I must have been seven then and I remember specifically asking my dad what ‘class’ we belonged to. Whether we were Orang Kaya or Orang Miskin (The Rich or The Poor). You know how it was as a child, we had this funny urge to belong and to fit in, hoping that we were the hierarchical toppers. When I asked dad the question, I remember looking specifically at our bathroom door almost feeling sorry that it didn’t even look like a door.
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But perhaps it was that door that made dad think we were in a class of our own. He said we were neither kaya nor miskin. We were Orang Berada‡. Because we had a house. We had a bathroom. And our bathroom did have a door no matter how unlike a door it looked like. We had money. It was barely enough but we had money when we had it. We had wheels. Riding on dad’s bicycle was definitely faster than walking. We had food on the table. Though we didn’t really have a dining table. We sat on the floor around our food at mealtimes. But we had a floor of the house. And we had a house.
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Most of all, said dad, we had the will to better ourselves so no one would call us The Poor. I learned it from my dad that we didn’t have to have all, to have it all. We had it all figured out and today we are okay. We are our all. Each other.
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Orang Berada‡ loosely translates to ‘people who have (everything)’
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Questa è Enida 
