i came back from work today and was told by abah that he just plucked his coconuts.i havent introduced my abah, havent i? abah is my retired dad who is now a fulltime dad (at least to me), and simply loves farming. he has planted for us (his 3 daughters ya, not musketeers)many many kind of fruit trees. we are just yet to reap the fruits coz they mostly arent ready to start flowering yet. whatever it is, his coconuts are precious and loved by so many, including encik tupai2 living freely in our orchard and backyard. so when he announced that he has successfully plucked two coconuts (by the way, mereka pun sudah ditebuk encik tupai2 sedikit)and they are readily in the fridge, i was overjoyed. coz i simply love the refreshing young coconuts water. and the flesh, is equally heavenly to me. and my father's coconut is just as nice.

they reminded me of my childhood though. as far as i could recall, i started having them when i was 5 yrs old. and the coconuts remind me of someone- tokyah,which is my late grandma. why so? well, when i was little, i was living abit apart from my grandma/aunts/uncleas/cousins. my parents originally worked in Kl.and while i was small, i was being taken care by my other grandma in kemaman. when i was about to start kindergarten at 5, my parents came back to terengganu and we started to live together in Chendering. the rest of my mum's family was mainly in Paloh. as far as i could remember, they lived quite far from us coz everytime my parents took us to paloh, i will fall asleep during the journey and it felt like ages. (now only i realized its just mere 30 minutes). and only then i get to know tokyah and also my cousins too. they seemed like strangers initially. (but now we are more like siblings).

the things that i could recall vividly is that tokyah has a grand rumah papan with a very nice small pondok or known affectionately as 'gerei' to us at the backyard of her house. the gerei was used for keeping al-quran and teaching the youngs of the kg as tokyah was an alquran teacher.it was also used in some special occasion like kenduri or to us, the young grandchildren, as a place to main masak2 or main perang2. in front of her house, there used to be a few coconut trees of about 20 to 30 feet high standing tall. and they are usually full of coconuts! when i came down for one of the trips, she used to ask one of his kg man to climb up the trees and get some of those delectable fruits down for us.and we will end up having them in the gerei coz the soft breeze that usually accompanied us there will make them extra nice and extra delicious.suffice to say that the juicy tender flesh did not take too long to be my favourite. in fact, i used to ask her to summon the man to get us the fruits whenever that pakcik was around. and i still remember the way i ate them, the water will be put in a large jar for the elderly to drink. the coconuts shell will be cut open into half and then i will scrape the flesh and mix in some sugar. the sweet flesh then will be eaten on its own while the water consumed separately. it was one of the best moment in my life.

now, there are still coconut trees infront of tokyah's house. but it hasnt been climbed on for quite sometime. i guess they are too tall nowadays. and the gerei is no longer there. our dear tokyah is no longer with us. she left us 1 year ago. however, this childhood memory of her will remain affectionately etched in my heart.