Gifts

Gifts come in various shapes and sizes.

The gold wedding band that encircles my finger was a gift from a friend who is like a grandmother to me. She was a child of five, born during the second world war. A girl who lived through the great depression. When money was tight and food was scarce, her parents bundled her and her sisters to an orphanage in Grafton, where the nuns cleaned, clothed, fed and educated them. She came out a resilient, strong-willed, and independent woman who taught me never to be afraid to speak my mind, to seek my own answers and fortune in the world.

The engagement ring, with its large, sparkling diamond perched up high, was inherited from Mamih, Indo-Chinese for Mum. A daughter betrayed by her own mother, who sold her future to my father, a man who was already married, but wealthy enough to provide for her extended family. Mamih fought against family and public opinion to leave him and raise two daughters single-handedly. To survive, she worked long hours and learned to sew, enabling her to sell rags and clothes to put food on the table. Despite not being allowed to finish high school, she scrimped and saved, then uprooted us all from Jakarta across to Australia with the goal of lifting her children out of poverty. She was a grandmother before she passed away from breast cancer at the young age of fifty-seven.

These two rings currently adorn my finger. They were chosen by my Australian-French husband to replace the beloved set he had given me when we married over twenty years ago, which are now too small for my thick hands, swollen from my third pregnancy.

All of these rings represent part of the circle of people I have been blessed with. People I have had the fortune to know, enriching my life with priceless stories and golden memories.