No Childhood Games (2E4 Audrey Lee's maternal grandmother)

My maternal grandmother, Margaret Lee, was born to Hor Jiu Liang and Lee Bor Tek on the 29^th October, year 1926, in Singapore. She was the third and youngest child in the family. Her siblings, a brother and a sister, were also born in Singapore. They were named Lee Woon Seng and Lee Woon Jiao respectively.

Her parents were actually from Fujian, China but, like almost everyone else who wanted to try their luck at earning a better living, they migrated to Singapore. Here, her father worked as a labourer, hopping from one job to another at times, while her mother, worked as a maid who went to clean the houses of other people, probably those belonging to the wealthy family category. Family income wasn’t high due to the jobs her parents had gotten as for the fact that they knew not a single soul when they first stepped foot in Singapore. Her mother worked for very long hours and also, since there was no one to take care of my grandmother properly in her tender years due to her siblings being busy with school and her parents working, she was taken under the care of a babysitter and could only go home at night when her mother had returned from a hard day’s work. This continued until my grandmother was five or six years old as it was then her mother stopped working. Childhood for my grandmother wasn’t anything like what young children nowadays experience.

She did not recall playing any games with her friends or neighbours or classmates at all. All she ever did was to go to school and then come back home, sometimes helping her mother do housework, like the laundry. Also very different from present times, my grandmother started schooling at the age of 11 without going to through kindergarten but started with primary school education where she, along with all her classmates took only two languages - English and Mandarin. They also had activities in school such as the game of baton-passing. My grandmother’s parents were Taoists who prayed to many gods, and so was she herself, though her siblings were not followers of this religion. My grandmother herself was later converted and baptized into Christianity, recently just six years ago.

          My grandmother’s education came to a halt when the Japanese Occupation started. She was then 13, only in the third year of primary school. The war years as described by her, were horrifying as planes flew in and out of Singapore, which was re-named Syonan-to, meaning “Light of the South”, and bombarded houses and many other buildings, thus contributing to the high number of casualties. It was so scary that even her family, although luckier than others who survived on tapioca and sweet potatoes, had not even the appetite to eat the canned food they’d bought from shops that still had their businesses running. Luckily for my grandmother, the Japanese soldiers did not inflict any harm onto her family, nor did she have any encounters with them either. The war at long last came to an end on 15 August 1945. She was then 16 going on 17.

          Peace had finally returned after days of horror and anxiety. My grandmother and her family later moved to a home in Sili Road and it was probably there that she met my grandfather. They married, though the ceremony was nothing grand. My grandmother also did not have any hobbies back then even until now. She was also lucky not to have encountered any disasters such as the Bukit Timah floods and nothing of the rioting era had been mentioned too as she has forgotten about it due to her failing memory though she still remembered Lee Kuan Yew’s rule was much better and much more peaceful too. It was also during that time when Singapore’s economics were doing much better also. Life thus gradually got much better under Goh Chok Tong’s and currently, Lee Hsien Loong’s rule too. She now currently lives with my uncle and his family in a HDB apartment in Tampines.

Audrey Goh (7)