Ayah Kami

I don’t think our dad actually planned for any of this. When he came to the United States almost forty years ago searching for an education that would provide him with a better life, he had no way of knowing he would meet a young, White woman in college and proceed to have two kids with her. He couldn’t have known that he would successfully earn a PhD, work jobs where he was unpaid or severely underpaid due to his immigration status to support his new family, and come to accept that his two children would not follow the path he had hoped they would.

Our dad is a Muslim Indonesian man, and he is very pious, having turned even more toward his faith after the deaths of his parents. He raised my sibling and I to follow Islam’s principles and restrictions, such as only consuming halal food, though when we were young, we were not provided the context required to understand why. This allowed for our mother to successfully enforce the idea that we did not actually have to follow Islam, regardless of our father’s wishes. Raised Baptist, our mother told our dad that she would convert to Islam when she married him, but ultimately decided that she was atheist. Due to negative feelings toward organized religion, she influenced my sibling and I into disliking religion as well. She would also occasionally slip us some bacon and pork ribs while our dad was at work, and these delicious treats further convinced us that we were, in fact, not Muslim.

Though we felt disconnected from Islam for most of our lives, my sibling and I still called ourselves Muslim in name only, not wanting to upset our dad. It wasn’t until we were teenagers, with my sibling already in college, that we finally came out to our dad as pork-eaters. I remember the day I first ordered ribs in front of my father clearly. He asked what I had said, appalled, and I turned to our waitress and politely asked her to give us a minute. My dad was visibly upset, but he immediately accepted that I enjoyed the taste of pork and that I wouldn’t change my mind based on a religion that I personally did not follow. Though I did not realize it at the time, this spoke a lot about his character and his openness to the lives that others lead, even if they don’t always match up with his own life or his core values.

Around the same time, my sibling and I discovered that there was another hurdle in front of us when it came to coming out to our dad. We both came to realize that we were queer, which, even today, is something that was not widely accepted among certain very religious people. While we confided in each other, we were not running to tell our parents about our crushes on girls at school. In fact, true to the typical queer experience, we were trying to actively avoid coming out, fearful of what would happen once our parents knew. This weighed heavy on my heart, and there was a time when I started to sob in the shower thinking about how much the world hated someone like me. Our dad had knocked on the door after a few minutes, asking if I was okay. While I appreciated his concern, I brushed it off and said I was fine. I never did tell him why I was crying because, at the time, I didn’t know if he would want to try to comfort me if he knew the reason I was so distraught.

Our relationship with our dad has always been a generally quiet one, with limited in-depth conversations about things that weren’t brought up during daily interactions. Emotions were something that we hardly really talked about, particularly between our dad and I since we both tend to be non-confrontational people and would rather wait for the other person to start conversations about heavier topics. Additionally, our dad was very often busy with work to continue to support our family, and since my sibling and I were trying to keep a salient part of ourselves from our parents, we didn’t talk more than needed. We spent time together when we could, watching movies or going out to eat as a family, but conversations were typically related to school, friends, and food.

So it came as a surprise to my sibling and I when our dad, unprompted, seemingly decided to hint that he was actually fine with our sexualities. We were in the car, with my sibling in the passenger seat so they could have control of the radio and with me in the middle seat in the back so I could stretch my legs out between them, when our dad told my sibling that they can do whatever they want as long as they “don’t kill anyone,” “still believe in God,” and “mother says it’s okay.”

I guess we weren’t as subtle as we thought.

After my sibling and I were both obviously out as queer, though we never had any in depth conversations about our identities with either of our parents, our dad continued to silently support us and our choices. While most parents eagerly look forward to and often expect their children to provide them with grandchildren, our dad is surprisingly accepting of the fact that we have chosen not to carry on the bloodline. My sibling recently underwent a voluntary hysterectomy and I am asexual and do not desire a relationship. I asked him recently if he was bothered by us choosing not to have children, and he said no. Whatever we wanted was fine by him.

He is also very supportive of the marriage between my sibling and their partner, also a Southeast Asian immigrant who came to the US to further their education. He wrote an affidavit for them after they got married, happily acknowledging that their marriage is a legitimate one based on love rather than a “fraudulent” or “green card” marriage. Given that he had gone through the same process and faced the same criticisms and accusations when marrying our mother, albeit during a different era, his support for his child and their relationship is based on empathy and shared experience. Though he may not have fully understood the added difficulties that my sibling and sibling-in-law faced due to the fact that their marriage was a “same-sex” one, he was steadfast in his support.

Our dad’s unwavering support is something my sibling and I never truly anticipated growing into who we are today, not only because of his strong religious beliefs, but because of his age. Our dad was born in the second half of the Baby Boomer generation, but once we felt comfortable having more substantial and politically-charged conversations with him, we quickly learned that he does not have the typical mindframe that it is believed most Baby Boomers have. He is very open to having conversations about privilege and how certain identities, including ones he holds as an immigrant of color, can affect one’s ability to navigate life. He is always willing to listen when we discuss the changing yet, in some unfortunate ways, stagnating world around us.

Not only is our dad open to learning about issues that affect our day to day lives, he also willingly shows genuine curiosity toward our more subjective, personal interests. He will sit through and, eventually, start to enjoy the type of music I listen to in the car – pretty hard-hitting screamo included – and he gets just as excited as we do when there is a new animated film being released soon. This man, in his 60s, told me just last month that we should go to an anime convention together after becoming just as obsessed with My Hero Academia as I am, and he doesn’t hesitate to agree to watch new Billie Eilish music videos with me.

All things considered, he’s a pretty cool Dude – a loving nickname that we gave him when we were just children.

It can be extremely difficult to face life head-on most days, especially when my sibling and I have to navigate it as queer, biracial individuals diagnosed with depression. Our humanity is often questioned not only by other people, but by systematic structures and policies that don’t value queer lives, that don’t believe the lives of people of color matter, and that believe certain people shouldn’t have bodily autonomy.

In a society that does not accept us, it is truly a blessing that we have a dad who does.

And so to our dad, we would just like to say: Dude, terima kasih atas cinta dan dukungan tanpa syarat Anda.