My grandfather grew up in small-town, middle-of-nowhere East Java, right around the old Dutch sugar plantations.

I’ve been a city kid all my life. It takes me 21 years to ask to visit.

“You want to go to Tulungagung?” he asks, crow’s feet deepening with a smile. 

“Yeah,” I say, a little awkward.

He pauses, mulling over the moment. Then he nods back. “You tell Opa when,” he says, reaching over to pat my back.

*

The trip begins as something between the two of us, but quickly grows into something more. My grandfather brings along his girlfriend-slash-sort-of-wife (they’re both widowed and are touchy about re-marriage). My dad and aunt take time off work to come. My grandfather’s siblings text that they want in.

Then suddenly it’s mid-November, and my granduncle is picking us up in his car from the airport. We spend longer than necessary fiddling with our luggage, which my granduncle insists is secure tied to the roof of his car. We watch as he fiddles with the rope.

“They’re going to fall,” my sort-of-grandmother protests. As if on cue, one wobbles, threatening to spill onto the asphalt.

“So what?” my granduncle grumbles, revving the engine. “We’ll hear them if they do!”

The journey takes three hours. Between my granduncle’s brazen driving and the thick Javanese of my relatives, I peer out the windows and watch the roads go by.

The touch of the Dutch is everywhere—sugarcane litters the landscape.

East Java is mocked for a sweet palate. Every meal is accompanied by sweet tea and every dish with sweet soy. This is certainly true of my grandfather, the only son of a sweetmaker. His mother would wake up every morning, well before dawn, and get right to work shredding coconut, kneading flour, and steaming cakes to sell in her blue wicker basket, an icon of the area. 

Driving through the streets, he tells us these stories with pride; but, to my surprise, his sister laughs.

“You know those layer cakes?” she says. “This one,” she points a finger at his bald head, “used to sneak licks between the layers. And then Mama would sell them! Can you imagine?” 

At this, my grandfather grins, the light gleaming between the gaps in his teeth.

Eventually we stop for our first meal. It’s soto, as most meals will be over the next week, at a spot my grandfather and his siblings assure me is a tried-and-true favorite. 

I’m already digging in as my grandfather bows his head and makes the sign of the cross. The chatter circles around him as he prays.

Then he picks up a bottle beside him—tjap kuda, it reads—and squirts enough sweet soy to turn the soup black.

When he offers it to me, I turn it down. “I don’t like sweet foods,” I explain, pretending not to notice his dismay.

 *

Several hours later, we pass into Tulungagung, which is bigger and more city-like than in my grandfather’s stories, but still small enough that I feel out of place. My grandfather points out his primary school, and my grandaunt points out a spot by the river, right where her favorite shaved ice seller used to be. 

Eventually, we stop the car by a little gray house, which he tells us was his family’s as he was growing up.

“All of this used to be dirt. All kampung,” he tells us, hands clasped behind his back. “It used to flood a lot. We would have to paddle away when it did.”

I imagine him in a makeshift raft, huddling with his many sisters.

“All that flooding,” my grandaunt laughs, “and Mama still never taught me to swim!”

*

The next day—or maybe the one after that, I lose track—two more grandparents join us, adding another granduncle and grandaunt to keep track of. With nine of us traveling, it takes two cars to get anywhere.

With our group complete, my grandfather deems it the right time to visit the graveyard.

It’s blazing hot when we get there. Nobody else has the bad sense to visit at noon, when the sun is at its peak, so we wander in, parking the cars by a rich man’s gazeboed headstone.

The graveyard keeper is an older woman with a wide-brimmed hat and a tooth-gapped grin. She leads the way with a sickle, chopping down the tall grass so we can shuffle through it single file. The blades tickle my ankles.

We visit my grandfather’s parents, and then his grandparents.

Tulungagung is famous for its stonemasons, but these headstones are simple and perfunctory. “This one really liked alcohol,” he says, pointing at one of the slabs. A name is carved into the stone, followed by a list of living relatives. I don’t recognize any of them. “That’s where we get it from.”

At each one, we pause to pray. My grandfather makes the sign of the cross, but I’m not sure what language I’m meant to pray in, let alone what religion. I don’t think any of my ancestors were Catholic.

