Queen of my Heart - A tribute speech to my mom

Every one has something to say about their mother. My friends call their moms a monster, firstly because the word mother rhymes with the word monster, and secondly, they deem their moms as one! My mom is the queen of my heart, and she’s the most awesome lady on earth! She’s a professional home maker, not simply because she can do the laundry very well or cook wonderful dishes. If that’s all she could do, well, she’d be nothing more than an Indonesian maid.

My mom used to love playing hide-and-seek with me back when I was a kid. That was what I thought. Every evening, I would wait eagerly for the cue to start the game: “Piano time Joash!!” Trust me, I hated practising the piano, and I would run up the stairs, down the stairs, hide in the bathroom and every room in the house to run away from both the piano and my mom. For a 29 year old lady then, my mom had pretty bad stamina, so she sat me down on the piano chair, looked me into the eye and said, “No practice, no ice-cream.” As far as I could remember, that was the last time I played hide-and-seek with my mother.

My mom has a great sense of humour. She takes jokes very well! One fine evening our family was sitting on a table telling the lamest jokes on earth, and my dad said, “Darling, you gave me 2 great sons, ones a joker and the other’s a joke!” Guess what? For the next 2 weeks, she made my dad do all the housework, from washing the floor to doing the ironing, from washing the toilet to bathing the puppies at home. One fine day I came home from school at 6pm and I heard a loud crash from the kitchen. The kitchen door flew wide open, 2 live chickens scrambled out of the door, a knife zinged past the chicken, and guess what! My dad was scrambling behind the ruckus in front. So much for house work, what more cooking..

My mom was a graduate from University of Flinders back in 1984, with a first class honours in chemistry. She came back to Malaysia to work for a plastic firm as a general manager in a branch firm with a starting pay of RM 2000 back in 1985, met my dad, got married and gave birth to me and my brother. Funny thing was as soon as my brother was born, she gave up her job.
A few years back in my secondary school days, I had this opportunity to sit down and just chit-chat with my mom. I asked her why she quitted her job. Her reply was pretty a surprise. “Joash,” she said. “I may have missed out the salary, I may have missed out the reputation, the social status, the functions, or rubbing shoulders with the Datuks and Datins. But I didn’t want to miss the fun of having to chase you around the house, watch you practise your piano and grow up, watch you eating your ice-cream or watch you grow up to be a man and the best you could ever be.”

Now I realized that over the years I built a solid relationship with my mom. It was a blessing my mom didn’t continue working, because I would have missed out all that hide-and-seek games and the opportunity to bond and confide in my mom. Just this Tuesday, I called my mom to tell her some of my problems. “Mom, the girl that I love is hurting me a lot.” “Joash, just let go.” What? I always thought my mom told me to never give up in the exams if not I’d go to sleep with a red buttock! “Some things are just not worth pursuing… besides, I thought you were better off talking to an audience then getting a girl! More so... with your face like a moon crater, your 5 foot 3 height and your father's spare tire, it's gonna be a fat chance you could get a girl now. I tell you what, you come back to Ipoh, I'll fix your face then I'll teach you how to tackle girls ok?"

My message here is simple friends. Every one will have that queen of your heart, whether you realise it or not. And this queen is the one that knows you better than anyone else and she makes you the best that you could be. She is the one that you can go to no matter where you are, no matter what the time and no matter what the problems are. Appreciate them! They will not always be here, so show them that you love them! Give them a hug, a kiss, a call, or a little note or present. After all, it’s always better to appreciate them while they’re still around then to get Chihuahuas to replace them once they’re gone.

Bing Xing once asked her mom, why did she love her? Her mom’s reply was simple, no reason why, but because you are my daughter and you are my darling. Right now I’d probably have a million reasons to why my mom deserves to be the queen of my heart, because she made me all I am, because she brought me to this world, because she made me a musician, but you know what? I don’t need a reason anymore. It matters the least. Realising it or not, she has always, and forever, will be that queen of my life.