Leading Lady

Eyang Putri, at my favorite place on earth

My grandmother has no official birth date.

Nobody knows exactly when she was born, what year, in what month, or what day, not even what the sky looks like when she came into the world. What her mother knew, that night, there was a full moon.

Her official birthday, based on one local administration officer's judgement many years ago, happens on December 31, 1940. So all we know now is that she's 75, and her birthday is to be celebrated by everyone around the world.

Her family was poor, her biological father died when she wasn't even born yet, and the man she always thought to be her father, was in fact her stepdad. She did not even make it past 7th grade in school, and she was married off at 16, to a man 14 years her senior: my Grandfather. He was a man of ambition; even when people back in their era chose to be a soldier and fought in the war, he stayed as a civil worker and later in his life, went back to college and learned economics. He'd rather use his brain and worked his best to feed his family. He was a respectable man, and since this was way before Indonesia is famous for its corruption, he was genuinely honest in doing his job. He worked for the local governor until his last dying breath at age 51, leaving 7 kids to his widowed wife who had no education whatsoever, while their youngest daughter was just 5 years old.

So you understand now how long she's been left without a husband, when the man is her only window to the entire world? The world can be such a small and scary place for someone who's uneducated. It can be too full of uncertainty, and pressure, and hardships. I dare not to imagine myself in her shoes, because I might break down in tears because I don't even know if it was possible.

I don't know if she's an excellent mother, because I suspect she wasn't. She's not even very great at being a grandmother. But you know what she is? She is doing what she can, in her capabilities, within her own means, despite her own limitations.

I don't know how she does it.

Maybe it's through her prayers. Maybe it's what she said to her kids. Or maybe it's something she did that inspire them. Who knows? Life is a series of sequence that work together to create a story so distinct for one person to the other, which is why life is a mystery and it's bigger than what anyone could ever write about.

It's been a long 28 years since my grandfather departed, and the woman has seen quiet everything a woman in her standard would be expected to see. People have lost count how many times she's traveled to the Holy Land. She's gone south to the Kangaroo Island. She's visited the great Uncle Sam. She's seen the land of the Turks, and therefore she kind of has been to the Blue Continent.

She's been to every single one of her grand children's graduation ceremony, wherever it is. She told me how it's her favorite part of having a family: "Weddings are weddings. It's just a wedding. But graduation is something you worked hard for. It's a milestone. It's the start of a good life. I didn't go to school. Your grandfather could not finish his college education. But you can. And that's something."

The woman doesn't even have the slightest idea about what having an education feels like. She only went to school so that she's not illiterate, but she understands how important it is to be educated, even though her grandchildren are 95% girls.

The sad part is, she lives in a society. A society that has a system that's always bigger than its people. Even despite her own greatness, her unbelievable endurance in facing the hard reality of life, she's still limited to the things she could have done if her husband were still here. So many of the things she said she'd missed, things she said she'd want to do again in this lifetime, would be followed by the crashing sound of her voice saying, "...but what would people say if I do that by myself? I'm a widower. I have been, for longer than I wasn't."

I used to dislike hanging out with my grandmother. Somehow, I wasn't free to do what I wanna do, and because whenever I hang out with her, the focus shifted from hanging out with my nuclear family to simply making her happy. What I didn't understand is that, she deserves all that treatment we're supposed to give her. She's endured her own limitations for so many years, that now, it's truly the least thing we can do for her, from whom I was partly generated from, to focus on making new memories that she will cherish, despite the mild dementia that's starting to gnaw on her memories.

Now every time I was going to spend some time hanging out with grandmother, I'd take note; because this is how I should treat my mother someday. Hopefully in the same healthy condition as she is treating her mother, and the same capability to make each other happier than the world usually made us.