by Vy-liam Ng (he/him)


Something struck me as I read that line, 

“I am trying to pressure myself less on what a friendship should be” 

Jonny Sun. A writer I am both jealous and in awe of. 

What a simple sentence. Such a simple, uncomplicated scattering of words both mundane and significant at the same time. 

It made me feel something. Something which I’ll try to describe with words but is probably better served with imagery. Words are a tapestry of thoughts and feelings after all. At least that’s what I’ve been taught. 

And maybe that’s why I’ve been called a failed writer… 

In any case, Jonny Sun challenged me. And I don’t mean challenge in a confrontational way. No. What I mean is that it really made me think of the barriers I place upon myself as a failed writer with an insecurity complex. 

But instead of friendship, I thought of family. I thought of my grandma, my Yun-Yun sitting by her window knitting, day after day, from early morning till night. 

A frail woman by all accounts, plagued with the diminishing returns of humanity as her mind wanders further into the dark spots. Her questions are always accompanied by a wry smile, while other repeated questions come with a hearty laugh. In her 80 years on this earth, she feels no pressure of what friendship or family should be or could be. At least not anymore. She’s seen and sensed everything that life and people have to offer. 

Pressure of what should or could be, for me, is an albatross around my neck. For Yun-Yun, it’s a spark. A conversation starter for her to regale others with mythos and tales of a life lived through her memories as she knits steadily with focus and strength. 

And it’s knitting - my god knitting of all things that has really given me pause and allowed me to reconnect with her once perfect mind. It would be through a year of lament and anguish, and not forgetting writers block to which Amanda would hound me about, that I would decide to do something other than stare at the wall behind my computer screen. Something magnificent, creative and so far out of my comfort zone that I may as well be on another planet. Something to challenge my boundaries of self and self-worth. 

Something I can pressure myself less about. 

I decided to knit too. 

But why you may ask? Just because. 

I’m a 32-year-old adult male who wants a story to tell and I’ve exhausted everything I have on trashy young adult novella, and tabletop gaming campaigns. Amanda needs something new to publish and I’m tired. There are stories everywhere. Stories that need to be told, hidden just under the quagmire of those societal and life pressures that we live in; and I want to tell Amanda to leave me alone and look for those other stories in the politest way possible. But I’m a failed writer with an insecurity complex and finite funds. I need Amanda more than she needs me but my pressure valve is at its limit. 

Give me time. Give me space. 

So last week, I would order a knitting kit for beginners from Amazon and because we live in the future, the knitting kit met me at the door the next morning. Every day since then, I’ve sat with my Yun-Yun by her one bay window facing toward the rising sun and simply knitted away until that sun set. 

“What do you think about when you’re knitting Yun-Yun?” I would ask her. 

“Anything” She would say. 

Anything and nothing. 

If you don’t love or receive love from your Yun-Yun’s, then I am so sorry for you. There is special purity in the love I feel for her as the cornerstone of our familial bonds. She is symbolic of everything I think my family is. The good and the pure, and I know very little of our hidden evils. Every family has them. 

She knows though. She knows everything and nothing when she asks me who I am. 

Throughout the past week, in her moments of lucidity, she taught me how to knit, how to purl, how to step back and correct my mistakes. I’m so stupid for not seeking out her counsel throughout every peak and valley in my life when I had the chance to. My mistakes of youth and beyond are plentiful and receiving a parable of wisdom from Yun-Yun would have helped me avoid so much needless heartbreak. I admit, the stubbornness and the audacity of adolescence really stunted my emotional growth but growth is a lifelong venture I guess. 

Growth without judgement is what Yun-Yun knows best and whatever time I have left with her, I will think as time left for me. 

I asked as we started another row on our needles, “Did you knit back in Malaysia?” 

Yes of course she replied. They taught knitting as part of their home room classes in the schools of British Malaya. All the girls were taught knitting, cooking and homemaking. And what of the boys you may ask? 

It is what you think she told me. A system of a more archaic time when gender norms were deemed “normal”. Boys were scouts and warriors, while girls were maidens who, if they excelled at their maiden voyage, maybe, just maybe, could also be seen and treated as princesses. 

She laughed at that thought. 

She was never the princess. She described her school years in British Malaya as a time of reckoning for both herself and for her country. A young schoolgirl in a country caught between multiple cultures, trying to reforge a national identity in the aftermath of war and imperialism. If her lifetime, she only knew Malaysia, or Malaya as a nation embroiled in conflict of what it should be. An allegory for how, she herself wrestled with being who she was. A rebel with a cause in a time when people of power held that authority over you and only told you what they think you should be. Not what you are. 

