The cake that my insurance agent gave me for my birthday had been the kind with stale fruits, limp sugar cream and nasty sheets of frosting at the side. I ate but one mouthful and good old mum finished the rest. That is, she finished all but the frosting. It's too much even to her to eat slabs of pure artificial flavor. So guess what did she do with them? Discreetly used them like sugar in cooking. I realise from here on I can go on a different tangent, and create a "history of mum's ingenuous cooking innovations". But this hadn't been what happened. So I detected slivers of the nasty sweetness in mashed raw beancurd and the fish the other night. And I protested. Mum was then scared into a gruding silence. She had never been able to take criticisms impersonally. This is a scary quality if it falls on someone you can neither avoid nor severe relationship with.

The scariness comes tonight. Mum'd been waiting for me to have dinner together, for the first time in a couple of days. On such occasions she coils herself into such a docile and vulnerable state with goodwill that she's just ready to flare at just about any judging remark. There was a good soup of tomato and wintermelon. And I recalled that a same soup two days ago had tasted different, less of the natural sour taste of tomatoes. And I asked for the reason. She frowned and curled her lips into a desperate expression and implored, "Just don't mention it anymore, will you?" I was as puzzled as anyone who reads this can be. When demanded further she was past the point of reconciliation in her agitation, as she let out that the soup two days ago had been added with more sugar - frosting from the cake. Ok, so I thought that's a good cooking lesson learnt. Point #1, fry tomatoes with a little sugar before making soup. Point #2, adjust the amount of sugar for the level of sourness you want. But the cooking lesson was not all I was going to learn. How severely mistaken I was! Mum with an unknown frustration repeatedly hit the table and called me to see reason, and not to make it out that everything's her fault. Now I thought it must have got it into her head that I was trying to bring up her "wrong doings" regarding cooking the frosting again. It wasn't before long that she started crying and calling upon grandpa to bring her with him (grandpa's dead of course). I didn't give in this time because there's no way that I'm going to destroy the little confidence I'd been cautiously trying to build before the external world. I made but the innocent question of how the natural sour taste of tomatoes are removed. It was a fact, though, that I had asked the same question before and forgot about mum's answer. She could have told me about the frosting then, and now repeating the question I might just sound like I'm trying to be difficult with her.

Stuff such as she's reduced to such miserable lifeform ever since she came to Singapore, and gets a savagely unfilial daughter in return were often said, but this time amidst earnest shouting and tears. She said, "I don't want to live anymore. Do you believe that I can just jump out of this window?" And thereafter went over to the said window, stood on a stool and reached out. I had gone to the living room to practise on erhu, but my fingers were cold and couldn't stop shaking. And so put down erhu, marched into kitchen, dragged her bodily away from the window into a chair, and told her not to be ridiculous. There's no "fault" to speak of in this matter, and if she wants to victimise herself to make me feel bad, nobody can gain anything out of it. I told her as much. She was only further confirmed of my undaughterly "fierceness". She is such a vulnerable being. Her mum only found fault. That's why she so desires praises and takes criticisms only to pierce her own heart. I'm past the point of trying to think whether rational moments exist within her, when she understands the concept of emotional blackmailing. But she really has no one except those who are close to her. Those whom she talks to in the stadium bring her news of China and add to her regret and depression from migration. She only has the close ones to indulge a little of her want of attention. She only has me to hurt.

I've tried so hard to replace my own fault-finding view of life with confidence, goodwill and cautious happiness. I've relied on nobody except maybe on this blog. And I know I'm getting better with emotional equinamity. If that had necessitated ignoring sources of frustration, I do see why mum's pissed off at my indifference towards her. I still couldn't do otherwise though. The vice of selfishness used be my big time taboo but now I just want to keep my own life together. I'm too wearied to say sorry to mum. I just want to take a deep breathe and suppress negative thoughts instead of looking for scissors to relieve frustration.

Keeping out messy relationships and friends is not the same as keeping out messy mum. Or maybe it's not so different... It does seem I'd always been having messy relationships. I have them, I break them off. I had friends, I cast them off, or grow wary. It could all have started with mum in the first place. But get a grip, girl. No fault-finding...............