Fireplace Stories

To be honest, I probably should have been sleeping during many of the fireplace conversations we had but I have no stories to tell of my sleep.( excluding, perhaps, the one weird dream I had of Facebook on the third day).

There's something very communal about the fireplaces. We regularly sat around Tepu Sinah Rang's fireplace though you could often see us by Tepu Uloh's fireplace as well. Maybe it's something about the warmth of the fire at your feet that draws you in and leads you into conversations you normally wouldn't have anywhere else. But then again, maybe it was just the big bowl of popcorn being passed around that encouraged us to share our stories as well.

Most of us only hung out with our ladies within the "teaching hours". You would think that spending a day with a bunch of hyperactive kids would be more than enough for these old ladies but it wasn't the case with Tepu Uloh and I.

I was lazing around on the verandah when Divya suddenly showed up. She said " Your Tepu is looking for you. She just asked 'mana cucuk kita?'"

I quickly got up to look for her, thinking that she needed help with something. Instead. She was sitting and talking to Tepu Sinah Rang by the fireplace, grating (or 'nudut'-ing in Kelabit) tapioca. She told me to sit and join them in their work.

I was always worried that we'd run out of things to talk about but we never really did. As we spoke and grated, more  and more people joined us. It became a really fun conversation with everyone (not least my tepu) teasing me on my wedding plans and saying that we were grating tapiocas for my ‘ruti kahwin’. I would cheekily say to her our inside joke: “Kalau suka sama suka, jadilah!”. It’s a line she made up that’s now popular in the whole kampung and a line I’m very proud of.

I think it really set an important tone to our relationship, knowing to joke affectionately and also being okay with joking about myself. I feel that the warmth the fireplace exuded made all those conversations we had take on a depth that translated throughout our time together.

 

There was a conversation I had with Ashley and Dan around the fireplace too. It was after reflections, with the usual popcorn to crunch on. I remember sitting next to Ash and throwing unpopped corn kernels into the fire, making the smell of slightly burnt popcorn waft through the air.

We talked a lot about friends we used to be close with in high school and the memories you associate to things. One of us, I can’t remember who, said “Songs always remind you of something. The problem is, usually it’s not something, it’s someone.”

It got me thinking about how often people fade out of our lives, no matter how important you thought they were. If you're lucky, they don't fade out too much but more often than not, relationships wax and wane depending on how often you see those people. Soon enough, all the memories you had will only come with the sudden smell of roll-on deodorant or with the lyrics of a song.

It made me a little afraid to think that these people who mean so much to me now might fade out. Right now, I have my Kelabit necklaces and my pineapple jam to keep me anchored. Sometimes, we even start singing Bario Strings and The Cup Song (songs we performed on cultural night) in the middle of lunch. These things are still fresh with us, but how long will they last?

I want to say that I’ll always remember every memory I had there but that’s not something I can promise. There are a lot of things I can’t promise but I do believe that once you’ve started loving someone, you never really stop. To whoever is in the future batch, I hope you're prepared to give out that love. I hope you don't hold yourself back just because you're afraid this is temporary, for you or for them.  Even if it only comes with hearing lines like “kalau suka sama suka, jadilah!”, that love is still out there in the universe and I think that’s important.

This was the fireplace conversation where Jeremy was telling us about one of my favorite movies which I will not disclose the title of because, spoiler alert! He explained the journey of this man, who broke off ties with his parents, his friends and society, to live in the wilderness of Alaska. Just before he dies, he sees the most beautiful sight ever and, thinking of his parents, he says the last lines of the movie: "What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?"

I would have ruined the moment by saying "Dude, that's totes deep." But instead, I gave it the reverence it deserved by staring into the fire and keeping quiet.

I think about it a lot now that I'm back from Bario. I have yet to see the most beautiful sights, but I've seen some throughout my fleeting lifetime that could match up pretty well. “The mountains, the rivers, the sights to make you shiver”. These things that made up Bario. These may the prettiest of views but I think about how the people you love (and miss) can make them prettier still.

If you make sure you're always standing on the brightest shade of the sun, it doesn't matter where you go, your travels will usually bring you to the most beautiful sights. If you're lucky, you'll meet them instead.