I'm Reminded

Last night after dinner, was walking out from the coffee shop when something - or someone, better said - caught my eyes.

A little girl beside her mother on a table not too far away. Her eyes were glued to the small empty bowl in front of her. She looked hungry.

The mother had a big bowl of noodles. Pushing the bowl gently to the empty bowl, she carefully picked noodles out from her bowl and filled the empty bowl. Then the soup, spoon by spoon, one by one, until the noodles were semi floating in the soup.

I stood there for a long time. A real long time. The girl tilted her head as she saw the noodles poured into her bowl, and once done, her eyes lit up as the bowl was pushed in front of her. Fumbling over the excessively long chopsticks that her little fingers struggled to grasp, she ate away happily.

It was, to me, more than just a mere show of affection or love of a mother. It reminded me of my mother.

Back in my kindergarten days, my mother would took me to this coffee shop that sold soup noodles. She would order a normal bowl and an empty bowl. When the food arrived, she would dish out half of her noodles and soup into my bowl, and that was breakfast. Along with the noodles would be a cup of ice tea for herself, and a cup of hot milo for the small boy. The shop owner was a nice young lady that had no kids back then. Probably she adored all little children as she would always put a colourful straw and a generous amount of ice cubes on the saucer with it.

One morning, while fumbling over my chopsticks, a thought struck me, and I decided to voice it out.

"Mummy, won't you get hungry if I eat your food?"

My mother smiled, and looked at me. Even then, she already had light wrinkles over by the edge of her eyes, but yet, could never hide the sparkles in her eyes.

I'll never be hungry so long as you're not.

Till this very day, I realized that I will never be hungry, when I'm by my mother's side. Every meal since coming to Shah Alam has never been the same then, and the physical hunger of the tummy would often remind me of the emptiness left in my mother's absence.

Mummy, I miss you, dearly.

But I'm coming home mummy, I'm coming home.