LOOK AT US

From what I can remember, there used to be only a few stores in our village growing up. You were considered ‘rich’ if you owned one. It didn’t matter if all you had were a few canned food on the shelves and a few rubbered jandals scattered on the side. These stores aren’t like the 711 here, they’re located as a small extension of your home. It’s mostly closed, and if you need to buy something you either catch the shop keeper while they’re inside the store [with other customers] or you yell out their name and wait until they’re done with whatever it is they’re doing before they can serve you. Usually, they’ll just yell back asking what it is you need and most times it’s either they’re sold out or they don’t have it.

Anyways, I’ve heard stories several times growing up where we were known as the ‘half a kilo’ family. My father was a fisherman and worked both the sea and land to provide for our needs. My mother was a middle school teacher growing up, so in a sense we were considered a middle class family, even though we didn’t own a store.

The only time we would eat meat bought from the store was when my father didn’t go fishing, and when we bought meat from the store it was always ‘half a kilo’. The store keepers in the village knew that if either one of us kids showed up to buy meat – they would automatically reach for the ‘half a kilo’ meat bag. When we get home with the ‘half a kilo’ whether it’s chicken or lamb, my mother would always make soup out of it. Soup, quickly became an everyday meal in our household. We had soup during the hottest summer days and soup during the harsh winters.

When my Husband and I got married a few years ago, we rented our first one bedroom apartment in the middle of South Provo. My husband got a job working at a disability care facility where he was paid minimum wage. We often struggled to make ends meet with the amount of income we had, but we never seemed to go without. The first night he got home from work, I made him soup. He complimented me on the yummy dish and said I did a great job preparing dinner. The following nights, we continued to have soup for dinner. After a few weeks of having soup for dinner, my Husband asked if I knew any other recipes. I replied, of course! When he got home, I had made soup again – but this time I added ramen noodles to the soup! Imagine his surprise.

I’ve often reflected throughout the years, especially now that I’m married with a family of my own, and wondered why was it always just ‘half a kilo’ and why soup?

As I grabbed the last four pieces of chicken meat from my freezer to make soup, I suddenly knew why!

I probably complained every day about having soup for dinner, or why there isn’t enough meat in my soup, or why we never got 1 kilo of meat like everyone else in the village. I envied my friends that had something else other than soup for dinner, and I always made sure that I ate at theirs instead of mine.

Needless to say, I failed to see that during the times we had soup for dinner, my siblings and I probably had all of the ‘half a kilo’ meat in our bowls, which meant that deeply nestled inside my parents bowls was nothing but soup water and veggies. It’s the kind of sacrifices we make as parents for our kids.

So as I sit down tonight to enjoy my hot bowl of chicken soup… errr water, I will do so with a heart full of gratitude.

I have a confession to make: I’m t h a t one Mom that is constantly comparing my kids progress with other kids.

There, I said it! Phew.

When motherhood becomes you, I feel like that is the one thing no mom ever wants to admit but it’s the underlying reason as to why they do the things that they do. It’s the reason why you saw your friends kid with that one cute dress the other day, so you made sure when you got home that you squeeze in time tomorrow to stop by at Old Navy to look for a ‘similar’ dress. It’s the reason why you come home after hanging out with your ‘mommy friends’ and immediately browse Pinterest because you want to find the latest DIY style to make cute headbands for your baby. It’s the reason why you ‘force’ your kid(s) to suddenly learn his/her ABC’S; numbers; colors and shapes. It’s the reason why you don’t feel bad at all for spending $60 at H&M at the kids section, yet you shudder to think what a waste of money it would be if you had to buy something nice for yourself.

You see, they don’t tell you these things when you’re a mother [or maybe it’s just me], but it’s definitely the unspoken rule we’re never allowed to admit. It’s the [modern] epidemic disease most mothers suffer from these days.

 

Well, don’t fret! The good news is that – it only seems to affect your first child because you quickly realize that kids grow out of clothes at a rapidly fast rate and believe it or not, so does your wallet! You get so excited about his first pair of Jordan’s and after just wearing it about three times [because Heaven forbid, you would never let your kid wear the same shoes with the same outfit every time!] you realize it doesn’t fit him anymore. And for a person that sucked at mathematics, you somehow can quickly calculate that if your kid is only 9 months now and he’s grown out of most of his shoes, you have to spend about $1,000 more just to keep up with the latest Jordan’s to fit his growing feet.

Let me tell you, when that second, third or fourth child comes along – you will no longer care about what kind of Jordan’s he has on his feet, nor will you care whether he/she is just turning three and doesn’t know his ABC’s just yet. If you’re like me and you’re the second child, you’ll suddenly understand why you always got your sister’s hand-me downs. lol And back then when your Mom handed you your sister’s dress that she outgrew, you threw a fit and thought, ‘Gosh, my parents hate me! The whole world hates me! Life sucks, I never get any nice things… when I grow up and have kids I’m NEVER letting them feel like this…’ [and you never think out loud of course! because it’s either you’re handed the dress or the laying on of hands… lol]

This morning, when we took the kids to the park to play, my son immediately started making friends with all the children at the park. My husband walked over and said, “your son seems to make friends easily with all the kids here…” [insert major mommy heart explosion] That right there is what being a Mommy is all about. It encapsulates everything for me… that, “we[I] need to care less about whether our[my] children are academically gifted & more about whether they sit with the lonely kid in the cafeteria.”

 

As a little girl growing up, I always thought that I would grow up and be so focused in getting ‘rich’ that I wouldn’t have time to think about the prospects of marriage. Well, life happens and we know that when life happens, things don’t always go our way. In fact, it almost always goes the opposite direction. lol [and oftentimes, never in the right way! lol]

Anyways, when I was planning to get married, I was so focused on just getting myself here to America for the wedding that it never occurred to me to focus on the small intricate details that make up a wedding. It wasn’t until at the end of our wedding dance, when Paane dropped me off to my hotel room did we talk about the ‘small details’ that was going to happen during our wedding reception the next day. We realized that it was probably a good idea that we choose a song as our ‘first song’ as Mr & Mrs Tonga… But, what would be our song? We came up with various songs – one of them being, “Look at Us” but we never made a definite decision on it. We decided that whatever the DJ plays tomorrow at the reception as our ‘first song’ that would be our song.

When we got to the reception, Paane’s Dad told us that instead of the DJ playing a song, he would have his cousin come sing our first song. I mean, it also never occurred to us that there could be a possibility of someone else singing our ‘first song’ live lol [this is where I tell you life happens and you just gotta roll with it] lol We stood in the middle of the dance floor and as we were taking in the moment, the singer started singing, “Look at us!” We started smiling at each other as we proceeded to waltz to the rhythm, knowing that fate has once again smiled upon us and granted us at least this one moment! Life happens! =)

And so, as I was looking for a title for my website – I thought it would be appropriate to name it ‘Look at Us’. It does not in any way mean that we are perfect in our journey through marriage, but rather as we come to embrace the changes such as ‘life happens’, we want to think that years down the road we will be able to look back and say, ‘hey look at us, we did it!”