Grateful

I know them through Che Man. It was in a month of Syawal; few years back. We went to their new-big-house at a new housing area. Apparently Che Man had not seen them for quite sometimes. They already have 2 daughters at that time. Their conversation was mostly about the couples’ carriers – they work at the same place. The husband works during normal hours, odd hours and long hours. Everyday. Part of it due to his nature of job. The wife who works in office will have to follow the husband working hours in order to solve their logistic problem. They however do not mind since the money is very good. Their daughters live with dear mother and only spend few days with them every week. We were amazed with the situation. I cannot imagine myself going through that on daily basis. However, the materialistic part of me envies them.

Che Man invited them to our house during last Syawal. They have 2 daughters and a son now. I am glad that this family stayed after everyone else left my house. We spent good one hour talking about our lives now.

The wife has stop working 2 years ago after gave birth to her son. The husband has been terminated from work about few months ago due to some crisis at work. They did not talk about how difficult life has been since the last few months – something I expect them to mention. They mentioned nothing like that. They are jovial couple. I forgot about how difficult life must be for them now when the husband cracked jokes after jokes.

The husband asked me to tapau serunding since his elder daughter loves it so much. She ate everything with serunding. Masalodeh, mee hoon goreng, spaghetti, nasi himpit, satay.

I asked, “Really? I tapau okey...?”

He said, “I am just joking la.....”.

Anyway, I made a mental note to act on that before they leave.

Time to leave. We walked them to their car – a car; we thought. Instead, it was a motorcycle. Five of them on a motorcycle. They left. Happily waved at us. Knowing where they live, they will be on the motorcycle for more than one hour.

We stayed outside of the house picking up some rubbish in the car porch when suddenly Che Man said “Kesian la. Tentu susah hidup dia orang skrang. Ye la... sampai ke tahap jual kereta”. That is exactly what I was thinking.

In the kitchen I was still thinking about them. How life can change drastically? How some people can still show happy faces when they are forced to change their lifestyles coz money is a big issue now?

It reminds me of myself – suka mengeluh about not having this & that, spend my precious time doing this budget & that budget (but never stick to it) and hate the fact that I HAVE to do budget at all, looking at other people’s nicer houses, cars, handbag, shoes, suits and at almost every better things they could afford and secretly envied them. Suka berangan that one day I’ll win something like more-jutaria contest and bring back RM1million in cash.

Why not grateful for whatever I have now?

Then, I realized I was staring at a Tupperware filled with serunding and packets of nasi himpit that I forgot to give them.

Sigh.

I hope they keep the house.

Sigh.