For The Love Of The Family

When Raja’s mom proposed a trip to Templar’s Park last weekend, I was more than excited. I was stoked! My eyes widened, staring intensely into space, blurring everything in its way, and my ears deafening laughter around me as I lost my way sliding down a trip to memory land. Reminiscing somewhere back when I was a little 12 year old girl.

My mum had brought my family along with my cousins up to Templar’s Park. The long exhausting drive to our destination was immediately washed away by the icy cold splashes from the breathtaking waterfall. I can still feel the warm sun rays painting our faces in stripy yellow hues as it penetrates itself between the hovering tree leaves above us.

Nature was something my mum thought us to love. And I love her for that.

Ironically, at the bottom of the waterfall was this Olympic size man made pool, about 8 feet in depth. Seeing that my brothers and I attended swimming classes as little as 3 years old, 8 feet was somewhat non-life threatening for us. My cousins however, all four of them, had no swimming experiences whatsoever, so they spent the day clinging to the sides of the pool.

After spending hours in the semi nature pool, with the sun shining at the tip of our heads, blatantly signaling that it was lunch time, my brothers and I crawled out of the pool. Soaking and dripping wet, our tummy growled even harder as we chewed hungrily into our sandwiches.

Everything was perfect. Until suddenly, there was this loud commotion coming from the direction of the pool. It all happened so fast, yet so slowly. It’s really hard to explain.

From where I was seated, I saw Azrin in the water first. He was steered a couple of feet away from the side of the pool. His safe area. Aware of his desperate cries for help, his elder brother Azmi instantaneously jumped in after him. It was amazing. He jumped in to save his little brother, which obviously turned out to be a foolish idea seeing that neither of them knew how to swim.

It didn’t stop there. Next, their sister Shima, loosened her grip from the side of the pool and unhesitatingly pushed herself into the middle of the water to save her two drowning younger brothers. Now, there were officially three people choking water and violently gasping for air. As a finale, their eldest sibling Lia, leaped from the side of the pool and splashed into the drowning trio making herself the final member of the drowning fools.

My mind was going into slow motion as I watched my cousins flapping their hands wildly above the water with their heads bobbing in and out like a cherry. They were ALL drowning!

Fortunately, several men, who made sure they knew how to swim first, jumped into the water and pulled all four of my cousins into safety. My mum was clearly worried out of her mind. I, on the other hand, was just baffled at what I had just witnessed. Why? Why would anyone do such a thing? They were still too shocked from their mass near death experience to explain.

As I sat there in Raja’s mom’s living room, my eyes finally relaxing and my ears allowing the laughter to race back into me, I realized that it was all about love. Foolish as it may seem, leaping into the arms of death one after another, it was all for the love of the family.

Here’s a shot of Raja and two of his cousins during our trip to Templar’s Park using my iPhone. I’m pleased to announce that no mass drowning incident occurred during this trip. I just hope that should an unwanted event ever happen, there will be others out there to leap for me too. For the love of the family.