This, of course, takes some explaining.

It all began two Thursdays ago, when my father fell and hit his head quite badly on his bedroom floor.

Sitting with him in the emergency room about two hours later - she being his sole caregiver and the hospital in Penang being a 45-minute drive from my home in Kedah - she called to say he was still conscious and would be warded for a while.

Stuck in Singapore with infectious bronchitis, I felt helpless to do anything but pray.

Then came this SMS from her later that evening:

'Hi. Dr TEH says there is no internal bleeding. He came around 10.45pm. ADIOS'

I cannot begin to tell you how much I hung on to that 'ADIOS'. That SMS was to be the first of a flurry from her throughout my Dad's hospital stay.

She had certainly come a long way from the days when my sister and I would programme the noisiest ringtones around (like flaring brass flourishes from Beethoven) just to goad her into fiddling with the functions on her mobile phone. (Tee-hee!)

The morning after her 'ADIOS', I woke up to my mobile phone's alert to this:

'Hi. HMS says he is putting in 1 pint of blood into Dad today. CP'

CP stands for Cutie Pie, which is what my sis and I are calling her now that her once-stern face has been softened in her dotage by a child-like trust.

But who or what was HMS? Then it hit me, and I cracked up despite my worry about the '1 pint of blood' bit. HMS - or 'How Many Scoops' - was her cheeky reference to Dr Teh, my father's heart doctor who, while probing my diabetic Dad one day, gasped: 'How many scoops did you say?' That was when my father told him he liked three teaspoonfuls of Ovaltine in hot water before turning in every night.

Later, not knowing how else to lift her spirits, I scanned the wires and SMSed Malaysia's No. 1 badminton fan the second round results of the French Open.

Back came this:

'Hi. Tenkiu 4 badm. results Dad sleeping like a baby since 2pm But got up to eat hosp. ang tau th'ng n complaining not sweet!'

Happiness. My father was now well enough to grumble.

The next day, having learnt I had to do an 8am interview, she SMSed:

'Howdy. Hope you can sleep early. Dr SAM has seen DAD and given med. 4 his legs. He is on leave 2 morw. but he told me he is going 2 rg the nurse 2 find out if the med. works. Dr SAM is a v compassionate Dr. No need to RSVP. CP'

Howdy? I scratched my head, never having pegged my Mum as a country-western fan. I knew she enjoyed Elvis, was mad about McCartney and claimed Seiji Ozawa as her soul brother. This cowboy call-out about my Dad's neurologist was as surprising as the time I saw her take a puff of her brother's cigarette during a round-the-table Chinese New Year reunion when I was a teen. My mother smoking? Nobody in my family smoked, I huffed as she puffed.

But, like that rare cigarette, these SMSes showed me a playful side to my Mum I barely knew. The strength that underscored her chin-up messages to me also meant she was learning to let go of my Dad, something which she once said she could not do.

And then came the SMS I had been waiting for all week:

'Hi came home 1 hr ago all fine'

My sister had gone up from Kuala Lumpur to help her get my Dad from the hospital to our house safely. So all was well.

RESTING with the radio on days later, I listened to IT gurus tell the BBC World Service that the growth of the social website Second Life (now with 9.5 million accounts and counting) was being fuelled, nope, not by youths, but by the grey-haired generation who saw it as a way to roam and mingle even if they were immobile or of slender means.

Now, this kind of technology news I like. How nice to know, for once, that the trends of an ageing population and ever-improving technology can make for a happy marriage.

Then there was the msn.com item on Spaniard Maria Amelia Lopez who, at 95, has her own blog on amis95.blogspot.com (in Spanish only, regretfully). Reuters reported that her maiden blog began: 'Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog.'

On my last trip home in September, my Mum had asked me for a laptop so she could learn to surf new turf. Wait till she got her paws on Skype, I thought, cheering her increasingly upbeat outlook on a future without my Dad.

Which brings me to why my Mum is trying to teach her daughter the few Iban phrases she picked up from the nice Sarawakian nurse who had been attending to my Dad. Thus came this SMS from her last Wednesday:

'Howdy! Udah makai bedow (Iban for chiak pah boi) Mana bitawan means how are you n u reply mana which means I'm well. Had dinner with DAD last nite while watching the Badm. finals n enjoyed them tremendously. VAYA CON DIOS. CP'

'How are you.' 'Chiak pah boi (Hokkien for 'have you eaten').'

How very lucky we are to be able to ask each other these mundane things again when, days before, we could only SMS each other because we were too choked to speak.

suk@sph.com.sg