Sweet Home

  

Sweet Home

          “I want a small house, a big garden. Its walls pastel colored, low seats, low tables, soft-lighted sleeping room, curtains like this, the kitchen like that,  bath-room and toilet …  I need a lot of things to have  my home nice, cozy and comfortable.” so said the future bride. 

And she looked up in the magazines concerning interior design or visited model houses, but the most important thing she couldn’t find in the books and model houses. And I then remembered someone saying: “A house, a palace could be bought but not a home.”  

“Not in a golden cage, but in  my nest of woven grass, warm and cozy among my baby  chicks, that’s where I’m home,” said the Manyar bird.

“I’m home wherever  my master is” said a dog.

“Among my books” said the professor.

“In the water” said the fish.

“Anywhere there’s Eve” said Adam.

“Where my children are, even in hell” said a mother.  

“So, where, what we or whom we most love are, there’s our home, our paradise, the place we yearn for, the place where we’re feeling very rich and the happiest in the world. A small hut would turn into a home. The couch., mattress, a mat would become the softest, warmest bed. Just the smallest corner would seem roomy and a little food would never be too little, as not to share it with each other.”  So said Pak Arif.

How so? asked   si Upik.   

Just imagine to stay or live with someone we hate. The finest place would be like hell. Tasty food would taste bitter, a large house would seem small, plenty of food would seem little, as there’s no food, much enough, no place, large enough to share it with one another.  

“Greener grows the leaf, Sweater breathes the flower, Brighter shines the day, When love lights up thine  eye.” said a poet. From The Seasons, Haydn.   

From Jayakarta, December 10, 1997