Have you ever noticed how sometimes small little things would bring the nostalgic version of yourself ? Or how long forgotten things when you stumbled upon it makes you feel a bit overwhelmed? Or how the smallest detail would spark off the good old memory?
Well, this bubble gum did the job.
When I was 5, I was living in Calgary, Canada. It was veritably hard to find any local halal restaurant and we seldom eat meat. Most of our meals consisted of green and fish, sometimes pasta. But there's this one shop that we always did our groceries. Since I loved doing groceries and I used to be the one who carried the lightest sack, I had a privilege to pick something for the road. I chose Bubble Yum.
A couple of years later, we were back in Malaysia, and I haven't had any one of those for a very very long time, perhaps it wasn't available in Malaysia I thought, until recently.
I found it at a local store -guess I wasn't trying very hard to find it- and out of the sudden, the flashbacks of being 5 in Calgary suddenly popped. How I missed the autumn leaves, those snowy days, candy canes during the winter, iced-lemon tea during the fall, finding warmth under my mother's arms, creating the wildest imagination possible with my brother, and of course doing groceries with my dad.
I was a bit delirious and emotional because I've been searching - again, wasn't trying my best to find it- for this gum for more than 10 years and to me, it was such an outstanding achievement to have finally discover one of the things that revived my fading memories and reminisced me about my childhood in Calgary.
A small matter yet evoked the remembrances of yesteryear.
Oh tetiba rindu family. Satu minggu lagi.