Partnership for Life: The Ping-Pong Way

Posted by May May 31, 2020

Partnership for Life: The Ping-Pong Way

“Ewan! What a good choice of a birthday theme! Daddy and mommy got to play too. Now we’ve got Archery and Table Tennis, mmmm nice.” Meyer told his son as he got himself ready to challenge me yet to another game of ping-pong.

We got through 8 years of parenting! Got through it like a table-tennis game as we served balls and got them bounced back. “Ping Pong Ping” Sometimes we experience near misses and sometimes we totally miss the table! Sometimes we go 9 balls straight without missing and that feeling is euphoric! Ay… I meant him and me in one team and the kids are on the other team ya? *haha*

Table-tennis is a fun game. We were mostly laughing and with every serve, we got better as we learnt from our lost point in the previous game.

We braved through 三姑六婆’s 好心 and urgency to “Faster give birth. What are you waiting for?” but they didn’t know we were facing fertility issues. We braved through 30 hours of labour with Ewan, terrible epidural side-effect which got me shivering, breathless, vomiting and numbness not from waist down but from head all the way to my toes. We braved through endless quarrels. We braved through contradictions in our parenting styles. We are braving through mid-life crisis and now through COVID-19.

Without us working like a team, serving and bouncing balls back to and fro, it’s going to be so exhausting a journey. I cook, he washes. I clean the house, he entertains the kids. I pick one kid from school, he picks the other. He jokes, I laugh. I create birthday parties, he executes them. He says to call him Mariam [not Meyer], I still prefer to be called May [not Maria]. He scolds me, I scold him harder *woops*

Marriage is a partnership. Most importantly, we must learn how to show appreciation to one another. I hope we have, by now, shown our children what love and respect is leading by example.

I hope they find a partner for life they can play ping-pong with as they date, become man and wife, start a family and hold the fort until the end of days.

Through thick and thin.