10-year-old Harry was jolted out of his day dreaming by his mother’s shout. It was good timing as the pail of water he was filling up was now spilling over. What again, he thought, that endless shouting. He was day dreaming about the amount of money he would be able to gather by selling the wild rambutans he would pick from the nearby forest to save up to buy a pair of new shoes. Harry never had a good relationship with his mother. There was always an inner struggle between love for her, and something else. His mother was always finding fault with him, and he would always be the first to get fingers pointed at if anything went wrong in the house.
Growing up was not as carefree as Harry had hoped. The second child in a family of 7 children, he had been in charge of the household chores since as little as he could remember, occasionally joined by a younger sister, Angela, when she was of age. There was plenty to be done around the house, clothes to be washed, water to be pumped up from the well, toilet waste to be cleared. The time he most looked forward to was time spent with his grandfather, a traditional and righteous man who believed in Harry. His grandfather would always say to his mother “Don’t keep picking on your boy, you have to rely on him when he grows up.” Harry spent the first nine years of his life sleeping next to his grandfather and hearing stories of the past, the present and the future.
Time spent outside of the house was heaven. There were lots to do in the little town other than picking wild fruits and flowers to sell, back in the 1950s. Harry learnt martial arts at the local temple; his father was a martial arts disciple of a monk there. He would swim in the river, collect stones on the river bank and sell to the local women to make necklaces, cycle to the nearby towns, play along the local railroads, and most of all, he enjoyed playing on the local basketball team.
And it was on the basketball court he met his future wife, Anna, the youngest daughter of a widow who ran a prominent Chinese medicine shop in the town. From the day they met when Harry was 10 and Anna was 13, they were like carrot and pea. Harry would meet Anna at her house at the crack of dawn every day and they would walk to the local school for basketball practice.
The years went by. Life in the town became harder and harder. 3 consecutive years of drought had brought hardship to the farming town and Harry’s father had to go find work in the nearby city where the jobs were. Harry’s grandfather had passed. Harry hated school and dropped out of school at 15 and decided to become an apprentice at a local car workshop in exchange for skills and meals. He was a quick learner and was soon on his way to become quite a good mechanic repairing cars and motorbikes. He continued at the workshop for another good 6 years not getting paid much and then the next several years at various odd jobs in the town and the nearby cities. Try as he might, good job opportunities seemed to evade him, even though he had good mechanic skills and he was hardworking.
The financial situation at home continued to deteriorate. Harry felt the overwhelming pressure of supporting the household on his shoulders as his older brother left town and not to return for several years. His mother would say, “Your father is not bringing home much, we need food on the table. You have to take care of your younger siblings. I don’t know if you will ever make it.” Anna would often help by channeling allowances to help with Harry’s family but Harry knew that was not a sustainable solution.
One day, in the midst of his misery and pondering about why life was so hard, he remembered his grandfather’s words from a long, long time ago, “Child, this is not the place for you. Remember, to have a better life, you need to cross the oceans.” After several days of deliberation, Harry decided that he should leave home to seek out a better life. He had heard that there were openings for technicians on board a cargo ship, he could go for that to cross the oceans. After all, there was nothing to lose except, perhaps, Anna.
Harry asked Anna to marry him and Anna readily agreed, despite strong objections from Anna’s family. “He has nothing,” her brothers had warned, “and he’s leaving town, he’s going to leave you here, he’s not coming back.” Anna was adamant. They had a small ceremony and invited a small group of friends and relatives for a simple meal. Several weeks later, Harry would say goodbye to a tearful Anna and his solemn father and set sail for the other side of the Archipelago.
And one day, Harry would look back and tell his children, “when everyone was skeptical, your mother has believed in me, and I thank her for it.”
