My Birthday 17 June

17th June, every year.

Independent Together Adapting

Today, on my birthday, I am changing my thinking style. Thinking inside the box, setting limitations – remembering.

I remember a dark night, streetlights and a crowd of people. Papa carrying me. Seeing a black cat on a tree I screamed and wriggled to get down to play with it. Years later Papa and Mama were surprised I remembered that. They were waiting outside the Odeon Cinema to see a movie. I was eleven months old.

I remember when I was seven and came home from school, unhappy. I told my mother the children in class did not like me and she said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s because you are better than they.’ From then on the whole world could dislike me and it would not matter.

I remember going to Wales in August for the first time. My sisters-in-law, four of them, gathered in the oldest one’s home in Goytre. To welcome me there were flowers everywhere. The perfume so strong as in a hot house I almost fainted. As I had come from Penang, a warm place, they sat me next to a roaring fire and one side of my leg got burnt.

I remember when Shanta was born in Bridgend Hospital. She was so tiny and so perfect with large eyes and a mass of black hair. I remember the overwhelming joy of owning a new human creature.

I remember being on top of the world each time I walked about Hong Kong and saw my business advertised. I said ‘World here I come’. At Sun Hung Kai Centre hoardings flashed ‘The Prince of Wales Pub’ and ‘Witchcraft Antiques’ I said, That’s me, a high powered business woman’.

I remember Don proposing marriage on Valentines Day and frightening the daylights out of me. Rigor mortis set in before I said say ‘No’. He persisted, and a few Valentines later, in spite of my not wanting a man in my life, I said ‘OK, la!’. Great decision. Happy he persisted in his choice.

I want the man. I love the man. The best life perfect partner a woman could wish for.

There is such a thing as a perfect life.

Image: Trees living together in a Beijing Park, China.