I bow my head and count sheep in my head until an appropriate length of time has passed. Then I open my eyes, and we move on to the next grave.

On the way out, I crouch down to play with the shameplants, grazing my fingertips across their leaves. They shrink away with the touch.

*

After the grave visit, my grandfather and my other grandfather and my other other grandfather drive us to another village, Puh Sarang, to visit the Goa Maria—a name I recognize as vaguely Catholic but am given no explanation for. 

We split up into the two cars, and my granduncles call each other on the phone so they can continue talking.

“I bought my puppy there for 15 dollars,” my baldest granduncle tells us over the phone, half-brag and half-fact, “including shipping and everything.” The puppy in question, Bruno, is known in the family for its protruding belly and perpetually muddy paws.

“15!” my second-baldest granduncle exclaims. “No wonder he looks like that!”

It’s mid-afternoon when we get there, and the sky is an ominous gray. We know too well what that means, but my grandparents insist we will be quick and elect to leave the umbrellas in the trunk. 

We clamber out onto the side of the road, right by a stall selling stewed lizards. Puh Sarang is green and wet, the ground damp from the dew of the morning and the rain of the day before.

An old lady with a basket waves to greet us. 

“Candles?” she offers, gesturing toward her wares. The candles are varied: short and tall and fat, all inscribed with blessings and prayers for fertility, money, health. 

We empty most of her basket, then head into the site. 

The walk to the grotto is long but scenic, paved with smooth stones and old, winding trees. “Careful not to fall,” one grandaunt tells me, pointing toward the rounded edge of a staircase. “I know someone whose son slipped here and was paralyzed for life.”

“You’re too negative,” my granduncle chides. He lets her hold onto him as they climb.

Our group splits up as we walk. My grandaunts, content to squabble on their own, scamper ahead, their chatter growing ever-distant. My granduncles find some way to disappear. My grandfather’s girlfriend—a recent convert—wanders around, taking photos of the things that pique her interest (tree, gazebo, Jesus sign, restroom). My dad whistles a quiet, breathy song.

I lag behind with my grandfather, whose hip has been acting up. He hobbles along and leans on my aunt the entire time, a hand gripping firmly onto her forearm. 

Together, we inch along the stations of the cross. The sequence is familiar. Jesus is sentenced to death. Jesus carries the cross. Jesus falls with the cross. My grandfather coughs. Jesus falls again.

Partway through, the greenery comes to an abrupt end. The path narrows and feeds us into a road of gift shop stalls, baskets of Catholic-themed products spilling out onto the street. Their holey plastic awnings block out the sky.

We find my grandaunts here, huddled together at one of the stalls. “Which one should I get?” one of them muses, leafing through the Catholic t-shirts.

“Look at this!” the other exclaims, holding up AI-generated Jesus. “So cute!”

The stalls are an unexpected treasure. Some of them are more specialized, run by old carpenters selling crosses and wood sculptures. Others are a cesspool of regular gift shop fare—tamarind candies, wooden toys, snacks—coupled with a tsunami of Catholic paraphernalia. Mary statues of varying sizes, shrink-wrapped in plastic. Carvings of baby Jesus. Rosaries, wooden and plastic alike: brown and black and rainbow-colored. 

I’m admiring a gold-lined, holographic Jesus poster when my dad comes up to me. 

“Do you want a beer?” he asks. I’m convinced he’s joking until he points at the drink fridge. Sure enough, the top shelf is lined with cans of beer and seltzers.

I shoot him a look. 

My dad laughs.

I move on to the shelf of holy water.

*

I buy a rosary for a friend, but nothing for myself. My grandaunts leave with bags full of Jesus merch.

All together again, we hobble along the last bit of the trail, the trees thickening around us.

Finally, the path opens up to a large courtyard with a stone grotto at its head. Nestled in the cave is an enlarged statue of Mother Mary, her skin as pale as a ghost. The bushes snake around her, weaving between the stones and around her bare feet. She looks solemn—head bowed, hands pressed together.

