A Flowermaker (2E4 Nazreen's Maternal Grandma)

My lovely grandmother whom I adore so much is named Zubaidah (A Bedah) bte Hashim. She was born in the year 1928. Her NRIC states that she was born on the first of January but my mother told me about my grandmother having lost a few important documents. Ever since she has grown older and is suffering from senility, she couldn’t remember much about her past and also her birthday. So in order to gather information about my darling grandmother, I asked my mother and my eldest auntie for help. Thanks to them, this is what I have learnt about my grandmother’s life.

I know that my grandmother has gone through World War 2 and racial riots during her young adult years. She can’t remember anything about major events like the Maria Hertogh riots and other riots that happened in Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s period. Her love story and everyday life is the only thing I could find out from my auntie and my mother. My grandmother was married to Abdul Karim Bin Mohd, her first husband. He was actually an actor from the entertainment industry in that era and was known to have flung a motorcycle with his teeth. He was a very strong man indeed. Together they had four children: Mohd Abdul Katir, Fatimah Bibi, both who passed away, Salmah Manap (Eldest auntie) and Abdul Rashid. But my grandfather’s time had come for him to rest in peace. My grandmother was truly heartbroken but she moved on with her life, bringing up three children by herself.

But God granted her another husband to lighten her burden of single motherhood. This man was a charming man whom many ladies including my grandmother admired. My grandmother was a beauty so no wonder he got married to my grandmother and became my biological grandfather. When my step-aunties and uncles were teenagers, my grandmother bore my mother, Kartini, Ramli and Zulkifli. Having no other choice to survive, she gave away two children, Kartini and Ramli to two different married couples who could not conceive. That was a very hard decision for my grandmother but they still keep in touch. My grandmother wasn’t educated and is illiterate so it was hard for her to find a job to support the family. She married my eldest auntie off to an older respectable man. The eldest uncle was working as a sailor to support the family but it wasn’t enough. Even though my grandmother wasn’t educated, she was very good in making pastries and also very artistic in making artificial flowers from cloth or straw. So to augment the income, she baked pastries and malay “kueh” like “gado-gado”, pineapple tart and even snacks like “keropok ubi”. My relatives, during their free time, had to help my grandmother to sell this to the neighbors and friends or they had to take care of the household chores and take care of the younger siblings.

Although most of my relatives got jobs when they grew older in order to support the family, my grandmother didn’t stop working. Since my eldest auntie owns a malay bridal boutique at Geylang and needed a traditional flower arranger to do the bridal gifts ordered by the couple, my grandmother helped to do the arrangements as she was talented in arranging flowers in a vase or anything to so with cloth and glue. She was an artistic lady who spent her free time making cloth flowers or straw flowers. Thus this job was ideal for her. I was there to help her as well. I helped to select the flowers and leaves with my mother though I was only 5 years old.

Now my grandmother’s age has caught up with her and she has gone senile. She has no enthusiasm to even make the cloth or straw flowers anymore. But I still love her for her perseverance in the past and I respect her as my wonderful but frail grandmother. May God Bless Her with happiness all her life.