Grandma, you were there for us, now we're here for you

Unlike many of my peers from the 20-something generation, I was raised by a gaggle of mothers and grandmothers. Raised by my paternal grandmother from the day after I was born, I was swaddled in her tangy Hokkien speech. Every night, until I was a teenager, my younger brother and I would lay mattresses on both sides of her bed and go to sleep.

- Shawn Hoo

She took us everywhere - including to hang out with her mother, our Teochew-speaking great-grandmother whom we had no common tongue with, but listened and nodded along to. Whenever we visited, which was often, our great-grandmother waited with my brother's favourite curry bun in hand as an after-school treat.

On Sundays, my mother would take us to her mother's house in Yishun. We would spend the whole day lying on tiled floors or my late maternal grandmother's wooden, cushionless sofa. She made a mean peppery bowl of pig's stomach soup that we, over the years, craved.

It felt - and still feels - natural to me that everyone shares this experience of being lavished by grandmotherly love. But not everyone does and, in fact, fewer people do, as multi-generational households become less common in Singapore. Not to mention the stark linguistic, cultural and educational divide that often seems insurmountable between generations.

Now that I am almost 30, my relationship with my 78-year-old paternal grandmother has inevitably changed. We still live under the same roof, and while she is self-reliant and probably still thinks she is the one caring for me, I think of it as the other way around.