Goa Maria translates, quite literally, to “Maria Cave.” Later I learn this is not a unique place, but a general term for a Marian cave, fashioned after a pilgrimage site in Lourdes, quite a ways away from East Java. There are perhaps a dozen of these sites around Java, each one a variant of the last.

If you can’t make the pilgrimage, make the pilgrimage come to you, one blog writes.

The Puh Sarang site is nestled comfortably in the middle of nowhere. Its history is a classic one: Dutch missionaries arrived in the area in the 1930s and made quick work of the locals. By 1936, a Dutchman with “a love for Javanese culture” had designed and built a church. 

The cave was built 50 years later, decades after their departure. The locals have remained Catholic.

I imagine a parallel history across the island: conversion and continuity. Imposed, then embraced.

*

There’s another dip in the cave—under Mother Mary—with a designated area for candles. The remains of hundreds of candles spill into each other, red and white wax curling over each other in big globs. My grandfather hands me a pack of candles to light.

For children, they read. He doesn’t seem to notice.

I carry them to the cave, balancing them on the sea of wax. My dad tries to hand me a lighter, but I’m afraid of using them, so he lights a candle for me and I use it to light the rest. I pray, because it seems right, and this time I’m able to muster up something about good health for my family before walking away.

Just beside the candle cave is a spigot, stuck directly into the stone. A basin, carved into the landscape, sits beneath it.

“Holy water,” my grandaunt tells me. She turns the tap and washes her face.

I wet my fingers and make the sign of the cross. Then I dip the rosary into the puddle that forms.

My father scolds me. “That’s wood,” he hisses, because he’s a stickler about wood health for some reason. 

When he turns his back, I dip it in again, watching the beads bubble in the water.

*

My grandfather digs plastic stools out from somewhere in the landscape and settles himself in the center of the courtyard. He points to an empty one when he sees me.

“Come sit,” he says.

I set my stool down behind him. From where we’re seated, we have a full view of the cave. I watch the candles flicker from afar, like little flames licking the air. 

My grandfather wasn’t Catholic for years, or at least not devoutly so. Growing up, this vestige of the Dutch seemed to escape him. 

It was my grandmother who was. Even throughout their marriage, he would drop her off at Sunday Mass, and leave until it was time to pick her up.

When she passed, prayer consumed him. 

My grandfather bows his head, brows furrowed in concentration. 

Was he praying for her, to her, or on behalf of her?

*

The sky finally breaks. Rain spills onto the stone, the droplets heavy and fat. The nine of us take shelter in the grotto until a gardener comes up to us with some umbrellas: a perfect savior.

We waddle back the way we came, passing shuttered gift shops and wet stone.

In the car, my granduncle complains he is wet. My grandaunt hands him one of her brand-new t-shirts, and he wears glow-in-the-dark Jesus around for the rest of the day.

*

On Sunday, we drive into the city and attend Mass. The city is near a famous mountain, which I’m told the Dutch liked for the colder weather. I can see it in the architecture: large and white and imposing. Even the church is grander, with taller ceilings and wider pews.

The bell rings.

The priest looks like us, but he speaks their words, preaches their beliefs.

I wonder how they got my grandmother to believe.

*

Months later, I am back at college, and my grandfather has a bad fall. Bedridden, he misses Mass for the first time in years. I tell him I love him. I wish I could be there.

Lent rolls around. I haven’t gone to Ash Wednesday service since middle school, but I go with a friend and force myself to sit through it.

The priest is white. I listen to him ramble about his sister’s children and good deeds and other vaguely Catholic things.

I think of the missionaries.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The ash cools on my forehead in a sticky way. I think about all the oils on the priest’s thumb—the oils of everyone before me—caked and layered onto his skin. I think about the acne it will cause, the fungal kind that comes from moisture behind my bangs.

When Mass ends, I wash the ash off—though not before sending a text to my grandfather.

 

Misa rabu abu, I type. I send him two photos: one of myself, ash behind my bangs, and a second of me and my friend by the chapel door. I don't tell him we are both begrudging participants—that, if he could have gone himself, I never would have done it at all.

Luar biasa, my grandfather writes back. Extraordinary. As in, how bizarrely, delightfully out of the ordinary. 

*

I’ve never had a desire for pilgrimage.

But maybe I'd do it for him.