Mum’s my daughter

 Mum’s pants.

While doing laundry, this was what I found. She always complained nobody brings her to shop. When we did, she would say too expensive and said don’t buy. Lets buy at Miri. When reached Miri, she would say buy at Bandar. It’s a loop. Kept on going round and round. She doesn’t throw away things that were broken. 

Mum and I went grocery shopping. Our car controller ran out of battery. We went to buy a screwdriver. They no longer sell the smaller ones separately. I was deeply frustrated either to buy a good set or a makeshift cheap ones. In the end, mum said the cheap ones. After first use, the tip broke but we use another smaller one which worked as well. Now left in the car to rot. She said she got spare battery and so after fixing it, controller still wouldn’t work. I asked her if it was used but she said it was new. In the end, I went back to the mall to buy a new battery and it worked. Mum thinks it is still working and the battery is rechargeable. She wanted to save money and think she can buy a charger somewhere to charge it. So, she kept the used battery while searching for a charger that doesn’t exist. I had to throw the used battery away while she still looked at what I threw away broken hearted. I searched online for the battery and forwarded to her that it was not chargeable. She was having pretty bad mood from the trip back and I didn’t have the time to do that while needed to drive us both back home.

Tumbler. While we reached Miri successfully after a few rushing road ride and queues for 4-5hrs, Mum’s tumbler is gently leaking out in the container without anyone knowing. She didn’t have time to finish it while we were rushing to set off which took forever because of endless things to look out for. I was looking for things on the 2nd day of CNY. There was coffee smell and the bottom of the container looked light milky brown. Ah. Was that coffee from my mum’s cup that morning. Yup, it was leaking out from the tumbler which I thought was not closed tight. I tightened it later on but found that it still leaked… It was not a good tumbler… Sigh. Bro-in-law managed to help me carried the big container back to hotel room. It was obviously broken but mum kept them.

While at the hotel for our last night there, mum tried to charge a phone. She kept charging but when I looked at it while helping her to charge it, it wasn’t even charging… I said your phone not charging and like your charger broke… She said yalo… sigh… She has been charging it when it was broken. I said from the coffee to the battery incident, if the charger is broken, you should throw it and don’t mix it with good charger. I felt like she was hoping it would be working suddenly if she kept trying… Anyway, managed to convince her to throw away things that are broken else she will waste more time. Hope she didn’t pick it back from the bin.

She used the milo tin can to store her biscuit instead of tupperware. She used things reusable. She stored machines the same way. Hoping they would work someday or able to find parts. Yet, technology comes to past real fast and soon they will be outdated. You spent time which could be used to do other things than to cling on something that might not happened. It is far more expensive than what the machine was once costed. The spare parts that couldn’t be found. If you scrap it away, probably it would give you back a bit of money.

I don’t blame her but whatever she did, I do know that it was for us. She lived frugally but sometimes costed way more. I guess it was what many mother does. If you can’t sacrifice, probably you weren’t a mother yet.