OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
May 7, 2018
Volume 28 Number 9
May 7, 2018
ISSN: 1094-9453
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TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n By Ronault LS Catalani &
Caricia EC Catalani Veneziale
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When I’m 64
recently turned 64. I used to think, when I was
our daughter’s present age, that 64 is ancient.
Un-im-maginable.
So as my birthday neared, I began thinking about
those 50 fast years that passed us since Sir Paul
McCartney recorded “When I’m 64.” Since he tucked
that rooty-tooty little number inside The Beatles’
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. “Will you
still need me,” he sang sweetly, “will you still feed
me, when I’m sixty-four? Oooh.”
Also back then, we were new to here. To Salem,
Oregon. Back then, America’s boys and men were
warring ferociously with our old neighborhood’s
boys and men. Their moms and daughters too. In
the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos, in the divided
Viet Nam.
During those chaotic ’60s, our Pop and us boys
packed our couch to watch CBS News’ dead body
counts — their losses versus ours. A dashboard of
sorrows. All TV networks did this, every evening.
Pero you know, even as a squirrely krotjong I knew,
just inside these left-side ribs, that those ugly
government numbers did not square with what’s
true, with what our achy little earth was actually
living. Though none of us, not our Pop, not his boys
said so.
Also during that dark decade, also in every living
room, everyone watched America’s brightest politi-
cal leaders and our bravest moral authorities, shot
to death. We saw Mrs. Kennedy patting back into
place, the top of her husband’s head; we witnessed
her handsome brother-in-law Bobby bleed out on
the Ambassador Hotel’s kitchen floor; we saw
America’s fearless civil-rights elders and activists
pointing at a running gunman as our beloved
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. breathed his
last. Oh ampun’illaah. Oh God have mercy on us all.
Those evenings I watched our pop’s polished teak
eyes while he watched Mr. Cronkite’s. And I knew
— inside the same humming bones every son and
daughter knows the meaning of their father’s eyes,
his brows, his lips corners — that our tough and
tender pop was choking back what every good
parent resists at times like this. Regret. Oh Lord,
did I make a mistake? Bringing us here.
Fifty furious years ago — years much-much
better than our elders’ preceding 50 of grinding
Dutch colonial self-loathing; dissolving into brutal
imperial Japanese occupation; devolving into years
of dirty warring among our nascent Indonesian
I
Antara Tempat (Places Between)
By Caricia EC Catalani Veneziale
To my Pop, on his birthday,
Who, like many of you, has stood
For most of these 64 years
In places between places.
Not here and not back there.
Somewhere that might have become
Nowhere.
To my Pop, who had the heart
To build a place for us
In this place between places;
Who shared his love with us
Without any one place to anchor it,
Ground to plant it,
The rights to hold it.
To my Pop, who shared the same boundary-less
Spirit as many of you.
The spirit that builds a community
In places between places.
Our community, made more beautiful
By not belonging to here or there.
Like Brindisi, like Istanbul, like Alexandria and
Nairobi, Java.
A place made more beautiful
By being Us.
nation’s major and minor ethnic communities;
concluding with our familia’s expulsion from our
mother’s home — like I was saying, five supersonic
decades ago, The Beatles were hot, Carlos Santana
was cool.
The evening of my 64th birthday, 64 of my tried
and truest kualarga (meaning “familia” in the
traditional sense) representing four generations of
transnational mechanicos, gathered to thank our
Mom, our daughter and son, and their rajini-rajini
(princessitas) for lending me to our newcomer
communities.
Since my birthday, I’ve thought and thought
about how to thank you all, for so honoring our
matriarch, her children and her children’s children.
Al’hamdulillaah. But I could not, until I saw our
daughter Caricia’s handwritten poem for my 64th
birthday. Please read her poem above.
Pero silahkan (but if you please) read aloud. She
and me, write in Indo djatung style, in which tone
and rhythm and volume mean as much as words.
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.