I’m Sorry

After almost 24 years of living, I finally understood what my dad was all about – not thoroughly, but more like meeting him halfway in the emotional journey. I’m not entirely sure how I managed to come face to face with this realization – perhaps it had something to do with the way my parents were these days; whenever they got to see each other, which was usually every Monday evening, they seemed more like any other normal parents would. Especially last Sunday, as we went grocery shopping, I was struck by the beauty of the ordinariness of it – we were doing the idle chit-chat, saying funny comments to each other and just simply spending the weekend together, like any other normal family would.

The whole togetherness of us that I hadn’t felt since I was small made my dad seem a lot more relaxed and opened. It was as if we almost didn’t have any communication barrier between us. Then something made me realize that after what we’d all been through, my dad was simply just a middle aged man who’d seen his children grew up and went their separate ways. His inability to reach out to them was something he couldn’t fix, the same ways that I couldn’t fix my own neurotic side.

Having been living overseas for six years, my arrogance had belittled and disrespected my dad and made me think of him as an old fashioned, conservative man whose views would never apply to the real world, let alone about life and most importantly, my life. I refused to acknowledge that he was probably struggling with his own problems too, emotionally and physically. Over the years I had seen him suffer from many illnesses and diseases and watched him age, and somehow the image of me sitting on his shoulders pretending to be an aero plane kept coming back and it was devastating.

I never thought that he might’ve wanted to be understood and loved too, despite all the things that had happened in the past that might have disintegrated the love that a daughter could reflect towards her father.

As my own life’s experience became richer, it came to my realization that whatever it is that I’m going through right now, in my own life – my parents nevertheless must have been through worse.

And all those things that they’d been struggling for, they’d done them all for me. How heartbreaking it must be for them to see their own little girl growing up with such bitterness and cold exterior, invisibly developing and becoming hardened as the years go by, and as she’d lost her innocence and cheerful self, the image of the little me in her kinder uniform, singing and prancing around to the school mars with the smallest attempt of a pigtail on top of her head – gone.

I bawled my eyes as I wrote this, not because I am having just another “child guilt tears”, but because I kept thinking about the time when I didn’t speak to my dad for months, and for something that seem so insignificant it signified what a selfish, ungrateful daughter I’ve become. It never occurred to me that neither of my parents ever had the same support and privilege that I’d received, yet I, with my own selfishness, have forgotten how tough it must have been for them to provide me with all the luxury that I have around me, and seem to want more and more.

Sometimes our own self-centered ways of wanting to be heard and understood – the whole “I’m your child therefore you must love me unconditionally” way of thinking has prevented us to try to put ourselves in our parent’s shoes. We forgot that parents, like us, were just human beings too, because we tend to turn a blind eye to their weaknesses, mistakes and errors. We forgot that they have only tried to love us in the way they thought was best, and ironically, we seldom put our best love for them, or even make an attempt to reciprocate, because we have always believed that our parents were there to love us regardless, no questions asked.

We dismiss, or perhaps truly forget, that they’d raised us since we were powerless little beings and there is really no greater love than parents would have to their children.

I hope that in this 24th year of my life, it’s not too late to show to my parents how grateful and truly blessed I am for having them, and how sorry I am for not wanting to understand where and how they really came from, nor what life must have been when they were my age, and no matter what happen I wouldn’t want to trade them for anything else in the world.

My Burden And Hers

I was on my way home from work last night when I spotted a busker in her teens. She was a girl with thin, brownish wispy hair and she had that burned out look about her; the kind of looks you just forget immediately, and she was beating one of those battered tiny drums made of recycled plastic containers, and the beater was made of water bottle with rice grains inside, to create a rather more interesting sound, I presumed.

I was watching her quite a while, since the car that I was in wasn’t leaving for the next twenty minutes – it took a while for it to get full in the evening – she was handing out those dirty envelopes to people and started singing. I didn’t put any money in it. In fact, I was quite annoyed by her intruding my own thoughts and rudely shoving the damn thing to my face.

When she collected the envelopes back, I noticed that her posture was near perfect – her back perfectly straight and her chest and butt stuck out. Then I looked at my own condition – sitting in a huddled public transport that forced me to slouch down until my back screamed with pain and I considered myself defeated. Through all the years of my life I was unable to stop myself from developing this kind of posture, as it was the mental burden that made me think it would be quite a struggle for me to maintain the correct posture – such as this girl would have – all day.

I felt a sudden flash of envy for this girl, for her posture I would never have. For the simplicity of her life that didn’t require her to carry so much on her shoulder, when all day I was forced to bend my back with the force of gravity from the desktop at work. Then I thought it was deeply ironic considering she would probably kill to have the life that I had, and yet I had the audacity to envy her for this one meaningless thing.

I kept watching her intently as she cleansed her feet playfully in a small puddle of dirty water near where the other cars were parked.

In the next five seconds, some idiot got on the car and pushed me aside so I was ended up wedged in between this skinny girl and the idiot himself who was obviously more on the obese side. I knew instantly that I would get massive pins and needles by the time I had to get off.

When I looked up to where the girl was, she was nowhere to be seen.

….And All That Jazz!

Nothing beats seeing a live jazz performance and furthermore, nothing beats a great live jazz performance, which was something I’ve had the privilege to witness last saturday, at the Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival 2006.

I still couldn’t get over the fact that I’d seen Lee Ritenour (amongst many other great jazz performers, such as Tompi with Groovology, and Ireng Maulana and many other crazy musicians) played live on stage and it totally blew me away. Not only that the whole performance was outstanding, it was also breathtaking, because seeing those brilliant guys up there doing their thing, improvising along the way and trying to outdo each others with their own skills, but somehow ended up playing in perfect harmony together, was really something out of this world.

But what I noticed the most about jazz that evening was that no matter how all over the place everything sounded, there was a sense of togetherness about it. I’m not only talking about the music itself, but also the crowd and the atmosphere, the energy, and the whole jazzed up feeling about it – there I was surrounded with other people who loved jazz as much as I did, getting excited to the thought of seeing this geeky looking guy with a mullet-ish curly hairstyle (I bet that’s what Irine was thinking about Rit!) playing mean sets of jazz music on ‘air-conditioned’ guitar while his mouth imitated the guitar sounds, and actually didn’t mind standing up for hours wearing ridiculously high heels (Yes Syl, I’m talking about you) just so they could see their fave jazz musicians. Exactly like what Irine had said, I was staring agape in amazement, captivated by the whole thing from start until the end. I kept gripping on to my gals’ arms and annoyed the heck out of them for keep saying, “I can’t believe we’re at Java Jazz Festival!!!!!!”

But thinking about the way jazz goes, it’s funny how much it resembles life itself. Everything is not always a smooth sailing ride – very often it gets a bit messy and everything is all over the place, but then somehow, after the storm has subsided, everything just feels right; as if that’s the way they’re meant to be. The different instruments are like different aspects of our lives – sometimes one is more significant than the other, sometimes they all demand equal attention simultaneously, and sometimes we have to juggle them all together in order to keep our lives running smoothly. And of course we have to improvise. All the time. Even harder as we get older, me thinks.

But it’s all that jazz that keep us hooked on, wondering where the hell our lives are taking us.

It’s all that jazz that keep us alive.