and where is Heaven

My niece came back for holiday from Australia and she brought souvenirs for me, a marvelous Revlon lipsticks set, exactly my colours, and for each of my children she bought a pair of crocs. My kids immediately loved them. Pinks one for Fatini and orange colour for Emir. In fact when we went to Hong Kong, they persisted to take the crocs along. In fact my niece bought something for almost everybody within her extended family circle.

Off course I felt happy and touched. Faizah to me is like my little sister or like my own daughter. I don’t have kids who are big enough to buy me presents especially when they come back from somewhere. She’s the first one amongst her generation who ever brought me presents. I was touched and I was happy. She had used her own money for all the souvenirs ( I actually asked !). I remembered she started to buy me something when she was in the secondary school.

I used to tease her when she was in primary school, every time she went for her school trip, and brought her grandmother some souvenirs, I always asked her, “where’s my souvenir, Faizah?” as she never bought for me any thing during that time. Her answer was always, “I don’t have enough money..” and she would explain to me, cent by cent on what she had spent. Those were old memories. As a child, she never indulged in wasting money. In fact, she always asked me to buy things she need, and even though I did buy them sometimes,, I also said to her, ask your father, she will reply, but I feel so sorry for ayah….Even though at that time I thought, “bertuah punya budak!!”, at the same time I was happy that as a daughter she had that feeling of affection and compassion for her father.

It is a peace of mind to see children who I used to see as little children grow up and become good individuals who respect parents and the elderlies no matter what. It saddens me to hear news of abandoned parents who were left to their own device by the children that they raised with their sweat and love. It saddens me to see how children when they grow up talked to parents as if the parents owe them something, with no respect and no fear about hurting the parents’ feeling. They treat the parents as if the parents are the ones who need them and they don’t need their parents. It’s even worse when the children still take money from the parents.

No matter how wrong your parents are in your perception, which could be wrong anyway, as long as they never abused you sexually, they are still your parents, deserving respect and good manners from you, always. Heaven is under the parents’ feet indeed!