Grandma and her children

My paternal grandma told me alot of her life stories during my stay with her. Though I was very young, some of the them etched deeply in my memory.

Grandma arrived at Singapore in a Junk from Samsui Province, Guangdong, China at the age of 12. Her mother, i.e. my great grandma, had been here working at construction sites. Grandma was matched made and married when she was 19. She had a total of 12 children. The first 10 were boys. Times were bad. Four out of the first five died at infancy, one of them was sent to a church when he was ill. My grandma hoped that he would receive medical attention and be given a fighting chance. "The priest sprinkled some water on him and took him away," she said matter of factly. She never knew what happened to that child. In the interim, my grandpa turned to opium as a form of escape. Life became tougher for the family. The sixth to tenth sons (including my father) survived, and gradually grandpa quit opium. But he could only afford very basic education for them. So all the five boys were street urchins. The last two children were girls. WWII broke out and the girls contracted diseases and died as they couldn't get any medical attention. I often wonder how grandma coped with all these set backs.