Eldest daughters

Marina Mahathir, the internationally respected Malaysian writer and journalist, circulated an email to Malaysian bloggers for International Womens Day. She writes, “March 8 is International Women’s Day. In solidarity with women all over the world, we would like to invite all Malaysian women bloggers ( and pro-women men bloggers) to celebrate this special day by appending the attached IWD logo and linking your blogsite to the IWD website (this is a condition of using the logo) at http://www.internationalwomensday.com. We would also like you to dedicate a post (or more) to yourself, the women in your lives or simply to ruminate on the state of women today. Let’s do it collectively and simultaneously on March 8.”

This post is dedicated to the eldest daughters who came before me.

My Grandma, my Mum’s mother, had always been for me a strong, dignified presence in the family. We did not always see eye to eye and as a girl, I sulked whenever she tried to correct my posture whenever I slouched. But I always loved and respected her and loved to hear the stories she would tell about her childhood in China, the clever eldest daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She passed on that love of storytelling to my Mum, her eldest daughter, who also filled my childhood with stories about her own childhood, about our family and also about the books she had read and the films she had seen.

I did not know my Great-Grandmother very well although she lived till I was a young teenager. She spoke Teochew, a dialect of Chinese that I did not speak and I was most comfortable communicating in English. The strongest image I have of her is the story that Grandma told me of how her mother was a young girl washing clothes in a river in China when my Great-Grandfather, a young man studying at the nearby seminary, came upon her while on a walk with his friends. Their eyes met across the dancing waters and well, here we all are, generations later.

I found this photo below of the four eldest daughters. On the far left is my mother, aged 24 at the time. Next to her is my Great-Grandmother, Grandma’s mother, who would have been around 80 then. Then there’s Grandma in the polka dot cheong sam, aged 49. Finally, there is me - just under 1 year old then. Today, I am not far off the age Grandma was at the time of the photo - but still slouching, I’m afraid.

Grandma loved this photo of us all and she would often look at it with me over the years. She would say to me, “You are the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter.” It makes me feel proud still.