the jungle and mountains. But the second burden was different. During those five years, I shouldered it every step of the way, day and night, from high rocky ridges through to meandering brooks. I still vividly remember the day I had to leave. I had travelled to Bang Pakong, my birthplace, to bid farewell to my parents. Father was the only one at home that day. Mother had gone to a neighbouring province to buy fruit she’d sell at the market. As I sat waiting for her to return home, I thought about the days of my childhood, when we still lived together. The more I brooded, the more I felt she was an angel heaven had punished by making her the mother of someone like me. Mother spoke little and hardly ever had a harsh word for her children. She was nonetheless one of the proudest women I have ever known. Because she was abandoned by her father in her infancy, had no relatives and never went to school, she was used to relying on herself since a very early age. No matter how destitute she was, she never begged from anyone; even among her own children, she’d never ask for help to ease her weariness if we weren’t considerate enough to see it ourselves. She usually got up before dawn to take goods to the market and, depending on how much there was, carried them either by pushcart or in baskets hanging from a yoke balanced on her shoulder. After selecting fruits for a while, just before it was time for her to leave the house, she’d nudge me gently awake or call me in her usual tone of voice; under no circumstances would she shout, because she disliked making noise and, besides, was afraid to unnecessarily awaken my little brother and sisters, who were still very young. One day, she tried to wake me up three times, but I wouldn’t get up. I was already awake, but I still wanted to sleep late like any child who was growing fast and showing signs of puberty. After a while, I began to feel that Mother was unusually quiet. I got up and saw her busy carrying goods on her shoulder, holding this, grabbing that, and on her face, which had begun to wrinkle, tears were streaming down. “No need.” She whisked my hands away after I jumped to relieve her of what she was holding. Since that day, I never allowed her to wake me up more than once. This, however, didn’t mean the end of our sad story.
There was a time during which my mother had no money to buy fruit to resell or pay the rent for her stall at the village market. She earned five to ten baht a day from selling shaved- ice with syrup and toasted bread at the parking bay for the minibuses that ran between Bang Pakong and Chonburi. During that period, my father had gone looking for jobs in the South and my eldest sister and elder brother were earning their living in other provinces; thus I was the oldest child in the house. With my three younger siblings, it meant Mother had many