November’s almost over and I haven’t written a thing. I feel a bit guiltier than usual, since November’s NaNoWriMo, which is the perfect reason for me to write. But I definitely haven’t written anything close to 50,000 words. In fact, the only thing I wrote was another story about my grandmother – I’ve been writing down stories based on her life on and off for the past year. I then realised that I haven’t shared any stories, so here’s my first ever story I wrote about my grandma (I need to finish writing these):

“Babies can’t drink coffee,” my grandma says to my niece. “You have to drink milk.”

The baby in her arms is clearly unimpressed. She looks at the coffee cup, wondering when she can try something new.

“I drank coffee when I was a baby,” my grandma continues. “But you can’t.”

“You drank coffee?” This is news to me. I know parenting methods have changed, but in what world would coffee be acceptable for a baby?

“Yes. The Japanese were here and milk was extremely expensive.”

“And coffee wasn’t?”

My grandma shakes her head and proceeds to explain, my niece solemnly listening along.

Back then, there wasn’t enough of everything. But they did have coffee. My great-great-grandfather was a trader and he let my grandma’s family take coffee and a few other essentials.

So they had plenty of coffee and very little milk.

“And because girls aren’t as valued as boys, they gave the milk to the boys and the coffee to me,” my grandma says, completely without rancour. “They used to feed me coffee and bread. And gam too.”

Gam?

Kam?

My brain turns the word around a few times before I admit defeat. In my broken hokkien-mixed-with-mandarin, I ask what gam is.

“Gam refers to porridge water,” my grandma says, laughing. “The soup of porridge.”

Porridge without the porridge? That sounds awful and I make a face.

“That’s how it was,” my grandma continues to explain the past to me, the girl who used to pick fights the moment someone suggested that girls were not as capable as boys.

In those days, girls were not as valued as boys (my brain finally starts to understand what that means). Families wanted to raise their sons but did their best to have other people raise their daughters. My grandmother was unsuccessfully given away three times.

“And the first time, they returned me but kept the baby supplies. My mother went to pick a fight because you can’t return the baby but keep the good stuff.” She chuckles a little at the thought.

“Finally, they found a family who raised me until I was two.”

“And this is normal?”

As normal as anything, my grandma confirms. Everyone tried to give their daughters away. She tells me of relatives, their names flying past me, of how they were given or how they took in.

“You great grandma, her mother, and her grandmother took in so many girls,” she ends. “They were great women.”

I look at the portraits on the wall and their unsmiling faces seem to soften before my eyes.

When I manage to turn my eyes back, my grandma has returned her attention to the now, to the baby in front of her. Soon it will be time for her milk and then there will be a time of rest.

“Do you want to hear more?”