Reka's World

In Memory of My Mother

Following the first anniversary of my mother’s passing last November, I want to share this letter, which I shared with everyone at that time.

Dear friends,

A few of you knew but most of you do not know that my mother died a little over a week ago. I was not able to go to Thailand because of my health.

Thank you for all your condolences. This is my first attempt to acknowledge it, please forgive me.

I spent most of my time until yesterday at the Thai Temple in Mt. Vernon. It is our custom to engage our religion into our lives and make offerings and sacrifice for the loved one.

Nothing dramatic, we make an offering to the temple, the monk and the poor or someone in need. Every morning I made wonderful dishes and brought them to the temple, I brought flowers and necessities including money and the monks chanted and taught us about the uncertainty of life, and talked about my mother and my family in general. The monks have to start their meal before 11 AM and to most of them, that's the only meal they have each day. There were a lot of people and we brought enough for everybody. We end up with a lot of elaborated meals. I then stayed around, had a wonderful lunch and helped with what needed to be done at the temple. Mostly mundane work, such as stuffing the envelopes for their thousands of members. It is a beautiful tradition, I was comforted by the surrounding, the monks comforting words and warmth from all my friends.

I am content with not being at the funeral, I called Thailand and they called me. I was told that because mother disliked modern medicine, she had never been to the hospital for sickness and she made her own medicine. They had her in a beautiful refrigerated coffin. After she was cremated, we donated a bed to the hospital and gave them all her things such as wheelchair and bed. We donated money to the temple, to the clinic, and added to her scholarship fund.

Mother was born well, lived well and died well. Almost all the relatives came to the funeral. It was a big funeral even though she was humble, and was far away from her hometown. She wanted to die a few years ago because she said her body had enough, but we were not able to let her go. We were given an opportunity to give back a little to her.

She devoted her life to her children. Father died from an accident when we were young, and she raised us all by herself. Kay, my sister retired from her nursing in Houston and went home to give her the best care. All of her five children were with her for a while when I was able to make a trip, and we had a wonderful time together. She told me not to come to the funeral because that was better.

I am blessed to have a selfless family; I am blessed to have all of you as my friends; and I am truly blessed to have had my parents who raised us well.

With all my love,
Reka

12/3/2009

 

My Parents' Wedding

 
My parents were married around 1940. Judging from the picture, I knew she had a big wedding.  When I asked my mother, she said they had about 5,000 guests. This included not only distinguished guests such as representatives of Chiang Kai Shek and dignitaries from Singapore and Malaysia but also employees in my father’s company.  (My father ran his uncle's rubber company.  Based in Singapore with plantations and factories in Malaysia and Thailand, the company employed more than a hundred thousand people at that time.)  All the workers who were invited were given new clothes, presents, money, and a few days off. 

The wedding banquet was set up with round tables that sat ten each.  In the middle of each table, a bottle of Hennessy Cognac awaits for serving.  While distinguished guests were served fancier Chinese courses, everyone else partook of what could be the best meal they had ever had.

My parents’ honeymoon took six months as they traveled all around to visit elder relatives who could not make it to the wedding.  They received many gifts and well wishes. Most gifts were of gold, set in different forms, but I remember what my mother's favorite gift was—a beautiful dark blue short jacket delicately embroidered with a small bouquet of flower on the left shoulder.  It was custom-made in England for her tiny body. (She was so tiny that her wedding ring would not fit any of her children's fingers.)

Born To Write

Poetry
I believe that I was born to write, because I love to read. My parents loved to read so, growing up, we always had books everywhere at home. My mother could recite from memory—of the few we had had at home--Thai epics almost in their entirety.  In fact, my mother would use whole verses from some appropriate epic content when my siblings and I were scolded for our misbehaving.

The biggest part of my writing is poetry dating back to when I was still a small child.  At a very young age, I acknowledged the phenomenon of using poetry for recording memories.  Once I came upon various sets of writing tablets that were filled with beautiful scripts of medicinal remedies.  They belonged my great grandmother, a famous healer. My mother explained that my great grandmother wrote them in the form of poetry then memorized all the remedies by heart.

And Prose
When I was a teenager I also sent in my short stories to publishers and they were very well received.

However, the first one was sent back to me with a note from the editor.  She said she liked the story but her typesetters were not able to read my script.  She asked me to print it then send it back.

