Tick tock

I am at my parents’ place—my old home in Beecroft.

Having told my parents I would arrive close to ten o’clock, I turned up at quarter to eleven, armed with my laptop, my sketchbooks, my camera, a carton of soy milk, and leftovers from last night’s dinner.

I’m sitting at the kitchen counter with my laptop nestled next to the faded vertical blinds. Peering out the window, I glimpse mum’s vast array of neatly manicured plants. These are juxtaposed by the severity of the black weed mats my parents have laid down in place of mulch. It is not my aesthetic of choice, and if I had to give it a name, it would probably be ‘wabi sabi meets brutalism’. But unusual aesthetics aside, I am amused by a simple truth: somehow, my mother is a green thumb, and I am not.

Across the counter from me, mum is watching a Chinese news channel on her iPad as she eats a bowl of oats with black sesame powder. This is her breakfast, even though it’s well after eleven.

Tick tock.

The clock hanging above the hallway entrance is white, the size of a frisbee, and extremely loud.

Dad is in his office, trying to organise an overseas wire transfer. Unfortunately, it requires downloading an app and recording his face to authenticate his identity, and it’s not working. I keep hearing a Siri-soundalike repeat ‘That is not good’ in Mandarin, followed by dad’s grunts of frustration.

I glance out the window again, admiring mum’s handiwork. I ask her about the plants in the three hanging pots on the far side of the garden.

‘They’re very pretty,’ I say.

She tells me their Cantonese name, which literally translates to ‘rock orchid’.

‘Do you know its English name?’ I ask, hopefully.

She laughs and shakes her said. I reach for my phone to Google Translate it and learn that the plants are noble dendrobium.

I ask mum where the plants came from. She tells me that some years ago, she met a lady through our family friend Aunty Susanne, and they got to talking about plants and gardening, and she ended up coming home with a half-dead dendrobium. Months later, it came back to life under my mother’s care. She gave some of it back to her new friend and kept the rest for herself. Now she has three pots overflowing with the plant, and she shows me photos of its glorious colours when it flowers in Spring. ‘That’s truly impressive, mum,’ I tell her.

Tick tock.

Mum finishes her oats, washes up, and disappears down the hallway to do some ironing in the front room. Dad walks briskly into the room and leafs through the used envelopes on the coffee table. I surmise that he has scribbled down pertinent information on the backs of these envelopes, and I giggle quietly to myself. Some things don’t change.

Having located the correct envelope, dad returns to his study with stoic determination.

I open up my laptop but soon realise that, having spent the whole morning at home packing my things, I didn’t actually get around to writing a task list for the day.

I hop off the stool and wander over to the fridge. It is plastered with Post-it notes and magnets. The Post-it notes are covered with hastily written Chinese characters. I can tell it’s my dad’s calligraphy style. I step closer to try and work out what they say, but I can only decipher a few of them, no matter how much I squint. As for the magnets, there are at least a dozen of them, and I chuckle—loudly this time—as I realise that twelve of the magnets are for plumbers, and four of them are for the same plumber. My parents are hilarious. If I were a stand-up comedian, these magnets would have their own routine.

Tick tock.

I head out the back door and step into the pink rubber slippers that mum has relegated to the back patio. I roll up my pants and tiptoe carefully across the slightly boggy lawn to avoid getting my socks dirty. I have my camera in hand and spend the next fifteen minutes weaving my way through mum’s mat-covered garden, photographing plants as I go.

Naturally, I don’t know what any of their names are, so I resort to my phone once more. This time, I download an app called PictureThis, which soon divulges the names of every plant, shrub, and tree that my mother has cultivated in the backyard. In addition to the noble dendrobium, she has African lilies, jade plants, some angry-looking aloe vera (which could feature in their own low-budget sci-fi movie), and a very sculptural yellow pitaya which is meant to bear dragon fruit (crazy), but this one is, sadly, fruitless. I also find out the names of mum’s immaculate shrubbery: Malabar melastrome, lady of the night, and glory bush.

Mum calls out to me from the kitchen window.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks in Cantonese.

