Jakarta, Indonesia six and seven years old.

We moved to the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta in the early 1970's.  When I look back on my childhood, it is here that I probably was the happiest.  I rarely remember anything bad that happened, even though I was unaware that we lived in a country that had quite a bit of political unrest.  It was not uncommon that buses or cars were lit on fire as a demonstration erupted in the streets.  However, those are not necessarily my memories.  My parents have shared things with me later in life, or I might have read about it as an adult.  Instead, my days were filled with play and adventure for a six year old.  Our house had an inside garden, with net covering the top.  Inside this garden, we had two cockatoo parrots, an macaw parrot, a blue and yellow smaller parrot that somehow managed to hang himself accidentally on his chain, and my mom resuscitated him back to life, but he was never the same, and seemed brain damaged.  We also had a large fish pond, where we used to watch our spider monkey swim laps and time how long he could hold his breath.  Along with a monkey, we also had a grey hound dog who was not much of a watch dog, since we were broken into one night, and he never barked.  The same burglar had broken into our neighbor's house, but he had unfortunately woken up, and been shot in the arm.  We were fortunate enough to only have had our cassette tapes and cassette player stolen.  Since I am mentioning about all our pets, we also had a Sumatran sun bear cub!  I have always loved bears, and I would draw bears all the time.  And then one day my dad brought home our very own, live bear cub!  I was the happiest six year old that lived on the face of the earth.  We played with him, and put him on my brother's bike and pushed him around.  He used to climb the mango tree, but had a hard time climbing down, so my dad often had to rescue him.
Another time my dad did something amazing, other than bring home a live bear and monkey, was when we went to a French restaurant.  They served young rabbit stew, and I was so sad to discover that truth.  So my dad ordered in French, and for dinner the waiter brought on a large, covered silver platter, four live, baby rabbits!  My dad had asked the cook to not cook four of them and instead we got to take them home as pets!  It was unbelievable.  We each received our own rabbit that we also put in the inside garden.  I loved my pet rabbit, for as long as I had it, until our no good grey hound dog managed to sneak into the house, and killed all four rabbits in a bloody after school massacre.
In November of 1973, something even more extraordinary occurred.  My baby brother was born!  Oh, I loved that baby, and even if he is 39 years old today, I still love him as much.  When my brother was fussy I would stroke his gentle head and sing to him in Swedish.  He got to hear everything from Noah's Sunday school song to the Swedish National anthem in his crib.  I loved to read, and play school, so he of course became my first pupil, and Richard Scarry's great book of pictures was his first school book.  I even made him little report cards, that I have saved to this day.  I am about to see my brothers for Thanksgiving in a week, and plan on giving my youngest brother the report card that I found buried in my diaries of past.  We are all flying to Washington, to my middle brother's house, from all corners of the world.
Well, back to Indonesia....
My parents were always very good about taking us on what they called family field trips.  And these were no ordinary trips.  As a seven year old, we flew to the Indonesian island where the famous volcano of Cracatowa rises high above the island.  I vividly recall walking over the hanging bridge, as I looked down into the mouth of the volcano.  I picked up a little lava rock, stuck it in my pocket, and I have it still after almost 40 years.  My two little brothers may not remember being there, but they were there!
Back home in my yard, I would on occasion climb up on our flatter roof and eat mangoes from our overhanging tree, pour sweet soy sauce on top of the mango, and throw the seeds onto the snarling, barking neighbor dog, which only made him bark more.  To my dismay, the neighbor (the one that got shot in the arm earlier) saw me throw the seeds, and I had to go clean up dog poop all afternoon.  My parents thought that was fair.
Our street had wiring for television, so we had the opportunity to watch in black and white on our little T.V. "I Dream of Jeanie" and "Bonanza" on Friday nights.  Our best friends down the street would join us every Friday for this big event.  They had wiring for a phone, so if we needed to make a phone call, we had to go to their house.  The trade seemed very convenient to both households.
In school, I had to go to a reading tutor, because my English reading was poor.  "Run Dick run" and "Go, Jane, go!" I would read over and over, and oh it bored me.  My favorite all time book was "The Fire Cat" and I was so impressed with my friend's reading skills.  She read that "hard" book fluently, and I made it my goal to be just as good as her.
It was not uncommon for diplomatic families such as my dad's to have servants working for them.  We had two, but one I remember very fondly, Rasita.  However, my parents also felt it was extremely important that we kids learned responsibility and emphasized chores heavily.  My biggest job as a seven year old was to iron mountains of laundry.  Driers had yet to be invented, and everything in the 70's had a tendency to wrinkle.  I remember ironing for hours, or what seemed like it.  I loathed that chore.  As I got older, laundry responsibilities followed me everywhere, washing, hanging, folding, ironing.  I was so done with laundry by the time I was an adult, that when my own boys reached the age of ten, they had to be responsible for their own laundry.  My daughter had to take over hers by the time she was nine.  I have owned one iron in my whole married life, and it broke, and I have not owned one since.  The drier is my iron.  If it needs more, then we borrow my neighbor's iron once in awhile.  You may have detected my slight hatred for ironing.
There was so much that happened in Indonesia, but that will be all for this blog entry.
Next time, we travel back to Thailand, when I am eight years old.