Last Sunday, I had a chance to take care of an adult whose body size was smaller than mine. No, I didn’t do voluntary work by visiting a hospital. The one I had to take care of was my mum!
Early in the morning when I woke up, it seemed a strange accident had happened in my flat. I dragged my feet out of my bed slowly and looked around to see whether there was a stranger in my house as I heard some noise. When I stepped into the living room, I saw a piece of paper on the dining table. My curiosity made me pick up the paper and had a look at the words written on the paper. It said, ‘ Here comes a challenge! Let’s see whether you understand how hard your mum’s life has been up till now by today’s evening. Take good care of her! ‘
After reading the content of this paper, I found my mother had become 20 cm tall. I was dumbfounded. Then I realized that a magician had sent me a challenge of taking care my miniature mum for one day. I did not know what to do and looked at mother from top to bottom.
First, I had to make clothes for my mother to wear. The clothes which she wore to sleep shrunk with her body, so it was perfectly fine for my mother to wear those clothes at our home. However, she had to go to Mong Kok to have a Japanese class.She could not wear the same outfit! So I changed my doll’s dress a little bit by extending the length of the dress to fit my mother’s height. My mother loved the dress and kept praising me. I was proud.
Next, I asked my father to go out and have brunch with mother and I so that he could also take care of my mother. I cut the toast into very tiny pieces and put some fried eggs on top of the toast so that she could also enjoy her breakfast. After my mum had told me she was full, we went to Mong Kok by bus. During the bus journey, my mother stood in my T-shirt’s pocket and she said that it was an amazing bus journey!
I had to take my mother to the washroom after arriving at the place for us to learn Japanese. I put a plastic board which had a hole for her to go to toilet on top of the ‘sitting’ part of the toilet. I also gave her a piece of toilet paper for going to the toilet. Then, we had our Japanese lesson. My mother took notes by using a piece of paper which was folded into a book-like shape as her notebook. She also told me to record the whole lesson for her to revise later aas the teacher’s voice was too loud for her.
Finally, when we arrived at home, it was almost 7 p.m. as we took a long time walking back home and dad wanted mum to breathe in fresh air by walking. My mother grew back to her normal size and her dress grew in size with her, too! My mother told me happily that that was the best dress she had ever worn. She also said that she would see it as the most precious thing in the world as that represented the love between mother an daughter.
I knew that I finished the challenge successfully when I saw the big word, ‘Passed’ on the paper. Now, I understand the difficulties of taking care of a child-like person and how hard my mum’s life has been up till this moment while taking care of a rebellious and naughty girl like me. I hope that I can have more chances to offer care to my mother and make her happier in the future.