‘I’m photographing all your plants and shrubs and trying to find out their names ,’ I reply, also in Cantonese.

‘Why?’

‘No particular reason. Just so I know. And because they’re beautiful.’ And because they’re a part of who you are, I think to myself.

Mum leaves me to it.

When I’m done with my botany class and my photography, I head back inside, excited to edit the images over the weekend.

The three of us spend the rest of the morning pottering around. While mum and dad focus on their tasks for the day, I go in and out of different rooms, exploring—and remembering—forgotten nooks and corners.

Everywhere I go, there are memories: Moving in at the beginning of Year 9 and choosing which room I wanted to be mine. Looking out my bedroom window and spying our Rottweiler, Choi, looking back at me with a boyish glint in his eyes. Writing high school essays on dad’s slow IBM computer in his office. Watching scary movies with my parents on the large-screen television and struggling to sleep afterwards. Calling up my friends on the beige rotary phone and trying to have a private conversation by moving as far away from the kitchen as the cord would allow. Arguing with my mum because she would always cut my phone calls short (especially when I chatted with boys). Decluttering and re-organising my bedroom every New Year’s Eve. Hating the new curtains mum installed in my bedroom without consulting me. Spending Saturdays tutoring primary school students in the dining room at the solid pine table. Writing 60,000 words on the regulation of advertising for a law thesis on dad’s upgraded IBM computer. Inviting friends over for birthdays and karaoke sessions. Bringing Rick home for the first time to meet my parents, and how shocked mum was to discover he rode a motorbike. Having a genuine emotional meltdown when my parents told us, without mincing their words, that we were too young to get married. Walking out of the house in my wedding gown and veil seven months later. And sobbing my heart out when it came time to officially move out after the honeymoon, because I knew it meant the end of a season of life that I could never get back.

Tick tock.

I heat up my lunch in the microwave: it is pork mince stir-fried with chilli and soy sauce, served with rice and green beans. Mum rejoins me at the kitchen counter and immediately inspects my food.

‘That smells very delicious,’ she says, scrutinising the mince meat up close.

‘It is delicious! Rick made it last night.’

I sit down to eat and tell her about the RecipeTin Eats cookbook that we bought eighteen months ago and how it transformed our weekly meals at home. As she watches me eat, we chat about her week, my work, the boys, and Rick. By unspoken agreement, we deftly avoid the topic of their potential move overseas, as neither of us has the energy or stamina for it today.

Close to one o’clock, I start packing my things while mum gets ready for her swimming workout at the local gym. I find dad in his study, sitting at his desk, in front of two shiny silver 27-inch iMacs—quite the upgrade from his old IBM machines. I ask him if he’s had any luck with the face authentication, and he tells me, yes, it finally worked.

‘Good job,’ I say, in the tongue-in-cheek tone I like to reserve for dad.

He laughs and then says, ‘Thank you, thank you.’

I glance around the room and see that, apart from the computer upgrade and the addition of the Buddha statues at the far end of the room, it hasn’t changed much at all since I moved out. It’s as though I’ve walked into the past, even though twenty years have passed.

Tick tock.

I give dad a goodbye hug and kiss before grabbing my things and heading out the door with mum. The plan is to drop her off at the gym before driving home myself.

Just as I’m about to climb into the driver’s seat of our iMax, the tree in the corner of the front yard catches my eye. I have never seen it in the bright winter light before, and it is stunning. Leaving mum in the passenger seat, I walk over with my camera to capture my last shots for the day. Up close, I see that the tree’s flowers have large white petals surrounding bright clusters of golden yellow stamens in the centre. I look down at the grass—it is covered with the yellow and white flowers.

‘Mum, do you know the name of this tree?’ I call out.

‘No I don}t, but I call it the “fried egg tree”,’ she replies.

I look back at her with a big grin. ‘They sure do look like fried eggs,’ I say.

I take my phone out yet again and give the tree a once over with the all-knowing plant app.

‘What does the app say?’ asks mum.

I walk back to her with a knowing smile.

‘You were right. That’s exactly what it’s called. It’s a fried egg plant tree.’