Have you ever tried matcha coffee?
You can taste the bitterness of the coffee and the astringency of the matcha, but when it's blended just right, the flavor is surprisingly soothing. It's not as sweet as hot chocolate, but it's not as cold as sweet iced tea at a warteg, either. That's what our home is like. More or less.
My name is Ghani Alamsyah. I'm twenty-five years old—the age when some of my friends are already making payments on homes in the outskirts of Jakarta, starting little families, and even carrying their children around. Some have gone abroad, some have gone on to earn master's degrees, and the rest are busy showing off their key opinion leader status on LinkedIn. And me? I'm still here, sitting at a wooden dining table with one leg propped up by a thin piece of cardboard so it won't wobble.
"Ghan, have you seen the nail clippers? Seriously, you always use something and never put it back!"
That was Ghea. My older sister, two years older than me. She always had a sensitive radar for small things that went missing around the house.
"In the drawer near the TV. Gastan used them yesterday," I answered without taking my eyes off my phone, which was displaying this month's digital pay stub. The number was still the same, barely different from last year, but thank goodness it was still enough to transfer to Mom's account this afternoon.
"Gastaaaan! You always do this!" Ghea shouted again, this time toward the back bedroom where our youngest sibling was.
Gastan, nineteen, answered only with a lazy mumble from behind his bedroom's plywood door. He'd just graduated from vocational high school this year and was still trying to figure out what to do with his life, which often left him looking gloomy or, on the contrary, far too indifferent. Who knew? I didn't pay that much attention to him, either.
Mom came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of fried tempeh that was still steaming. "It's already morning. Don't yell so much. It's not nice for the neighbors." Mom looked at me, gave me a faint smile, then set the plate in the middle of the table. "Eat, Ghan. It's still warm."
"Okay, Mom. Where's Dad?" I asked, picking up a piece of tempeh.
"Out front, cleaning the pigeons."
I nodded. This was how our lives rolled along every day. Simple, a little noisy, sometimes exhausting, but carrying on as they were. As the second child and the oldest son in the house, I often felt like a backup support beam.
Ghea was the stubborn main pillar, Gastan was the still-unstable foundation, and I was in the middle, holding things up so our home's corrugated-metal roof wouldn't collapse whenever strong winds came.
My phone vibrated on the table. A WhatsApp message came in.
Letta: "Morning, Ghani. Today is my last thesis advising session for my undergraduate thesis. Wish me luck, okay? Don't forget to eat breakfast."
I smiled faintly at the screen. Letta Agnia Jasmine.
When I thought about it, her presence in my life was an anomaly. She was twenty-three, a senior majoring in accounting at an expensive private university. I'd known her since we were in high school.
Her world was completely different from mine. Letta was the only child of a fairly well-known businessman. Once she graduated, her path had already been neatly laid out: she'd join her father's company, learn how to lead, and eventually perhaps become its heir, since she was his only child.
And me? I was a twenty-five-year-old man still trying to figure out how to keep Dad's old underbone motorcycle from breaking down again this week.
Sometimes the difference between us felt like a chasm that made me dizzy. But Letta never made me feel small. She liked simple things, and somehow, she never got tired of listening to stories about Ghea's nagging or Gastan's bizarre behavior.
I typed a reply with my left hand while my right still held a half-bitten piece of fried tempeh.
You: "Morning, Let. I'm sure your advising will go smoothly. I'm having warm fried tempeh Mom made for breakfast. Good luck today."
I slipped my phone into the pocket of my slacks, whose color had faded a little around the knees. A new day had begun. The bitterness of the coffee and the savory fried tempeh Mom had made were ready to fill the day ahead with energy. And I, Ghani Alamsyah, was ready to make the most of it.