Sunday, and All the Mothers

Click photo for the video diary

Back at Le Meridien for a mid-morning talk, the second visit in as many days. The hotel and I are becoming regulars, the kind of relationship built on conference lanyards and lobby coffee. The talk ran smoothly, though my mind was already half-turned towards the next thing, which was altogether more celebratory.

Lunch was sacrificed — willingly, for once — to attend Azul's son's wedding. These occasions carry their own warmth, the particular joy of watching someone else's family milestone unfold with all the colour and ceremony it deserves. A Malay wedding in full swing is a thing of considerable beauty, and today's was no exception. I fell in naturally with the photographers, as tends to happen when you put a few of us in the same room. There's a quiet camaraderie among people who see events through viewfinders — we orbit the edges, trade notes on light and angles, and occasionally remember to put the camera down and simply be present. A project in mind, too, something taking shape in the background. Early days, but the kind of idea that benefits from being around others who think in frames.

A quick stop at Bangsar Shopping Centre on the way home — the sort of errand that takes ten minutes and serves mainly as a transition between the morning's formality and the afternoon's surrender. Because surrender it was: an afternoon nap, deep and unapologetic, while a storm did its best impression outside. Thunder, rain, the full orchestral arrangement. There's no finer accompaniment to sleep than a tropical storm you have no obligation to be out in.

Then the day's main event, the reason the calendar had a circle drawn around it in the first place. A drive out to Kajang to collect Mak for Mother's Day dinner. The journey is familiar enough to run on autopilot, though the purpose gives it a different weight. Mother's Day is one of those occasions that resists grand gestures — what matters is showing up, being there, letting the evening be about her rather than about anything you've planned.

Dinner at Bakerina. Steak, because some traditions establish themselves quickly and hold firm. The meal was excellent, the company better. Mak in good form, the conversation unhurried, the kind of evening where the table does most of the work and you simply have to sit in it.

Home late, the storm long since spent, the roads quiet. A Sunday that had covered serious mileage — hospital to hotel to wedding to shopping centre to nap to Kajang and back. But the last stretch, the one that mattered most, was the simplest of all. Happy Mother's Day, Mak. The steak says what the words sometimes don't.