A Love for Learning
Every day for the past two weeks, I have been taking my mom for a drive. Each day, she points out the same stop sign. When she sees the merge sign, she warns me about traffic coming alongside. She is delighted by a simple sign at the back of the bus that says “Thank you for giving way”. She chuckles at the paternalistic Singapore road banner urging us to “leave our roads with smiles”.
On every drive, my mom sees the world anew. She studies each road sign with intent, as if seeing it for the first time and trying to memorize its message. She suffers from Alzheimers.
Just as she lived life on her own extraordinary terms, she now confronts this heartbreaking disease in her own way.
She was one of only two Queen’s Scholars chosen annually in British Malaya—an extraordinary feat, especially for a Chinese woman at the time. It led her to Cambridge, England, where she read Mathematics. She went on to become a professor and a leading scholar in the history of mathematics, earning the Kenneth O’May Prize — the field’s highest honor.
The doctors are astounded at her level of reading comprehension given how long she has been afflicted. The disease is cruel and seems to lay bare her true personality without social constraints and pretense. One thing is clear: Ma has such a love of learning that she is still trying even as her faculties are literally failing her.