There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart
– Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist.
My family members are obsessed with the cost of things.
The two questions I hear most often are: “Did you eat?” and “How much was that?”
Discussing the price of something is like breathing to them.
You can’t make a purchase in my household without talking endlessly about how much the item costs, how much everyone thinks it should have cost, how much it costs on sale versus full price, whether or not you used a coupon, and if not, why not?
Like many who were raised during times of severe deprivation and loss, my extended family members never even had the chance to go to school.
Stability became their top priority. Something they held onto tightly.
Their children — my parents and their siblings — picked up what we economists call a scarcity mindset.
Simply put, they always worried about money.
On a trip to the Hong Kong Palace Museum, we all stopped for lunch at the on-site restaurant, where I ordered a latte that was pretty weak.
We chatted for an hour or so before I started feeling fatigued again and got up to buy an espresso — something to power me through the rest of our two-hour walking tour.
When I returned, my eagle-eyed aunt noticed the cup in my hand.
“How much was that?” she asked.
“30 HKD,” I answered. That was roughly RM14-17 at the time.
A murmur rippled through the group.
“Wow! That’s expensive for something so small,” someone said.
My family members conferred among themselves and agreed. It was too expensive. The cup was too small. The ratio of liquid to dollars was all off.
“It’s smaller,” I said, “but has more caffeine.”
My father scratched his head and chimed in, “It is okay, he’s the big shot with, uh … that bank?”
For the next 24 hours, I was roundly trolled for spending thirty dollars.
It was as though I had single-handedly caused the wealth gap.
All in good fun, but proof that in my family no money spent goes unnoticed.
The next time I returned with a drink, and they asked the price, I overdid it.
“It was free!” I said, holding up a huge cup of cream.
They nodded approvingly.
Money took on a whole new importance for all of us 13 months ago when my mother learned she had Parkinson’s disease.
She’s only 69 but suddenly her hands were trembling, and then she began forgetting words. Her personality remains the same — upbeat, playful and positive — but her decline has been rapid and alarming. She can no longer do chores, and we worry it won’t be long before she can’t take care of herself.
She has needed all kinds of new resources, not just copays for her medical bills, but a handle for the shower, a cranial red light therapy machine, slip-on shoes with traction, weighted utensils to help with tremors, a bidet and so on.
No one in my family has the kind of means to handle all this.
So naturally, my wife and I—being in a better spot financially decided to shoulder most of the load ourselves.
“How much was it?” asked my mother when I came home with a Uniqlo haul of elastic, easy-to-pull-on clothing.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied.
And really, it doesn’t. This is what money is for. It took a long time for me to break free of losing everything overnight, but now I’ve come to realise that it’s okay to spend—not just on what’s necessary, but on making life a little easier too.
Before heading out to the meeting, I noticed she was playing a phone game called Ball Sort Puzzle.
It’s exactly what it sounds like. You sort balls into a tube by colour and win points when they line up.
“Good for cog-ni-tive,” my mother said, stretching out the word in a way that made me think my wife had coached her on it.
“How do you find games to download?” I asked.
“Advertisement,” she said.
“So when you’re online, an ad for a game will pop up, and you’ll just click on it and download it?”
“Yes,” she said.
I finally understood why every few minutes, angry commercials were blasting from her phone.
“You’re bad at this!” one of them screamed.
I’m not sure what it was selling — a different game?
My mother patiently waited for the verbal abuse to end before playing another round.
I gently took her phone and downloaded the ad-free version for $1.99.
“How much was it?” she asked.
“Free,” I said.
These are the times when my parents have never complained about the price. The Uber we took every day because my mother could no longer ride the taxi, her acupuncture appointments (thinking it might help with Parkinson’s), her herbal medicines, goji berries, dried scallops, jujubes, a sippy cup to prevent spills, smiley-face squishy balls for hand exercises, spa appointments, melatonin for sleep and walking sticks she won’t use.
Recently, my father sat me down, and we had a frank discussion about what it would cost to take care of my mother as her disease progressed.
“Can’t you hire a full-time caretaker like Nina?” he asked, referring to a Mexican babysitter who looked after Bella when she was an infant.
A live-in helper who handles everything from cooking and cleaning to taking care of the elderly and kids would set you back about $500 a month.
“We don’t need a helper. We need a proper caregiver—a therapist,” I said.
But when I thought about hiring one full-time, the cost seemed way beyond what I had imagined.
“How much?” my father asked.
“I don’t know,” I guessed, “Maybe $100k a year?”
He took out his glasses and phone, opened the calculator app and started doing the math.
“Okay,” he began.
“Let’s say you need help 24 hours, and they only work eight hours a day. One cooks, one cleans, one takes care of your mom. Then you need nine full-time caregivers.”
He paused, squinting at the screen.
“But wait, they don’t work weekends or holidays, so you’ll need another nine for that rotation.”
He kept tapping numbers, taking his time; clearly he was doing a bit.
“Done,” he said with a straight face.
“Turns out you need 50 full-time caregivers. And, best of all, it’ll cost just two thousand dollars a year. No problem!”
We both burst out laughing.
“Yeah, that’s not quite how it works,” I said, shaking my head at his absurd calculation, “And definitely not 50 people.”
“Well,” my father grinned, “You can always ask me.”
I was suddenly overwhelmed not only by his generosity but by everything else as well.
“You don’t have to help,” I said softly.
“I’ll help with one, of course,” he chuckled, “but the other 49 are on you.”
We laughed again, this time with tears in our eyes.
“In this case,” he said, “the cost doesn’t matter.”
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
