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Happy birthday, Aunt Jessie!

Not my real aunt by blood, but closer to me like a second mom, Aunt Jessie is probably my favoritest adult in my life - that is, if I can still count on the kid-in-me.

Best friends with Momma for almost forty years, she was the girlfriend in those times. She's always been there for Momma, forty years ago and forty years on since. She was there when Momma was still dating my Pa. She was there when I was born. She was there when my Momma needed a babysitter for Kor and I. She was there every other day for us before she became one of the first few Singaporeans to head to China in the late eighties or early nineties, I can't remember.

And she's ten whole years younger than Momma.

It amazes me tremendously. When I think hard about that age gap, like I did just last night, I start imagining myself becoming best friends with any of those 18-year-old chicks I see at the games everyday. Er... how can? They are so... I shall reserve my comment here. And when I do my math, I am pretty certain Aunt Jessie must have been just all of sixteen or so when she first met my Momma.

It is a feat. Especially when I think about how hard I have to keep up my own chickships, after having gone through school and all the similar life stages.

It is definitely a feat, especially when I know Momma and Aunt Jessie have never once fallen out with each other. Momma goes through rather crappy relationships with her own sister - but never with Aunt Jessie.

My Aunt Jessie is like the coolest chick I know in her fifties. Never once married, she has no kids (I think she dislikes most other kids because she can't stand their nonsensical behavior) and I have never seen her needing a man in her life. For as long as I've known, she has been on her own. Before she got herself a bigger place, she had this tiny little one-roomer in which she used to hibernate for 72 hours straight. Momma used to worry tons when her phonecalls never got answered. And when she finally woke, she'd taxi a few blocks across one street over to my place for dinner. Yes, that's my Aunt Jessie.

Aunt Jessie is never lonely. She has plenty of friends, some scattered across the world, and she always comes back to my Momma. Most of all, Aunt Jessie is always cheerful, always happy, always so full of energy she puts me to shame at times. She's like the only adult I can pull my crap wit on. But I suspect I love her best because she's playful like me. Yes, at her age, all she still thinks of is having fun and a well-lived life.

Aunt Jessie sails the seas. In faraway exotic places in Europe and the Middle East. She names me French towns I have never heard of and tells me stories I can only fantasize of in my own dreams. She drinks the purest of waters from the streams and eats the best of caviers any Sultan could afford. Yes, she gets paid tons while travelling and experiencing life. She isn't home for months, and Momma and I get to see her maybe two or three months in a year. Still, she and Momma are tight as ever.

I know what's gonna happen in time to come. Me and Aunt Jessie, I'm gonna love and take good care of her like a daughter would her own mom.

I remember when I was a small girl, I used to look at Aunt Jessie and listen to her stories, and think, "I want to be like Auntie Jessie when I grow up."

Come to think of it, I am still captivated by her stories exactly the same way I was more than twenty years ago. If you'd ask me, I'd still want to be like Auntie Jessie... when I grow old. :)


To everyone else, happy Friday-the-13th.