If she had forgotten her watch, sometimes she would waddle quickly back inside her room to retrieve it from its special place: a box wrapped in a plastic bag, shoved inside a drawer that was overpopulated with more disorganized belongings. Her scattered mind loved knick-knacks for the little beauties, little joys, that they brought into life. Shirts with lace trim, glasses with pink frames. Rings, bracelets, and necklaces that were either expensive gifts from relatives, or inexpensive gifts from herself. It was not until later that I realized beauty meant something different to ma-ma than it did to most. Not one bracelet was more beautiful than another, but having more objects just meant more vessels for sentiment. She needed more objects for her heavy heart to spill love into; she carried too much for her little frame to hold.  

Other times, she only realized she had forgotten her watch when we were too far gone. We would be already on the MRT car, zooming away towards Admiralty, and she would pat her bare wrist in recognition of what had slipped her mind. In moments like these, when she forgot something, my eyes naturally welled up with concern. How terrible–should we turn back–

Not to worry, she said, patting my hand in hers. I’ll remember to wear it tomorrow. 

She was remembering and forgetting all at the same time, with many little things on her mind. Often the very last thing she would do before leaving the house, was run back into the bathroom to check her reflection, brushing through her permed curls with a round brush. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she pressed her lips together politely, as if greeting herself with a reluctant smile. A smile of a woman for whom showing teeth in photos was not a practice of her time. Her lips deceived you in photos – in real life her mouth never stayed closed for long, because she was a talker, and had the tendency to chirp endlessly upon seeing you, inquiring endlessly about your recent birthday (“recent” so long as it was within the past half year) or encouraging you to eat one of the four pineapple buns that she had bought in anticipation of guests on her way home from Wan Chai. 

— 

Ma-ma was usually the one who I remember meeting me at the doors of our apartment building when the school bus pulled around to Mansfield Road. We lived far from school and I was often the last one to be dropped off at home. I rarely managed to stay awake the entire ride and usually woke up from deep sleep to the feeling of the bus curving around to meet the building lobby, to the sound of the ugly bus doors creaking and slapping open. If ma-ma was there waiting for me, I knew I had something to look forward to. I hopped off and shoved my hands into her pockets expectantly, searching for the sweets she had prepared for my arrival. 

Sometimes it was Dextrose Lemon candy, the one with sour lemon juice inside, whose packaging also advertised an abundance of vitamin C. Even at that age, I was suspicious of these marketing tactics – candy was candy. But I liked that Ma-ma willingly believed this was a healthier alternative, so I allowed us both to indulge in this little delusion. “Vitamins” became our code-word of sorts. I asked, she obliged. We did this blissfully, and in this way, life with Ma-ma was sweet. Perhaps this helped her alleviate the guilt she felt when Ye-ye scolded her for giving us kids too much sugar, it gave her ground to stand on when he barked his complaints that we were ruining our teeth. 

Other times, it was a singular grape hi-chew among a few balls of lint that I found waiting for me in Ma-ma’s pockets. On the happiest of days, it was the entire packet of Hi-chews, unopened and wholly for my taking. On the less fortunate days, her pockets were empty and the candy was left behind in the fridge upstairs. 

Sometimes it was not Ma-ma waiting at the door but Ye-ye. I knew that that meant: no candy. I got off the bus, meeting my grandpa with disappointment, but placing my little hand in the opening of his wrinkled one all the same. Maybe tomorrow, I thought. 

I barely remember school, but I remember the hours between coming home and going to bed. In the days when Ma-ma was there, she ushered me to the dining table and plopped a plastic plate in front of me, on top of it a bun that she had saved from the morning. If I was hungry enough that I wanted to eat it cold, Ma-ma tried reasoning with me. As a rule, we shouldn’t eat food un-re-heated… cold things make us sick… it would only take a minute to heat it up in the microwave, she promised. I heard what she said but usually took a silent but defiant, symbolic bite that led her to accept defeat. 

I believe that Ma-ma was often willingly accepting defeat with me, her efforts to reason with me purposefully futile. We often drew pictures. Even though she didn’t like drawing and I loved it, I insisted that we collaborate on the same piece of art, a piece of DoubleA branded A4 paper, our shared canvas. When I got bored, I directed us to the next activity. Perhaps it was braiding my hair. Perhaps it was putting on headbands and bracelets. We were always chatty. On one particularly memorable afternoon, I was curious about the largeness of the number one-hundred, so I asked her to count to it. She did; but the humor of the situation was not lost on her, as around number sixty-three she wondered out loud what my mother would say if she walked into this room and saw this scene: her old mother-in-law sitting on a stool, reciting consecutive numbers without reason to her grandchild who watched intently. 

When she successfully finished counting in one sitting, I noted that one-hundred, this great number – it was not so immeasurably large. 

Night came around and sometimes it was just me and Ma-ma. We ate together, her putting things on my plate, me warning that I was getting full. After my night shower, my hair was often tangled and knotted. She brushed my hair. I fell asleep in her lap on the sofa. Even when my parents came home from work, I did not open my eyes, pretending to be sleeping so that Ma-ma would carry me back to bed. Whether it was my mom or dad who opened the door, she shushed them with a single crooked finger raised to her lips – a western practice that she had certainly picked up, but never perfected from her some years in grade school. She did not make the sound quite like you were supposed to, it sounded more like a “suuu” than a “shhh”. But I liked that I didn’t have to see anyone else. I was not accustomed to the touch of unwrinkled hands, my ears disliked the sharpness of voices that weren’t hers. I do not remember as much of my parents in those years. 

– 

Pink things remind me of her: a pale, washed pink, the kind that feels like linen. A comforting color, but one that I would have disliked on anyone else. Pink was the color of the love that loved me with patience when I knew so little about the world, my fingers unable to fold a piece of paper in half so that the corners aligned. Ma-ma showed me how to fold paper airplanes and take paper airplanes and turn them into boats, flipping them inside and out so they could sail along the river that was our hardwood floor. Pink is the color of most things she bought me, adorning my hair, wrists, and neck with all the different hues of her love knowing that even when she could not be with me, the headbands, bracelets, and necklaces could. I put them all into a box and promised myself that if the house burned down this was what I would run back for. So now pink is the color that I always choose for her, in the times when she doesn’t get out of the house enough to choose for herself. Last summer I bought ma-ma a bracelet with dark pink beads, almost red. She didn’t take it off. Not even when she went to bed, not until the day it shattered in the shower and it broke. 

– 

To this day I have never known a love like mine and ma-ma’s. She has raised one brother, one sister-in-law, three sons, and six grandchildren, but I can promise you that I love her the most. She was born on November 22, 1944, according to her identity card, although no one can say for sure whether that is true. I held her ID card between my thumb and forefinger, asking her if she ever noticed the niceness of her birthday. She conceded a low chuckle and nodded with her eyes, saying duh-boh, affirming her relentless hold on the English she learned in grade school and the way the digits came in pairs. Angel numbers: it’s always been you and me.