NS19

For as long as I've lived, I've only ever seen him work at this place. Decades, it seems. At the edge of the bank he will always stand, in his police uniform and greying hair. A baton pokes out one of his holsters, though I find it hard to imagine him using it. That's funny since a huge part of my life revolves around him beating the shit out of me with a belt or hanger.

This is an old story but I was away from my family for the whole of 2013, so I missed a year with him. Both our egos acted as walls, until heartbreak from a third party finally knocked them down. I returned in early 2014, and it was just too easy falling back once the awkward hugs and tears were over and done with.

His colleagues orders bottles of cookies from my mother every Chinese New Year, so we grew to have this annual thing where she, my little brother and I would lug bags over. If not, I doubt we'd come anywhere near here as a family.

You can gauge from that how loose my tie with this station is. Yet somehow I will always remember my way around because it's that familiar. From the bookstore above the bus interchange to the lift standing out at the side of the atrium, nothing much has changed. The bright canary walls remain and the entire vicinity still thrives.

But we changed. I went from a bespectacled fifteen-year-old girl who kept looking down to an adult standing tall and straight. He went from handing my mother a fifty-dollar note to buy my little brother and I dinner, to having his money rejected for his lunch to be on me. 

We went from just a teenager and her strict old man to a daughter and father. Now I talk about the book I'm writing when I always tried so hard to keep my passion for writing from him. Now he talks about our family's problems, when he used to lie all the time to keep up his steel facade. 

Despite being one of the first stations to be completed, this is one I very seldom pass by. But just like a father I missed a year with, its winding ways and atmosphere will always feel like home even if we don't always lean against each other. I guess Toa Payoh is just like my father; the oldest station still standing and my oldest man still thriving.