As usual, it is another sleepless night. This time it is not something incomplete, but a feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction despite a rather productive day.

It began perhaps when I asked my Dad casually over dinner whose personality I was most like: my Dad, my Mom, or my grandmother. He signalled there with his head, which most strong silent-type fathers do, indicating my grandmother. I asked, Mama? He nodded.

My grandmother, Mama as we call her, is now 95 or at least that's what it says on her IC: born 1910. Rumours have it that she is actually older, born in 1906 or 1908. Regardless, it is a grand old age despite being slightly demented and sporadically incontinent. And she has had one heck of a life.

Personality-wise, the term dragon lady must have been originally coined for her. I told my Mom what Dad said when we went to pick her up later, and she said, yeah. I was most like my grandmother, with her quick temper and occasional irrational outbursts, particularly during my teens (poor Mom). Thankfully, she quickly added, I learned to control my temper and have hence mellowed (and may I add, am no longer prone to irrational outbursts - ahem).

Everyone feared my grandma when she was younger. Apparently by the time I was born she'd mellowed a lot. My brother told tales of how Mama was a lot worse before. Very fierce. I remember her chastising me about wearing torn jeans as a teen and me trying to explain to her that it was the fashion then. She was fiercely independent, passionate, and very loyal. Every year we visited my grandfather's grave. He died at 54 in 1975. She was 65 (according to her IC). From the story of their life together my Dad told, he adored her till the day he died.

Every decade she mellowed more. Memories of Chinese New Years spent at her house munching bak kwa, Sunday mornings drinking tea and watching English football. She lived on her own till she was 90, and this year moved in with my family. She is an insomniac like me and wanders the house at night, restless. We've hired someone to care for her and it helps to have someone keep her company during her nighttime forays. Her mind is 30 years ago, sometimes 50. But she remembers me and smiles when I sit with her. She thinks my brother and I are still petulant teenagers.

My Dad told me about her business acumen. How she made contacts and started businesses for his father. When my grandfather died, she took over the business. No one knows where she came from or who her family was. She doesn't remember, not even when I asked her 10 years ago. My Dad never knew nor asked. I guess children during that era didn't. My Dad's most distinct memory of her was when he was little, she'd tell him to sit outside the bathroom while she washed their clothes by hand and how she would let him go out and play football in the evenings with their Jewish neighbour's kids.

I wish I knew more about her, more about her life, where she came from, because that too, is where I come from. I am her, living in a different era, with different rules, and different people. And in 60 years, I wonder if I will be like her, often difficult, in a world of my own, wandering my home in silence in the dark of night. Will the life I lead share similar trials, similar joys? Will I handle them as she did, with the same fire my Mom says we share?

When I see her now, it feels like the fire is gone. She is placid and smiling. Until my Mom complains of how she suddenly stubbornly insists on doing something her way. Perhaps it isn't gone, just subdued by Alzheimer's. But not the restlessness. She, like me, is constantly restless, much worse at night.

As I write this, I wish she could talk to me, about her life, our afflictions, teach me to temper my fire, soothe my restlessness. But as with some things in life, we have to learn them on our own.

I make a record of all this, so that one day, should I have children, and in the distant future, should they have children of their own, they will know who they are, where they come from, and what history they carry in their genes. Perhaps then I will teach them how to harness their fire and quell their restlessness.