When I was a little girl, before starting primary school, I stayed with my grandma for a couple of years in the small town of Alor Gajah, Melaka.
There was a huge cotton tree with its huge trunk full of thorns growing in front of the house. I still remember when the tree blossomed, white almost like magnolia sized flower covered the top branches. My grandma used to look forward to the tree flowering season for a simple reason that soon the flower would produced pods of white cotton.
When the flower dropped off, a small bean pod appeared and these pods grew bigger for about 3 months. Then the pods become brown and started to crack open. Even when the pods cracked, the cotton inside were not ready to be picked. We have to wait for the cotton inside each pods to be furry, then it is ready to be picked.
My grandma would attached a hook at the end of a long bamboo pole and hooked each pods from their branches. We would break the pods, spread out the cotton inside into a mat and picked the black cotton seeds that was attached to each cotton bean. We would filled up gunny sacks of the cotton and stored them in the house so as not to get it wet.
After this my grandma would sew up by hands large square pockets of material and stuffed the cotton inside. This becomes our new pillows. Some years, we have abundant harvest and grandma would exchanged her new pillows with friends for food. But sometimes, when cotton harvest was insuffient, grandma would store for more cotton from the next harvest to make into matteress.
After the demise of my grandma, someone cut the cotton tree and I told myself that would be the last of any cotton tree for me to see.
But, beyond believe, when I moved to this island some four decades later, I saw lots of cotton trees grown all over the island. The cotton trees here are of the pink variety.
During its blossom season around Sept or October, with branches having few leaves, the tree take the shape of sakura blossom as its flower is the colour of sakura-type of this island. During the fruiting time around January and February, the pods break and throwing out furs of cotton. When this happens, the furs of cotton is flown about brought by the winds and standing near the tree, one would feel like rain of flurry snow around.
Haiku:
Head on new pillow
lying beside my grandma
cotton flower scent.
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