Family Story#2 - My Mother Part 1

My mother's side came from the Alor Pongsu area (north of Taiping, towards Selama). According to Mom, her mother, Rokiah, got married at a very young age. She did not know her father because her father  left her mother while my mom was a child. Rokiah remarried and got a son (mother's step-brother) but again, the man left her. Such was the times in 1920's. My mom's auntie, Che Som, was a little bit better off because she got married to a Scottish Assistant Planter (a jock from the MacCally clan, embraced Islam with the name of Abdul Rashid). My mom's mother died young and her auntie (Che Som) adopted her and her step-brother (Darus). Being a childless couple, Che Som and Abdul Rashid even registered my mom and uncle Darus as Abdul Rashid's daughter and son. Remember that those were the years of 1920's where childbirths registration would take its own time. So, that was how I got a Scottish "grandfather". Abdul Rashid worked at a large rubber estate in the Larut&Matang district. They lived at Matang Gelugor. He even owned an small estate of his own and later bought a big house at Asamkumbang, along Kamunting Road. Other than my mom, Abdul Rashid and Che Som also adopted a few other poor children. From what my mother told me, she had one adopted brother and two adopted sisters. My mom schooled at first at the Matang Gelugor Malay School. When her family moved to stay in a rented shoplot in Taiping, she went to the Taiping Malay School (near Masjid India). Because of her good grades, she did her secondary school at the Treacher Methodist Girls School.
(Well, so, my dad was a KE boy and my mom was a TMGS girl. Sorry, I did continue this "tradition"). After mom completed her Senior Cambridge, she went to Government Nursing School. When she was a junior nurse, she got married to my father (a Hospital Assistant). They knew each other since their teens when the lived as neighbours at the rented shophouse behind the Government Toddy shop.
She quit her nursing job when she had two kids, my eldest siblings. By 1941, the clouds of war came to Malaya and the whole family (including Che Som and Abdul Rashid) left Taiping to take refuge at Matang Gelugor.
It is 2.30 AM now, got to go to bed. To be continued.