When my sister Renu heard about it, she bought me my first typewriter.  Renu was working as a nurse then.  She had given me her full month’s salary to buy me this typewriter and that I will treasure forever.

Early Attention
But it was for my poetry that teachers and schoolmates most often praised me at school.  “Your writings are great but your poetries are phenomenon”, one of my teachers announced.  At the age of eight, I truly felt that it was my first certification for a future career as a poet.  I still remember all of my early poems because of the deep impression such positive responses have given me.

When one of my poems was published in a children’s magazine, the whole school started calling me “Sri-prach” or “Soonthornpoo”, the most renowned poets in Thailand in the 18th Century. Some even called me “Shakespeare”. 

Once, one of the teachers said in class after he has read one of my poems,  “Judging by her work as a child writing something so complicated like that would take a 25-year old poet to accomplish; that makes her a genius in the poetry field.”  After that my classmates also started calling me “genius”.

We were always having impromptu poetry contests against other schools, colleges and universities. I was also known as “the fast and sweet one” because I could write for any given topic in minutes.

Looking back, I feel quite humbled by all the praise and attention.  As a young poet, I truly appreciated being part of that golden era in Thailand that I was blessed to be in.

An Audience of Royalty
At one time, a few poets and I had a private audience with His Majesty the King’s Mother, at her Srapratoom Palace. I also had audiences with a few princes and princesses who also loved poetry, held either at their palaces or at other poetry events where they presided.  We were honored but truly felt nervous until the secretaries briefed us on how to conduct ourselves, and that put us at ease.

Years later in America, I was asked by one of the princesses who lived here, Princess Hiranyachatra, to meet with her brother and show him around because we were both writers and wine lovers.  Prince Prem remains a legend even after he had passed away. He was only eleven when he was sent to England to further his studies. I had read about him as a child for his love of Literature and that when his father, King Rama the Fifth, asked him to study Engineering instead for the good of the country, he finished his Engineering study but stayed on to study Literature in Oxford.  He translated a few Thai epics to English and French and produced a few plays in both countries. He later started The Standard Newspaper and The Gourmet Club of Thailand when he went back to Thailand.

I had enjoyed my friendship with Prince Prem and his wife, Princess Ngamchit, for years until they both passed away. Even after Prince Prem’s passing, I still bring a special bottle of wine to add to his collections at the Siva Court where we had spent many happy moments together.  Whenever I brought wine, the princess would always say, “Too bad that the monk does not drink alcohol so we cannot offer it to him in his afterlife.”
Prince Prem and Princess Ngamchit have both been very kind to me.  At the princess’s funeral, my name was mentioned in the books that were given out to people during the service.

I also met Prince Prem’s youngest sister, Princess Vimolchatra, at The World Congress of Poets Convention in Thailand.  She said to me, “My brother told me you are the happiest girl in New York.”  I responded, “No, Princess, I am the happiest girl in the world. I compare myself only to me.”  She told me to write a book about my life.

Thailand reveres the Royal Family and, in their annual yearbooks, all the colleges reserve a special place to pay homage to our King and Queen. I feel great honor being asked to write that homage every year when I was in college. I would pick the most complicated form of Thai poetry and carefully search for just the right words to fit just the right spaces.

Prose and Poetry 101
In 1989, my closest poetess friend called to tell me that Thailand is hosting The 10th World Congress of Poets Convention and that I should attend because one of my poems was selected to be a part of the collections for the event.  I attended the Convention and met so many interesting poets from all over the world.

When I was showing my poem to one of my professors who came to visit with me during the event, she said, “Oh, they are using the same one we are using.” She had revealed to me that for many years, my poem had been a part of “Prose and Poetry 101”, a staple college textbook in Thailand.

The following day, as a gift, she gave me a copy of that textbook.  I wrote that poem about Thai music when I was 13 years old.  It was part of my first poetry collection that I had completed two years later.  I stared at my name and the date it was published.  I stared at the pages with my poetry in it.   At first I found it incomprehensible.

Then, of course, I was elated.  I recalled my teachers and schoolmates calling out to me, and for five minutes I felt like a genius.  It also brought me back to when I first saw my great grandmother’s poetry of remedies. I felt really honored, as if I were royalty.