On cloth and hands and work and love 

(I wear my granddad’s clothes, I look incredible) 

Janelle Koh

When I was five, my grandfather would pick me and my sister up from kindergarten, usher us into a cab, and take us home. Back at our house, he would thank the taxi driver (‘kam xia’ if they were Chinese, ‘terima kasih’ if they were Malay), hand him some folded notes he kept in his shirt pocket, and have a quick cigarette outside our apartment before bringing us inside, smoke still streaming from his lips.  

For as long as I can remember, my grandfather always dressed the same. A white cotton singlet under a collared, button-up short sleeve shirt that my grandmother kept pressed and ironed. Long grey pants billowed around his lean legs, worn brown slippers encased his feet. Before he retired, my grandfather was a coolie, carting sacks of rice off boats in the Singapore harbour. Later he became a foreman himself, supervising those that he had come before. I always thought his outfit, worn so regularly as to become uniform, reflected his own career as a reformed labourer – the common singlet dressed up with a pressed shirt and collar. The working man made dignified.   

As he grew older, less mobile, my grandfather took to sitting on the bench outside his flat, right arm resting comfortably on the wrought metal railing. Though he would go downstairs on his own, neighbours, friends and relatives invariably encountered him, and eventually learned to seek him out, stopping for a chat, bringing him snacks or a coffee. Even when our family made the yearly pilgrimage back to Singapore and visited without notice, we learned to expect that he would be at his bench. He’d greet us as though we had never left, ask us ‘jia pa bui?’ (‘have you eaten?’ in Hokkien) and hand us notes out of his breast pocket, urging us to go get something to eat.  

When even the journey downstairs became too taxing, my grandfather would still make the pilgrimage from his bedroom to the living room of his flat. In the comfort of his home, social restraints and the need for pants fell away and revealed the blue boxers that he had always worn underneath, hand-sewn by my Da Yi (oldest aunt). His once-buttoned shirt now hung freely from his shoulders, showing the white expanse of his singlet underneath, and the gentle rise of his stomach. He slouched a little now in his chair next to the fan, waving medicated oils under his nostrils and slathering analgesic lotion on his neck and shoulders, complaining about his ailments. The tails of his shirt wrapped themselves about him from time to time when they caught the scent of a breeze, making him look carefree.  

In his final years my grandfather adopted a new hobby – folding tissue paper. He would ask his helper to buy value packs of tissue paper from the Fairprice down the road, specifically the 3 ply ‘Extra Soft and Thick’ facial tissues (notably, at $5.45, the most expensive tissues Fairprice had to offer). He would pull two pieces out of the box at a time, layer one into the creases of the other,  refold them into a single piece, and replace them in an empty tissue box. It was deft, delicate work that nobody but him had the patience for, this weathered old man who had spent so much of his life working with his hands. In an instant, the hands which once hauled rice now gently cradled tissue paper, and the thought of all which was lost, and all that would become of him made us want to cry.  

My grandfather took to tucking wads of 6 ply tissues into his shirt pocket, using the double strength tissues from time to time to mop his brow or cough into. He pressed his tissues upon us too, urging us to take boxes and boxes of them home with us each weekend. For a time, my family’s life became both domestic and dystopian as each trip to and from my grandfather’s house had to account for the boxes of tissue paper that my aunts and cousins had to cart away each weekend. Vehicles had to be arranged. But eventually supply well exceeded demand, and soon giant bags of reassembled tissues filled the spare room, stacked and towering and gathering dust. It wasn’t until the funeral that my grandfather’s tissues saw the light of day again, adorning every table at the wake. We grasped at them indiscriminately and blubbered into them, letting ourselves be comforted by both their strength and softness. Even though he was gone, his steady hands guided us still at his own funeral, and I wondered whether this was what he had planned for all along.   

— —

In the poem On work, Kahlil Gibran asks, ‘And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.’ 

