Will away a Singer machine

2 articles in today's Sunday Times reminded me to stop procrastinating on a  task yet  unfinished. The first article is entitled "Why you should make a Will" and the other is the editorial "Memories Matter". The former jolted my intention to update my will and also helped me convince my husband to write one. The last will I made was some 20 years ago after the birth of my son. I was then in mortal fear that my young children will be deprived should my husband fall into the trance/spell of his wife when he remarries after my passing. So I made a will witnessed by my lawyer and his clerk. I put it in an envelope and left it in the custody of my mother. Years later when my mother was feeling ill she returned the will to me for safe keeping. On the envelop she had written 4 Chinese characters   长命百岁(longevity). That's her ingenuous way to void the superstitiously inauspicious act of writing a will. The law firm is no longer in operation now and I am not sure whether the witnesses (the lawyer and his clerk) are still around or surviving. Anyway changed circumstances do warrant the writing of a new will.

The second article, the editorial is more interesting. Apparently NLB is embarking on a Memory Project to collect and showcase memories of Singapore. The public is invited to submit personal memories like posters, toys, published materials etc. The editor quoted the words of a Czech writer, Milan Kundera: 'The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory" to stress the importance of memories to a nation. I thought hard for a moment whether I have such items. Well the oldest item at home is the manual Singer sewing machine with foot pedal which was passed down by my mum. The image of my mother pedaling the machine is amongst my earliest childhood memories. The machine also bore witness to my endless frustrations having to unpick and resew pieces of clothings to hand in at needlework class. Though it may be a piece of antique, it is not peculiar to Singapore and won't be what NLB is looking for. However it reminds me that it should deserve special mention in my will. I toyed the idea with my daughter, to bequeath it to the museum. She asked me to reconsider carefully because she would be in a fix if no museums want it. She does have a point because even though the grand old dame is more than 50 years old, there are many of such dames floating around. If memories around this machine is to be preserved, it should be within this family. However leaving behind an object without a written history is meaningless. It struck me that I have to write a short memoir about this machine, something like a description of its life since joining our family. If I make it into a nice little booklet to be found when one opens the drawer of the machine, it may motivate my daughter to keep it. The idea excites me and spins to bigger ambition like writing a personal memoir.

 Yea, a Will and a Memoir will be good!