A Taste of Home (That’s Not Ours)
As an Indo woman born in Yogyakarta and fluent in delivering wise Sundanese stories to anyone she met, it was easy to feel embraced and considered Mamih as your own grandmother.
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Mamih wasn’t the type who liked to cook; instead, she was quite spoiled and loved to snack. Her spoiled nature didn’t appeal to her six children though, who were all busy with their own matters, which led Mamih often suddenly traveling to Yogyakarta alone, unaccompanied, to worry them. Mamih’s tongue and mind was local. Her birth name was Louise, but since no one around her could pronounce her name correctly, she was called “Wiwi” throughout her life.
Mamih loved eating lalapan, karedok, ali agrem, soerabi. Only after Mamih passed away, I learned that Mamih secretly loved cheese. She would eat a box of cheese found in convenience stores. Not Brie, or Comte, just regular cheddar. Since birth, Mamih has never been able to return to her father’s homeland, far away in Europe. She was left in Yogyakarta, where she grew up in poverty and married a doctor from Cimahi, where she raised 6 children. I learned that she never felt she belonged.
I always thought she was able to make any place feel like home; it doesn’t have to be the Netherlands. But in moments of longing for something that never existed, she ate cheese. Mimicking the only sensation she could comprehend on what it felt like to be a whole European descent, and to return to the home she always longed for.
A micro essay written as a submission for Serving Suggestion’s “Aftertaste” column
