The Three of Us

Jun Hao took yet another small step forward, his left hand advancing his walking stick by the length of one foot-step. Walking was starting to get hard, and he was really about to give up trying to take walks in the evenings given the increasing difficulty to get his legs to work well at his age. They have said that he was lucky to be living so long, but he thought that it was a curse to be living in a body that was slowly falling apart at its seams.

But his grandson would hear nothing of it.

It was his grandson who convinced his son to get a walking stick for him. His grandson went with his son to the store downstairs and spent some time picking the style of the walking stick. It was originally supposed to be something out of aluminium, which his son favoured due to its light weight and strenght, but his grandson was adamant that Ah Gong should have a nice solid wooden one. Kid said that seemed more appropriate for Ah Gong because ``it looked like it was a part of natural world''.

Jun Hao took another step forward and advanced his walking stick once more. It would take him around twenty minutes to walk from his son's apartment block to the school to pick up his grandson given his walking speed, and it would of course take another twenty or so minutes to walk back. He sighed. His son was in agreement with him to stay at home more rest up due to his advanced age. But his grandson overruled them all; he had countered that since ``Ah Pa doesn't come back to work in time, he didn't want to stay in school to wait for Ah Pa and would rather Ah Gong come and pick him up''. His daugher-in-law had divorced his son after giving birth to his grandson -- she had cited ``irreconciliable differences'' as the reason for the divorce. He shook his head. Kids these days, they never seem to try and fix their own marriages, always trying to find the easy way out. The last he heard, she had already gone on to date another man, someone richer than his son, and was probably about to get married for the second time, if rumours were to be believed.

He took another step forwardd and advanced his walking stick. Three generations under one roof -- his grandson, his son, and he. And now, his walking was starting to get bad. The walking stick was helping a little, but for how long? How long more to go before he would become yet another burden for his son?

Jun Hao thought to himself as he walked on slowly with his wooden walking stick towards his grandson's school.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 11-Jan-2014 00:04:58)