Barefoot woman on MRT prompts mum of son with special needs to reflect: ‘Everyone may have a story we don’t see’
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A mother of three was left thinking about the struggles people may be facing behind closed doors after spotting a woman standing barefoot and looking unkempt on a train.
Stomper Irene Wong said she saw the woman at around 9am on Sept 19 at Yio Chu Kang MRT station, after sending her youngest child to school and boarding the train home.
The woman had taken off her shoes and her hair appeared messy, which seemed strange to Irene.
“I don’t know whether the woman was too stressed. Her behaviour felt unusual, so I took a video,” she said.
But the encounter also prompted Irene to reflect on her own life.
“I suddenly had a feeling I couldn’t really put into words,” she said in Mandarin.
“Recently, I’ve been seeing more and more people trying different ways to earn a little money and make ends meet.”
Near her workplace — close to the Central Public Library — Irene said she has seen people wearing gloves and carefully sorting through rubbish bins for items that can be recycled or exchanged for money.
“Some work alone, while others work together. They leave carrying bag after bag of things.”
Seeing the woman on the train made Irene wonder what might be going on in her life. “In today’s society, everyone may have a story that we don’t see,” she said.
“What we see may just be a person, an action or a pair of shoes that have been taken off. But what the woman is going through behind that, we really don’t know.”
‘I also have a lot of stress in my life’
What Irene witnessed hit close to home, owing to the considerable pressures she faces as a mother of a son with special needs.
“I also have quite a lot of stress in my life, so I often like to take my phone with me and record things wherever I go,” she said.
She is the long-term caregiver to Blaze Kwok, 20, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and is non-verbal.
She said their 20 years together have been filled with challenges and moments when she did not know what to do.
“Blaze is a child who works very hard to face life,” Irene told Stomp, adding that watching him go through life despite his struggles gives her the strength to persevere in hers.
She has two other children, a daughter who’s studying at Nanyang Technological University and a son who is still in primary school.
Her husband is a restaurant supervisor, while she works in the beauty industry.
In addition to caring for Blaze, the couple also look after several elderly family members. Irene’s mother-in-law is unwell, her father is in a nursing home, and her father-in-law has health problems.
“Many times, it’s not that we don’t want to find someone to help us. But once our household income exceeds certain thresholds for assistance, we can’t qualify for a lot of help,” she said.
“So over the years, we’ve had to get through many things ourselves.”
Whenever someone in the family falls ill, or something happens to one of their children, the couple has to find a way to deal with it themselves. “Sometimes I really feel very tired because I don’t even know where I can turn for help,” shared Irene.
Taking videos to make sense of life around her
For Irene, documenting everyday life has become a way of making sense of what she sees around her.
“Sometimes I see something special, interesting or worth recording, so I’ll take a photo or video,” she said.
“Not everything I record has a special purpose. It’s simply a habit of documenting the things I see in my life.”
But the woman on the train also made Irene confront her own fear. With the pressures she faces in caring for her family, she wonders whether she could one day reach a similar breaking point.
“I don’t know what the future will be like,” she said.
“But for all these years, we’ve just taken things one step at a time.”
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