Dad’s Birthday Tomorrow

Christmas has always been special to our family, as apart from remembering Jesus’ birth, we also celebrated my father’s birthday.

My father was born on 23 December, 1938. Our Christmas presents to him were also our birthday presents to him. We used to meet in David’s (my brother) house for dinner and in the last 2 years before we left Malaysia and came out here, Jean (David’s wife) also got us to gather around for some Christmas carols. I think my father enjoyed those sessions. He would enjoy his food and then just watch the grandchildren having a good time. I would join him and just talk to him about the kids.

My father’s IC (Malaysian identity card) had Tay Ah Pang @ Teh Seng Beng as his name. To everyone however, he was Seng Beng. Literally, that name meant “Holy People”. I dont know what my grandfather had in mind when he chose that name. My father was the eldest son, and the second child. “Beng”, or its variations of “Been” or “Meng” became the names for the rest of the sons, after my father. I Meng (3 chek), Tiat Beng (5 chek), Hui Been (6 chek), Kok Meng (8 chek) and Ing Beng (Beh Chek). My father’s sisters are Swee Lean (Tua Kor, eldest child) and Swee Har (Dee Kor).

My father was my great grandmother’s favourite grandchild. Dad loved taking the mickey out of her. I remember photos of him using her garbs to impersonate her. Dad was always the free spirit and though I tell myself that’s what accelerated his return to the Lord, that was also what kept him going. He was a salesman for much of his early life, helping my grandfather peddle goods like soy sauce, which my grandfather made for a while. The old mansion which the family used to live in Kampong Jawa in Klang is still often referred to as “Tauyu Long”, or the soy sauce factory. I still have images of my father tying soy sauce bottles with rafia string into eight bottle bundles and loading them onto a lorry, to be carted around the country for sale.

Perhaps my father’s free spirit grew during those sales days. As a travelling salesman, I guess he tended to be free, mostly. No one told him what to do and he lived his life as he pleased most of the time.

There are so many memories of my father in that old mansion. I have made a previous entry on this but there are so many more aspects to it.

It’s so close to my father’s birthday. He would have turned 68 tomorrow. I need to write this some other time.