Narratives@najahnasseri.org

When I was about 10, I entered a Vocabulary Bee. It’s a competition where words are given by a panel and you are asked what it means. I went quite far in the school district and at the finals, I lost because I couldn’t distinguish between “distinguish” and “extinguish”. A voice in my head told me the right answer, but the spotlight pushed me to go against my better judgement. And so it began, a string of events that pushed me to go against that little voice. Ha ha.

But back to vocabulary. Since then, I haven’t witnessed any vocabulary bees. All I’ve seen so far are spelling bees. Poor ones at that.

Vocabulary, as I have recently discovered during my 1-month stint as Adam’s reading drill sargeant last December, is very important in helping a child learn how to read. My earlier conventional assumption was that reading leads to vocabulary, when, like all things you learn when you take the time to remove your assumptions and start from scratch, it was the other way around. Sort of.

Adam read better when I equipped him with new words. He had the confidence to guess longer words within the right context and hence, wasn’t so stumped when the phonics method took a bit longer to figure out.

So it delighted me to no end to discover how well Idris has been doing with his vocabulary. Just the other day, when I asked him what he was doing, he replied that he was ‘looking for something unusual’. Revisiting old movies (old by a 4 year-old’s standards) led me to discover other words that he knew the meaning of – like when he narrated the starting bit of Transformers 1: “Look Ibu, the cube has just become a meteor” – as the cube entered the earth’s atmosphere.

At 3, Fische took him to an aquarium in Langkawi. He pointed out the anemone and the various fish moving about around it. He has pointed out the names of a few dinosaurs and am watching out to see if he uses the word ‘evaporate’ in the right context some time soon.

As parents, the natural reaction (I think it’s natural because so many parents do it), is to dumb down what we say to kids. I say, don’t dumb down the vocabulary, just make your explanations simpler. When Idris doesn’t understand a what a word means, he just asks what it is. And that increases his vocabulary, even before he learns how to read.

Reference for younger children: A Language Boosting Game for Hannan

I admit, living in Singapore, for me at least, is very close to living the life of a hermit. I’ve pretty much cut off myself from the rest of the world as I knew it and rebuilt my life around family. It wasn’t what I expected it to be and honestly, if you spoke to little girl Najah at 12 years old, she would’ve probably been disappointed. The visions of grandeur, brought about by what must have been a very feminist mother (I really don’t know, she kept a diary which my aunts claimed they burned after her death… grrrr!), was very very planned. The type of life, the type of career, the ages at which milestones must be achieved, was very very detailed and calculated.

But one thing my 12 year old self probably didn’t realise was that everyone yearns to be ‘centred’. You now, the feeling one gets when one is ‘home’, or ‘at peace’, or knows where they’re going. I guess we all go through various phases of this searching. One of my favourite Ustazs calls it ‘returning to Allah’. Whatever your spiritual leanings are, I believe that we all have an internal drive to reach a level of human perfection / a perfect state of being. Not to be confused with the street definition of being a perfectionist/particular, which to me, is a label for people who are generally fussy or obsessive compulsive.

At 35, I feel centred. I don’t feel like I’ve achieved what I need to achieve, but it’s like scaling a mountain and you reach this amazing plateau where you can see the heights that you’ve climbed. You take a short rest, you savour your position and the amazing view, you contemplate life’s little questions and then you look up and see the rest of your journey, unhindered by clouds, a magnificent path to the peak of your existence.

That’s what being 35 feels like to me.

And really, it’s not an individual climb. I’ve had great coaches. My parents, my siblings, my husband, my kids, my helpers (maid, nanny, anyone who has been in my ‘employment’ really), all have been exceptional teachers in their own way. Everyone has something to teach. Everyone has had their own way of supporting my climb. And I hope that their encounters with me has contributed in some way to theirs.

Oddly, I’ve been reading much about death. And thinking about it. Because my plateau was the same one my mother probably stood at a year before her death. Apparently, it’s a natural thing to do, for ‘motherless daughters’ to have this psychological hurdle at the age of their mother’s death. The great thing is, I don’t feel motherless. Ummi is a great role model. Serene in disposition, amazingly strong to withstand the person that is my father, sophisticated in thinking and very very soft at heart (I love the way she talks to animals, insects and all sorts of creatures. Very Mother Earth. No wonder birds have been building nests on our house!). She is part of my vision of my end point. Just like my very strong aunts and my amazing grandmother (to be able to smile and savour the joys of life after burying a husband and so many children, I’ve always thought that a lesser being would have gone crazy by now, but not her…). They painted a new picture of the peak that I’m heading to. Multifaceted, complicated women who at their core have found ways to make gold and diamonds from the straws of life.

We lost Yayi last week. Yayi, or Allahyarham Haji Ali bin Sardi, was my stepmother, Umi’s, father. He had weathered a brain operation a few years ago and survived a flood. His condition deteriorated though in the past few months. We were told that he passed away peacefully on Thursday night, or what we Muslim’s call Friday night – since the evening is the start of the next day. This is considered an auspicious time for a Muslim to pass away, alhamdulillah.

The thing about funerals is that there are lots of people around. That’s good. Yayi’s children were all buzzing around the kitchen, preparing to cook for the kenduri tahlil, and if one were not to pay any attention to their faces, one would think that it was Hari Raya, instead of a sombre event.

I later rushed to see my grandmother and aunt in Muar, who are both unwell. It was heartening to see that our surprise visit brought big smiles. That house used to be bustling with energy, but now the ‘heart’ of the house is unwell and it’s heartbreaking to see.