Morning II

Yeterday everybody is invited by Majelis Shalawat Gus Dur to celebrates Maulid Nabi, the day when Muhammad PBUH was born, in Ciganjur. I didn’t attend. My friend said that this moment was full with people. What cross in my mind for first time is Gus Dur and his fans. People respect on him, and loves him at the same times. They attend everything related with Gus Dur with passion—including many celebration dedicated to the late. Yes, Gus Dur is a brilliant person. He is so brave and has a great vision. It’s based on his idea how to treat diversity, how to deal with Islam and local culture, and how to keep Indonesia on the track. Many experts discuss about this topic. Many books have written for these themes—I read it for two or three. Gus Dur become a subject, a discipline of knowledge, then. I would never discuss about this. My understanding is not good enough to do it. Actually, I just wanna write about the legacy Gus Dur practically. Gus Dur is a good husband, indeed. He cooperated with his beloved wife, Shinta Nuriyah spent the time to create a happy family. It’s not ashamed to do caring about baby, to do household’s tasks, etc. He respect Shinta Nuriyah also: he said to their daughter: “Never ever angry with your Mom. She did everything for us. We can live because of her effort”. Shinta wakes up on the midnight to fry the peanut, pack, and sell them. Shinta also produces es mambo, an fruity iced drink packed with plastic. Shinta did this for several years. It’s unnormal due to Gus Dur is a prolific columnist with a noble family as a background. Gus Dur get my respect on the way treat the sickness—I loves his way much. He showed us when he suffer from unhealthy condition. Never complaining about our sick, he said, we have to fight. It’s simple but difficult messages. Everybody knows that we love to talk about our condition—even it is a cough, fever, influenza or something like that. We share about our schedule to see the doctor. We complain why our body is not well although we did anything to make it well. We write it on our facebook account or twitter or others social network. It’s quite simple, but for me it’s big thing. How can we regard our selves as Gus Dur-ian, and at the same thing we do the contrary: keep complaining? It’s badly serious. To be honest, we can count how many times Gus Dur complain about his body: seldom. My mate has same opinion. It’s easier to understand Gus Dur in practice rather than Gus Dur in theory. He said that he helps his wife to care about the baby—I hope it’s true. It’s normal, I said, but he reply: It’s unnormal for my culture. Father usually keep away from this stuff due to the baby is the mother’s business. Okay, I said, it’s pretty good. How about you?

Morning I

Last night, everybody talked about their inspiration for what they doing now: fighting for their idealism. Yes, the inspiration comes from their mommy. Me too--but I'm speechless, I wanna cry. So, I keep silent. This note for completing the conversation. Actually, I love the way my mother grow us up. She is ordinary person and we are ordinary family--but she is extraordinary mother. She teaches us how to handle everything about house-hold by her-self--we can't pay for assistant to finish this stuff. So, she makes a task for everybody in the house. My brother has to wash plates, my other brother did nanny's task--he play with our little sister and accompany her, and I sweep the floor everyday. This task will be changed automatically--when somebody leave home for study and something like that, the other one will replace him/her. I wash plates when my brother continue his undergraduate, and so does my others brother/sister. This is public task--we have personal task also. We have to wash our clothes by ourselves when we are in junior high school. We just have one choice: we did it. If we don't, we can't go to school while the uniform is still wet or dirty, for example. It's includes about ironing too. For first, I think this is a necessity; nobody assist us, so it's a must to do everything by ourselves. But, when I meet many friends from several regions and family, I changed my minds. They got the same condition, but the treatment is different--almost the women is the busiest people in the house. Wow. I know then that my mother doing something so -called equality before woman and man. I don't know what's in her mind when she decide to share the task for every children--but it's a great idea to do several works without making different between woman's task and man's task. Then, when I meet many person concern on feminism and gender issues, i know what have mother done is a part of feminism, although she never study about that. The challenge now is on her chilren's hand: how to practice feminism in real world. It's ashamed when we, the children, treat women as a half human being while we know about feminism well. Finally, thank's Mom for everything you've done. So sorry for everything we've done..