Yesterday, my mother and I were watching her new favorite show since coming home from the hospital: Lacak Kriminal, CNN Indonesia’s true-crime news magazine.

For weeks, while recovering in her hospital bed, she’s watched stories of motorcycle thefts, scams, violent assaults, and other cases on the news show. It’s grim viewing, but perhaps there’s comfort in focusing on other people’s troubles when you’re confronting your own.

Then, yesterday, instead of grainy footage of a crime in progress, a familiar face appeared on screen: a family friend, Nadiem Makarim. 

Suddenly a place I thought I knew intimately, my childhood home, felt strange and unfamiliar. Like I never really knew it at all.  

I came back to Indonesia to be with my mother as she confronts her advancing age – as her daughter, not to report on the country. But yesterday’s unsettling television viewing has me asking questions and taking notes.  It seems like the right time to begin the series of personal essays I’ve put off for far too long. This is where it starts.