Another Indo View
This Fathers Day I am thinking of Priscilla McMullen, a new Indo friend from Boston, who came to my home for lunch–chili relleno casserole with plenty of hot sauce on the side. One thing I’ve learned about my Indo friends: they like spicy stuff that would wipe the lining right out of my sissy mouth.
Priscilla sat at the lunch table, in tears as she talked about her father. “He was a proud man,” she said,”an engineer. He was in charge of the power plant that supplied most of the island.” She was talking about Java when it was the hub of the Dutch East Indies.
“But here…” her voice faltered. “Here, he was a janitor. A janitor! He scrubbed toilets.” She was talking about the United States, many years after the demise of the Dutch East Indies.
Three Indo women–of Dutch and Asian heritage–sat at the table. Ilse was born in the Dutch East Indies before World War II; Priscilla was born there after the revolution that gave it today’s name, Indonesia; Bianca was born long after the war, in the Netherlands. They all shed tears for their fathers, each a victim of World War II and the fall of their homeland.
Priscilla’s father, born to wealth and privilege, lost it all, along with his dignity. “What does that do to a man?” Priscilla sobbed. Bianca’s father, a prisoner of war forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railroad by the Japanese, came out of it with his life hanging narrowly by a thread. Who knows what Ilse’s father experienced; he was never able to tell about it.
Three fathers, three daughters who weep for them. I am privileged to weep, too, for them and all the others who lost everything.
Watch the program.