cars with cousin Izzu and listening to cousin Izzi read to him.

Sean made many friends too all around Singapore - our friend's twin daughters Jing-Jing and Ning-Ning, Tyler and Shonagh whose parents had just moved into the neighbourhood, feisty little Zacc and others.

His best buddy, George, swam with him in Yio Chu Kang and together they ran around the halls of Suntec City as both sets of parents ducked in and out of concerts by Yes and Jewel.

At Chatsworth Kindergarten in Yishun, I left Sean behind for the first time, so reluctantly, in the kindly hands of Miss Cathy and Miss Loh when he began pre-K early this year. There he made many more friends like Jonathan, Hanna, Zheng Jie, Jnelle and Lincoln.

There's nothing harder in life than leaving the people who helped make such memories and the places where they were made.

Yet becoming a father also made me realise how long I had been away from my own father and mother. It made me want to spend time with them while I still could.

So my wife and I talked and talked about moving to the United States, but we also procrastinated.

I avoided telling people when we were leaving, and shook my head at suggestions of farewell parties, hoping to slip away quietly, without fanfare.

As the time to leave neared, we postponed one flight, then another.

Sean developed a cough and a slight fever after we had already moved out of the Chuan Walk home where he had grown up and into Nenek's flat. We almost postponed our departure again.

I dreaded the scene at the airport with my wife's family but there was no getting around it. The tears were infectious - I couldn't hold mine back either.

Tonight Sean is asleep under the Spider-man quilt his 'Grandma' bought him in a new bedroom here on the other side of the world. It's a cool clear crisp night.

A perfect crescent moon hangs over the Cuyahoga Valley. He's peaceful, dreaming. Yesterday, when we lived in Singapore...

Paul Zach is now a correspondent for The Straits Times and based in Cleveland, Ohio, in the US