A fellow mom from World of Moms’ community recently left me the above quote in response to my 11 WiTsdom Feature. I love it and I thought that it’s worth sharing. Thanks for that, Tilo!
I supposed that’s a consolation: If I screw up (or thought that I do), my kids are going to be great!
Here’s to all the greatness there is for this week. Let’s bask in them!
It’s Friday, it’s fantabulously fantastic and it’s a day of feasting here in Singapore.
We’ve been busy, busy today. Busy visiting and eating and feasting as we made our way out to visit relatives from my side of the family on the first day of Eid, otherwise known as the Hari Raya Puasa or Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Hari Raya means “day of celebration” in Malay while Puasa means fasting. Lebaran is used mainly in Indonesia and is commonly interpreted to refer to the end of fasting. Aidilfitri is simply the Malay spelling of the Arabic name “Eid-al-Fitr” (meaning Festival of Breaking Fast)
Today marks the start of a new month Syawal with the end of the month-long fast during Ramadhan observed by Muslims around the world. Like the previous years, we would always be back in Singapore to celebrate this occasion with family and friends.
This is the day when we get together: Siblings, husband and wife, relatives and close friends seek forgiveness, to bury the hatchet, to undo all the wrong-doings and to start on a clean slate again. Above all, we eat. Hell yeah, we eat. We eat and we stuff our faces with all the goodness of everything home-made, and, prepared from scratch. And we eat till we explode or just couldn’t move anymore. Only because it would be considered rude not to try any, even if it’s just a little bit.
From the main meals to the kuehs , every single dish and goodies are all worth at least a try.
My mom’s home-cooked dishes are always especially special to me. Sure, I can make them, but nothing beats a mom’s cooking; MY dearest mom. I could smell the fragrant and aroma of food coming from my parents’ home the moment we stepped out of the elevator 50 meters away. And we weren’t disappointed:
All home-made. All done from scratch, ready for the festivities. And those are not even everything! It’s good to be home.
Hari Raya in this part of the region is always synonymous with Pineapple Tarts and my mom makes one of the best there is. She used to take thousands and thousands of orders making those pineapple tarts for people who would specifically ask her to make for them during festive seasons such as Hari Raya or Chinese New Year. And I used to spend hours and hours over days and weeks just to help my mom make those things; clipping the edges individually by hand!
So, in today’s festive celebration, I thought I’d feature my mom’s Pineapple Tarts recipe which she has just rattled off everything from memory!
The second edition of my monthly feature is now out on World of Moms!
From one XX chromosome to another, younger XX chromosome of the same DNA, this month I explore the topic surrounding a mother’s pearl of wisdom which I would impart to my daughter. Should be easy enough right? After all, a mother would always, always have wisdom to dish out to not only their own daughter(s) but to another person’s daughter(s) and even to the daughters’ mothers as well!
Herein lies my problem – I realized I have none; or nothing wisdomly enough that I feel I am qualified to share. Because, to me, wisdom is a big, big, big word. I’m not there yet…but being more street-smart rather than intellectually-smart, thanks to all the crazies in my life, I think that I’d have more wits about me than wisdom.
In writing the article, I have, willfully created my very own Grubbs ‘n Critters list of “wiTsdom”. Sayings and anecdotal Pearl of WisTdom by Ann. My very own “Annism“(aka Darwinism…Momism...Sayingism. You get my drift). Cool stuff huh! I’m bloody trademarking those terms! Hahahahaaa!
OK. I’ve gone loopy. And I’ve even created a half-assed logo for it that doesn’t really mean anything.
Below is an excerpt of it. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it for World of Moms; although I have a sneaking suspicion that it is not everyone’s cup of tea:
How often have you heard the phrase “Mother Knows Best” and really…deep, deep, deep inside your heart and within every single strand of your veins, you truly, whole-heartedly believe those very words? That YOU, because you are a mother, you just happen to really, really know best?
If you are confidently nodding your head or even ever so slightly tilt your head to one side with some acknowledgement to that sentence, then something must have completely passed by me and flew over my skull.
Because, even as a mother, I don’t quite have all the motherly wisdom I could ever wish for. I really don’t know best. No, not all the time.
In fact, I don’t know any better. Sometimes I THINK I know, but truly, I haven’t got a clue. Sometimes I THINK I’m doing it right, yet I’m so full of doubts if what I did was the right thing to do. Sometimes I pretend I know and really, I am just winging it; trying to survive. And sometimes, I don’t really know what I’m doing; I just make things up along the way. I ought to be hanging my head in shame.
So, yes, I AM a mother, but I don’t always know best. Neither do I feel the right to claim of having all the wisdom just by the virtue of being a mother to 2 kids who have the birth rights of driving me up the wall. And I’m telling you why.
Because, wisdom is a BIG word.
Google defines “wisdom” as the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise. Dictionary.com defines it as someone having a scholarly knowledge or learning
To me, the word implies a state of saint-like zen-ness, complete enlightenment and highly prophetic that would put anyone on the same level of or higher than the Dalai Lama. It’s not something I can quite claim I have plenty of after only being a parent for 5 years. Twenty years down the road, I probably still would not know any better.
Wisdom eludes me and I have none to dish out as it is a whole “big of somethings” I have yet to attain. I’m not there yet. Wits, on the other hand, is different. That I can claim I have.
Defined as mental sharpness and inventiveness by Google and the keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas that awaken amusement and pleasure as defined by dictionary.com, “wits” in its entirety is something I can relate to.
The word fits, as, if there’s anything motherhood has given me, motherhood makes me mentally sharper.I do things that I never thought I would have done before.
And, for all those times when I didn’t know or understood what I was doing, I get to be inventive and creative, resulting in much amusement and pleasures for my kids. A feat, considering how sleep-deprived I have been all the time.
I call that my “WiTsdom”.
Sheer street-smart astuteness – nothing more, nothing less. WiTsdom to live by from one XX chromosome to another. WiTsdom I have imparted to my daughter in the course of time, or will be sharing more with her for when she’s old enough to understand when she starts wearing the many different hats in life: as a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife and a mother.
Read my Annism, my 11 Pearl of WiTsdom here.
——————————————————————————-
What is WOM:
World of Moms (WOM) aspires to bring together like-minded women who believe that sharing experiences doubles the joy of parenting, reduces the agonies associated with motherhood, helping moms to find peer moms to resolve their queries, make parenting fun, grow their businesses and create a one stop shop for all their needs.
It is a place to connect, share experiences, give and get advice, vent anonymously and discover all that this place has to offer. And if you have a little time to spare, do browse through the site for there are much more things to be discovered. You may just like what you see! Don’t forget to share them.
Your account will be closed and all data will be permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. Are you sure?