Solitary Confinement

the hand that rocks the cradle

Raising a kid is no walk in the park, I tell you. Aside from the feeding, cleaning, pooping, peeing we also have to contend with the Baby Jesse's crying. And oh boy, the boy can cry - sometimes for no particular reason at all! Usually when Jesse gets that way, we'd just talk to him and strangely enough, sometimes it works.

"If you keep crying, I'll sell you to the pig farmers," Mae told Jesse one day, keeping her part in an age-old Chinese tradition of threatening the young. (Every Chinese mother I know has spoken this line at least once in their lives! Hahahha!)

And then, Aunty Mooi joined in the conversation, "Oh no, don't sell him to the pig farmers, send him home with me back to Kampar." And all of them had a hearty laugh over Aunty Mooi's quip. Suddenly, the air turned dense and thick, almost bearing down on Mae's fragile, weather-beaten and weary post-natal body. "I'm serious," Aunty Mooi said. Somewhere, a child's cry shattered the silence and serenity of the land.

When I came home that night, Mae confided in me. "Do you think she might just snap and make off with our baby?" Mae's always had a flair for the dramatic. It also didn't help that she had a fertile imagination.

"She's always discouraging me from breastfeeding Baby," Mae went on, "Maybe she doesn't want me to bond with Jesse." Like I said, Mae's mind is filled with the fantastical. And so I answered her in the only way I know how.

"You better check on her at nights," I told Mae, "Maybe SHE's breastfeeding Jesse!" Mae was mortified. As my words seeped into the dark recesses of her brain, snippets of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle played over in her mind. The evil Rebecca De Mornay had done just that to exact revenge on a woman who destroyed her life!

I sat back and enjoyed the show as Mae went into a mini panic attack. Hahahha! That's when she bopped me on the head and called me an idiot. Bwahahahhah!!

Aunty Mooi had indeed grown fond of Jesse. He seems to have that effect on people. Anyway, over the course of the last two weeks Aunty Mooi had brought up the subject. She was genuinely offering to take him off our hands for a month. We declined, of course. We would simply miss Baby too much. We did, however, promise that we'd take Jesse to Kampar for visits.

Still, in the back of her mind, Mae was still wondering. Was Aunty Mooi a crazed lonely woman?

Last Friday, the night before Aunty Mooi was due to go home, I decided to play with Mae again. "Honey, I think we better hide the house keys," I told Mae with dead-panned seriousness. "What if Aunty Mooi decides to sneak off with Jesse in the middle of the night?" Mae jumped out of bed to grab all our house keys. Hahhahhahhahha!!!

How can anyone not love Mae? :) She's entertainment all-year round.