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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2024
‘NICE BOY’ PHOTO
I was eight years old when Mama, my Dutch mother, first showed me a pile of photos she had kept for years in an album in the cupboard. Together we would often look through the album to our past. Most of them were baby photos of my older brothers and sisters and portraits to remind us of birthdays or weddings. Other times, there were even photos of Mama with her parents when they still lived in Indonesia. Mama would gesture for me to sit next to her on a bench. I would sit, sidle up to her and wait for her to tell a story about things that happened in the past. After many years in Holland, we almost never talked about these memories anymore.
“You came to Holland in April 1978. You were three years old. Mama still remembers it as if it were yesterday, picking you up at the airport. The plane was delayed. We had to wait for two hours at Arrivals. It really felt like giving birth. I was so happy, but also nervous to welcome you into my arms. It wasn’t easy to bring you to Holland. We needed to send a lot of letters beforehand. Everything was done through official institutions and the post, which sometimes took a long time. We never went to Jakarta, because your father doesn’t like the heat of the tropics. As soon as we heard the news that the notary papers were signed, we were so relieved to know that the long chain of procedures for adopting you were over. Before meeting you, we only knew you from four photos sent from an orphanage where you lived in Jakarta. So fragile and soft you were in those photos, with big eyes looking out to the world. What was in your mind that time, when not a single mother or father could protect you? It must have been a difficult time for you,” she would say softly. ▶18.1
My earliest memory was of being guided by an Indonesian woman, who probably worked for the adoption agency, into an airplane leaving for an unknown destination.
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