Friends

Parents are leaving on a cruise today.

At 1-plus, after lunch and while the cruise ship was still docked in Singapore, my mum whatsapped me a photo. It was a group photo of my parents and all their good friends. All in all, including my parents, there were 5 couples.

I felt all warm and fuzzy looking at the photo and seeing all of their happy smiling faces.

While I can't say I know each of the other aunties and uncles very well, I can safely say that I spent a considerable time with all of them when I was younger. All of them definitely saw me more often than my brother.

They all used to be members of the same country club and often went dancing or swimming or karao-k-ing together. My parents often brought me along with them...By then I was already in secondary school. On hindsight, it was actually odd for a young girl to be hanging out with a bunch of "oldies" haha...

That was some 20-odd years ago. Now the oldest of them is already in his 80s. Gosh...The youngest of them is at least 60 I think. All but one of them are retired. And each of them have their own fair share of health issues to grapple with.

What is heartwarming is that, everyone is still in touch with each other and still remain good friends. They explore places together, new shopping centres together. They go for senior citizen discounted buffets together and go for many cruises together. They lim kopi together and hog the seats at T3's foodcourt for 4 hours at a time just so they can chat together.

I think such friendships are hard to come by.

I'm happy for my parents to have such a circle of friends around them.

And I wish I would have my own similar circle of good friends too when I get to their age......