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Here in Jogja, she only has a tiny studio-like space she must now call “home” and a sport bicycle as her means of transportation. Her hangout places from now on will be those small coffee and rice stalls or warung. There’re only a couple of really good clubs in town and they’re quite far from where she lives. There are plenty of malls, but none that matches the style and class of those in the capital city. But… I guess these extraordinary challenges ahead are very much appropriate to test her strength and her will, especially because she is now… a philosophy student. Yes, out of all the trendy available choices, she chose to study the mother of all knowledge, the root of all comprehension, the origin of all understanding… Philosophy.
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I had to come with her. Of course. It’s useless telling her that when I went to college in the States, which was lot farther then Jogjakarta, I went alone without mom, dad or anyone… Nope, no point telling her that, because in those final days in Jakarta, she was already panicking. What to bring, what not to bring, what to buy in Jakarta, what could wait ‘til she arrived in Jogja, whether to call her boyfriend, whether not to call her boyfriend, whether this and that. It was hell. She was excited and nervous at the same time. She was crying and laughing at the same time. She was hell. And I couldn’t blame her…
We arrived in Jogja early in a Friday morning. After seeing the studio she rented, I was quite relieved. It’s clean, well-maintained, close to various food stalls, close to Jogjakarta’s newest mall and most importantly, close to her campus, which only 300 meter away. It already came with a clean bathroom, a nice spring bed, clothes drawers and a big TV stand with lots of storage spaces. Now, my task was how to make her feel at home enough so she wouldn’t ask me to send her a ticket home every few weeks. So we shopped.
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Then came the first test for the young philosopher. Cleaning her bathroom. Something she never had to do, EVER, in her 18.5 years of life.
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The second test was the bicycle. I didn’t buy her a car, God knows I can’t afford it. I didn’t buy her a motorbike, God knows I could never trust her with it. So I got her a bicycle. Cheap, healthy and environmentally-friendly. The question is: can she handle the traffic on it?
She knows how to ride a bike of course. She’s done it since she was four. But so far, she only rode her bike around our safe and protected housing complex. She never had to face horrible traffic on it. And now, to get to campus, she must ride along the famous “Selokan Mataram” for a couple hundred meters, then make a U-turn on one of Jogja’s busiest streets, “Jl. Gejayan”, then continue on a little bit more on a reasonably-wide-but-sometimes-busy campus street before she’d arrive right at the doorstep of her faculty. Can she handle it?
She was mighty nervous. I casually said, “It’s not that bad, Cas. Jl. Gejayan is busy, but it’s nothing compared to any street in Jakarta. And it’s only a 300 meter ride. It’s short and easy! No big deal!” But actually, I WAS TERRIFIED BEYOND WORDS!!! So one morning before I was scheduled to leave, I MADE HER PRACTICE. She was on her bike and I accompanied her all the way on another bike, a bike that belongs to another girl in the complex. Mind you, this is a girl that I didn’t know, a girl that she didn’t know, but we woke her up that morning anyway JUST to borrow her bike. Pretty smooth, Mom! It shows that you’re not nervous at all! Right.
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Then it was time to leave her. This is it. This isn’t a weekend camping trip or a summer getaway anymore. This is a trip to the rest of her life. This is a trip to adulthood. This is the mean real world and I’m leaving her in it. This is a trip to forever. Next time she comes back home, I know it’s never gonna be “home” to her ever again. She’s on her own, she’s all grown up.
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Good luck, Cas. Be a philosopher. Be anything, as long as you’re happy. Take care. I love you.
14 comments:
woooow! bravo! i love this story. see the last paragraph. hmm.. love it very much!! come only from a mother who love her daughter so so much! you must a very great mother, mbak rin. salute! - fen
wah... thanks ya fen!!! :-)
hehehe well i'm trying my best to be a good good good girl.
i'm still gonna go after my dreams, and i might be moving much more farther, hehehehe. so i take this chapter of my life as an exercise or a practice.
thanks for always being there for me, mom. i love you too
you have a great daughter : )
living by herself it's a good practice to be more individual and who needs those fancy pansy malls when you have more time to listen to music and stuff haha
to cassey : thanks for the comments... finally... hehehe!
to lina lena : thanks so much! yes, i do believe i have a great daugther.. i have another great daughter still living at home too :-)
Aww..this is just..plain sweet :).
This sort of "mother-daughter" relationship is not easy to find.
And you're lucky to have each other.
:)
u.n.e.e, thank you :-)
you're a great mother!
you are the type of mother i wanna be in the future..
beyond the words, it's like what i wanna do to my children when they're about to go off to college.
but im still in 3rd semester in my campus anyway.
to aisha and meutia.. thank u.. but if u ask cassey, she would say that i'm very jutek.. hahahahaha..
hehe.. that's fine.
in this very-young age of mine, i already could feel what is it like to be a mother.. (don't understand why, but i always could feel what mothers feel, when their daughters done things)
i wanna have a baby in an early age, but no husband, and parents told me it's too naive and youth's cheap-imagination.
i love kids, i love mothers who show their motherhood to kids.
ps: thk u for the compliment on my poetry.
i must say that it's like i'm watching gilmore girl in the real world. and that's totally cool.
hi neriva.. thanks for your comments! and thanks for following my blog.. i think you're cool too :-)
i love this post!
i also left for college in US 2 years ago when i was 18.
young and scared.
my mom was trying her best to comfort me even though she was half way around the world.
i feel it everytime
i can totally relate this post to my life : )
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