Flowers For My Hair

Saw some flowers that reminded me of days gone by.

Getah Hua with the bud in the foreground

The bud, in the middle, is clearer in this picture

They reminded me of those days when Gramma would dress me up as a little nyonya. I was about five or six at that time and part of the dressing up routine would be to pick the buds of these getah hua (literally 'sap flowers') from the tree in our garden.

Gramma would then string them together at night in preparation for the next day when she would use them to encircle the base of my bun. Even more buds would be threaded together to form another zig-zag band approximately 1 cm in height to surround the bun.

No nyonya can survive these days with the amount of time it takes just to prepare the decorations for the hair.