The Simple Joy of Having Each Other

On the plane back from Taiwan, I sat with an 11 year old Chinese child, named Wang Meng Zhu and a Indonesian lady named Sheila in her late twenties. I noticed that they were chatting to each other in part English, part Mandarin and part Indonesian with some fluency. This intrigued me. I also noticed a certain tenderness between the both of them. The teased each other and shared an ice cream. Something that a child and an employed caregiver would not do.

I joined in the trilingual fest. It turned out that Sheila is the wife of Meng Zhu's Taiwanese father. They met in Kelapa Gading, Jakarta, when he was an expatriate in Indonesia and when she was working in a bridal shop. At the time he had separated from his wife and was raising Meng Zhu, then a little three year old girl, all on his own. Sheila fell in love with Meng Zhu's father, but more importantly, fell in love with Meng Zhu. She cared for her as her own.

When Meng Zhu's father left Indonesia, they all left for Taiwan. He was later posted to HCM City, and they make a trip every month to see him. She returns to Indonesia once a year to renew her multiple entry visa. She was returning this time to Indonesia and the happy Meng Chu was delighted to come along. She loved Indonesia. The young girl told me that Indonesia "ada banyak teman, banyak mal", and of course that she did not have to study as she was holiday.

The tenderness between her and the girl is real. Meng Zhu would tug at her arm and hold it. They would joke with each other. Sheila spoke of the girl with pride, telling me how she finished top three in her class, how she was very strict in her routine and studied very hard. Sheila said that Meng Zhu was all she had in Taiwan and it was the same vice versa. Meng Zhu had not only come from a broken family, but a broken extended family. None of the immediate family ever came close to caring for Meng Zhu. This did not seem to bother the little girl. She had Sheila.

Sheila told me that she saw it as her duty to protect the girl and give her a chance to grow up full of confidence. She told me that a person should never think they could not do anything. Sheila plays golf. She writes Chinese characters better than I can. And she has come to love a child as if it was her own. She is teaching Meng Zhu that anything is possible.

And Meng Zhu? I have never met a multilingual 11 year old girl who appeared genuinely happier.