Our Big Family
Mama’s 72nd year birthday. Happy Year of Fire Pig!
Mama is restless. I heard her starting the day early. She wakes up early if she would receive guests. She plans well what to serve, how she wants the house looks like, what time she needs to go to get things,.. Last night she told me to be ready at 7:00.
The first two guests came before 6:30! Life starts early in Malang. They dropped by congratulating Mama on their way to church and market. Nice living in a small city. They actually touch each other, not through text messaging :-) Phone calls flowed since before 6:00.
I drove Mama to flower market to get roses and tube-roses. It’s nice to enter the market again after about twenty years. The price was surprising. A bunch of flower here was equivalent to a stem of a same in Jakarta. It’s luxury to have lots of fresh flower.
We fetched birthday cake and soups at Mama friend’s house. Again, it’s always nice to visit past neighborhood and meet past faces. Most of her friend thought that I looked the same and… Ha ha.. I might not meet their ‘expectation’.
Today Mama celebrated birthday with friends from FF group – an international group of elder as part of FF organization that has chapters in many cities in the world. A group visits other group in other country twice a year, like student exchange program. The visiting group stays in the hosting group for about two weeks. Mama has visited three countries the last two years and been hosting twice. It’s an interesting organization. Good for active seniors.
Generally, a function in Malang lasts two hours at maximum so people can hop from a function to another. In Jakarta, usually, a function starts before noon and ends in high tea time or early evening. Even if we leave early, it’s almost impossible to catch next function. Traffic won’t allow. It’s luxury here, one can attend three functions a day.
Mama hopped to the next function at her ex-student’s house nearby. It’s a reunion. Class of 60s. Only two couples and a single woman were still there when we came. That’s fine because these two couples were like sons to Papa and are still now to Mama. They saw our family grows of course. Like family, we know each other very well. It was hilarious recalling nice times in the past. I felt funny to sit and talk with them like we’re colleague. I used to treat them as aunties and uncles, not even big sisters and brothers. Nice.
I don’t have plan for this evening. I feel like spending evening at home. Last night we visited TET in café where she works. Uncle ANT and cousin RIO were nice to accompany us. TET is my girlfriend from childhood, been more than 30 years knowing each other, she is family too. In Malang, we are all family.