Symbolic Space
Once the meaning vanishes, the place dissolves into mere space, awaiting new meaning to transform it into a new place.
A four-room public housing apartment in the city of Singapore carries the label of “Ah-Ma house,” a term my cousins and I grew up using. It’s the term our parents have taught us, and both our generations use the same term to refer to this particular house. In Singapore, we use the term “house” loosely to generally refer to any living space. “Ah-Ma” is a term of endearment for grandmother so “Ah-Ma house” literally means my grandmother’s home.
The above does not necessarily speak of possession though — my grandmother did not own the apartment. We came to associate it with her because that was where she lived, and where we went to visit her. My parents referred to it as “Ah-Ma house” because they wanted to inculcate the value of respect and a sense of hierarchy into me, labeling it after my relation to my grandmother, hence Granny’s home, instead of Mother’s home. Interestingly, my grandfather was still alive then, yet my grandmother was the point of reference instead. Labeling it as “Ah-Ma house” and associating it with my grandmother felt so natural that this is the first time I’m stopping to notice and ponder over it.
Is home a feminine concept, or is the household a feminine concept? In Chinese Singaporean culture, the term “回娘家” (huí niáng jiā) is used to describe a married woman returning to her birth family, especially to visit her mother. Is this the origin of the home’s feminine association? That said, women generally live longer than men; in most families with three generations, children had extended interactions with their grandmothers, and many grew up not knowing their grandfathers. Perhaps, in those households, the homes did belong to the grandmothers.
In my case, my grandmother neither had official ownership of the apartment nor was she the all-powerful matriarch in the household. She was, nonetheless, the symbol of the family. It’s for her that my relatives and I gather; it’s because of her that these ties were kept going. “Ah-Ma house” wasn’t any apartment; it was the apartment I spent most of my early years in, the place I went to be with my grandmother, the shelter in which I could be a little girl again. It houses the memories of my upbringing when my parents were at work, the love and concern Ah-Ma showered me. It was the marker for the close relationship I share with my grandmother, who became the motherly figure for me after my mother passed away.
Ah-Ma was the reason the apartment became a place for me.
Now, what then is “Ah-Ma house” without Ah-Ma? Ah-Ma has passed on, and the only occupants in the house are two uncles, an aunt, and a cousin. Is it still “Ah-Ma house”? How am I to relate to that place now? Naturally, the apartment already feels different without her. The room she used to sleep in, the couch she used to rest on to watch television or nap, the black cushioned chair she used to sit on for meals and whenever she played mahjong. The altar, the shelf above the refrigerator with loose sheets of rough paper for recording lottery numbers, the toilet with grab bars, so many corners and things in the apartment still hold traces of her.
I don’t have to physically be in the house for these tears to fall. Projecting the architecture in my mind’s eye achieves the same effect. I find myself holding back from further describing the apartment, afraid to zoom in to more details, afraid to be reeled into a grief episode. Calling it “Ah-Ma house” brings Ah-Ma and an empty house to mind. I’ve come to know that apartment as a place associated with her, a place that is intensely personal to me. It’s difficult — I’m not ready — to see the house as full with its new occupants to whom I’m also related. To dissociate the house from Ah-Ma is concretizing the fact she’s no longer around. This isn’t any easier to bear. “Ah-Ma house” remains in my heart, for now, as an empty apartment full of Ah-Ma’s spirit and my childhood memories.
In a similar fashion, the extended family shares a WhatsApp chat group with 16 of us in there. The group description still reads “AhMa 91–10 Jun 18 (Sun),” a reminder of the last milestone we spent with her. We were blessed to be able to celebrate her birthday with her one final time in 2019, but that was a low-key event as she had grown much too frail to be up for long. I’ve been pretty passive in the group chat, yet each time it beeps, the notification reveals the group description, bringing my attention away from the sender to that. Even though it’s a virtual space, it has been providing the family — made up of ten households — with a place to connect.
It’s a virtual space with no physical demarcations. One might suggest the server housing the data takes up physical space somewhere on this planet, yet that’s not where I’m going with this. That physical space holds no significance to us. Rather, what are the boundaries of this space that make it a place for us? This chat group was first created by my cousin years ago to facilitate communications and the organization of festive events. However, in the past couple of years, the messages exchanged mainly revolved around Ah-Ma’s care, and details of her hospitalizations. It grew into an information center, a go-to place for questions and issues related to Ah-Ma. Now, it is a place where her offspring congregate, sharing wishes and updates for each other.
A place is a symbolic space — bounded, and imbued with meaning. The associations we make with space transform it into place. The apartment and the WhatsApp chat group took their bearings from Ah-Ma, bringing about their own sets of behaviors, expectations, and connections. In spirit, she held a family of three generations together. For me, Ah-Ma was the symbol of the apartment, and now, the apartment is a symbol of her. If I can no longer refer to that place as “Ah-Ma House,” what becomes of my memory of her?
What will happen when the meanings of spaces change?
—first published on Issue #2 of The Bridge Press