My memories of my grandfather are threaded with love, but also with work. His love was that of a man who worked with his hands. He was no craftsman but a simple labourer, yet there was a gentility to his ways, a pride and dignity that clothed him until his last days. He died wearing his cotton singlet and shirt. In his breast pocket was a $50 note, folded neatly in half. The note was changed into 5 cent pieces, one of which I was given. Just like that, a coin and some tissues form the extent of my material inheritance. But what I have inherited, which I can no longer lose, is the sense of his love, callused and quiet. A love that was well worn, but also worn well, though in knowing him I’ve since lost sight of the difference. Thinking of love in this way makes me wonder, is it so bad to be made weary by love? If as Rilke suggests, love ‘is the work for which all other work is merely preparation’, then could I ever do better than my grandfather? His constant desire to work, to create and provide reminds me that love is something that must be made real. A fabric that must be worked, shaped into a garment that might clothe another. How does one clothe another with love? It is to place hand over heart, over and over. It is to learn how to give.  

Even though I’m writing and thinking of my grandfather, I am thinking of myself too – of my own masculinities, and the roles that I play in my own relationships as a queer person.  I feel myself leaning into my ‘maleness’, the changes in my posture as I orient towards her. I am quiet and slow, as though making space for her thoughts and feelings. I try to listen, more than I speak. For her, I try to give, like my grandfather taught me. I emulate him, and his love for me in my own relationships. I do so despite knowing the way he treated my grandmother in their middle years before I was born. Age mellowed him, and all was forgiven. But I can’t help but wonder whether some remnants of his past remained in the kind, quiet man who raised me, and in myself also. Are our masculinities, and the values we attribute to them always suspect? Perhaps they never really are quite as pure, or as good as we make them out to be. But I cannot deny the pride I feel, that derives from being my grandfather’s granddaughter. To be the granddaughter of a migrant labourer, a man who lived (and worked) through the pains and joys of beginning anew. And perhaps (or so I hope), he was someone who lived (and worked) through his misdeeds too.  

— —

Maybe the love my grandfather clothed me in was patchwork. Maybe some squares were as strong and as fragile as the tissues he folded, so easily pierced by a sharp enough edge. Maybe it wasn’t enough, yet it always had to be. Maybe he knew this and so wrapped his shirts tightly round his body, with dignity pressed into their seams. Maybe my grandfather dreamed of being unflappable. Maybe, so do I.   

Like my grandfather, I favour collared shirts. Crisp white shirts with a jumper in winter, and Cuban shirts in summer. After he passed, I took a renewed interest in ironing my own shirts. The familiar combination of cloth and hands and work made me feel closer to him. I savoured pressing creases into oblivion, running a crumpled shirt clean. When I wear a collared shirt, I am dressing ‘up’, doing away with the presumed casualness of my encounters. Yet I find myself caught between the shirt’s clean lines and sharp edges, which I temper with colours and textures. A collared shirt swamped in an oversized patchwork sweater, or a Cuban worn open with a t shirt underneath. In this way I am always negotiating my masculinity, though never quite compromising on the collared shirt, how it is always to be treated and ironed with care.  

Perhaps I adhere to these collar shirts because my migrant work ethic is sewn into my skin. Often such a work ethic (and sometimes, the person who wears it) is seen by others as close-minded, uncritical, driving away unthinkingly at menial things. What others may view as a collar on one’s sense of freedom, I see as able to be transformed, made joyous even by a fun jumper, or a  

politically-sloganed shirt. To me, the value of migrant work is not something that is to be masked or endured. After all, as Gibran says, ‘work is love made visible’. If love is the work, then I want to be clothed in it, every day.  

I think of my grandfather most in the summer months, when I wear my Cuban shirts open with a t-shirt underneath. It reminds me of him in his later years, sitting at home in Singapore in his open shirt, singlet and shorts – for the first time in his life letting it all hang out. Working still where he could, but allowing us to do the work of caring for him too. I want this for myself more than I care to admit. To ease into the masculinities and cultural histories I have inherited from him. There are days that they feel like they are mine, but on others it feels like I’m just holding on to them gingerly, between thumb and finger, unsure if they belong to me, or to someone else. I think there is always going to be someone better, someone more well suited than me to carry on his legacy. I am not a man, nor the oldest of his grandchildren. But maybe ‘well suited’ isn’t what I’m going for.  

Maybe I’m going for loosened collars, rolled up shirt-sleeves, shirt-tails crumpled and untucked after a long day at work. Maybe I wear cheesy cardigans over my shirts, with baggy pockets full of mentos wrappers. Maybe when I dress as he did, I wear with pride all that he has given me, and then some. Maybe, just maybe, I wear it well.