With British rule and influence, she was a Christian-Chinese immigrant in a Muslim land. They were brought there as labourers and lifted high by the British as the good kind of brown. She was by default, privileged by minority standards at least, and free to act a rebel, only holding fear for a light scolding as long as her or her parents didn’t rock the boat too much. 

I noticed her gaze toward the quiet cul-de-sac outside. Quintessentially British and far from Malayan lands of the past. She said with a quiet resonance that she could not find fault in the animosity those Malaysian natives held toward the Chinese back then. And I see her point. 

We knitted in silence for just a second longer to let that sink in. My phone illuminated with a message from Amanda to which I happily ignored. 

Yun-Yun would return to her row and beckoned me to continue too. Probably before she forgets what she was doing or saying. She was telling me a story that I needed to hear. 

With a sadness in her voice, she reminisced about a time, while under the shade of those large, leafed Malaysian palms that sat below the South-Eastern Sun, she witnessed death for the first time. 

With colourful vividity, she recalled for me a scene that I have no hope of relating to in my uneventful suburban British life. A memory of when she was five, maybe six, looking upon the only stone bridge in her hometown. A man with a familiar face was on his knees with a cloth tied around his eyes. He was facing out toward the silent stream and everything around them was hauntingly tranquil. Two other men, with faces like hers but dressed in the attire of their occupiers stood behind this man with swords drawn. Not white faces of those previous colonisers, Asian faces from the east who came upon their shores with blades and fury. 

With one shout and a swift blow, she remembered seeing that sword coming down across the familiar man’s neck. Another sword would go through his heart. I can imagine this stillness of this memory for it to be so well imprinted upon my Yun-Yun’s broken mind. 

She didn’t blink. She said that she didn’t flinch. She knew that this was the reality of war and they could not rock the boat any further than they had. In that scene, she knew what she had to be for she was shown through the violent actions of others. Be silent. Be suppressed. Be smart. As this is the only way to survive. 

Even as a child, what was essential was to have the resolve and the strength of what grown men are taught to have but never show. 

It’s that strength I wish I had too but Yun-Yun carries enough for all of us. 

We would start another row on our needles. She looked up at me with openness in her eyes. A second of doubt. But I think she knew who she saw as I was met with a nod of recognition and love. 

“Why did you come to England Yun-Yun?” 

“Why not” she said with a chuckle. I know without her telling me why she’s here, whether she can remember to admit it or not. Her prodigal son, my prodigal father could not live here alone. Not without the support only she could provide him. 

He was one who thought he could embody the good and the pure of our family, but he was nothing but an angry man. A man filled with hostility and hatred toward a world he deemed unfair to him. Yes, as a young man, he experienced the pains of discrimination and racism in the UK. He grew bitter toward those he saw as the ones with a foot on his neck. How, as an enterprising, Chinese man, he could never succeed in the land of those colonisers no matter how hard he tried. Obviously, he couldn’t do that. Not on his own. One man, even with an indomitable spirit cannot deconstruct the evils of empire. And without community and support, he would allay those evils upon us. 

I would know. I was there. 

Only Yun-Yun could cleanse his soul and I’m so glad she travelled the oceans to do just that. 

If not for her, our lives living in inner-city Birmingham, with a man who only knew how to engage in savagery, would not be as fruitful as it ended up being. It was only because of Yun-Yun and the impudence of her spirit, that I could even have the freedom and agency to end up a failed writer knitting my days away. 

I cannot. For the life of me and my loved ones, express how much I needed her. I say needed because she is happy for today. Tomorrow I will see her again and we’ll knit more. She’ll tell me more stories of her past, and I will listen because I need to listen. But tomorrow may also be a silent day wherein we just knit. 

For her, tomorrow, by that one bay window, she may be knitting with a hushed shadow beside her. Although I hope, despite the frailty of her physical form, she will always feel in the dimension of self, that the shadow beside her loves and needs her more than anything. 

I don’t want her to live forever just because I enjoy her company or her stories. Her stories deserve a better writer to tell them. 

I want her to live forever because I fear the pain of mourning her. 

I know it will come one day. But until that time, I will resolve to needing her. 

by Vy-liam Ng (he/him)