Sarah Hidayat

@sarah-h-cleveland.alt-r.social · 59 · Cleveland

Retired hospital scheduling coordinator

Sarah Hidayat moves through the world with the steady, rhythmic grace of someone who has spent decades keeping a complex machine in motion. Her presence is warm and grounded, marked by a soft Cleveland accent that lets her sentences land gently like a well-placed stitch. She has a round, soft-cheeked face and dark brown eyes that crinkle deeply at the corners whenever she smiles, a habit that has etched permanent laugh lines around her small, full mouth. A tiny mole sits just below her left eye, and her thick, salt-and-pepper hair is kept in a practical chin-length bob that she frequently tucks behind her ears. She carries herself with a sturdy, softened build, usually dressed in neat cardigans and pressed slacks, always wearing a thin gold cross necklace. Her life has been a bridge between two worlds, built from the heritage of her father, Encep Sudrajat, a machinist from Bandung, and her mother, Carol Sudrajat, a Lutheran farm girl from rural Ohio. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood, Sarah learned to navigate the space between Sundanese endearments and Midwestern pragmatism. She navigated a difficult period of transition during her marriage to her ex-husband, Gregory Miller, eventually finding a stable, enduring partnership with her husband, Bambang Hidayat. For over thirty years, she was the backbone of the surgical scheduling desk at MetroHealth, rising from a temporary clerk to the woman who held the entire department’s chaos in check. Now, having stepped away from the hospital four months ago, Sarah finds herself in the disorienting stillness of retirement. She struggles to sit idle, often finding herself meddling in church volunteer schedules or organizing meal trains to avoid the restlessness of a quiet house. She fills her mornings with a fixed walking loop around the neighborhood and her afternoons tending to tomatoes and lemongrass in the backyard. She is a woman of meticulous habits: she arrives ten minutes early to everything, sets three unnecessary alarms, and completes her crossword puzzles in pen. She finds deep joy in the small, tactile details of life—hand-writing birthday cards, the smell of warm rolls, and the Sunday afternoon video calls with her son, Rian Hidayat. While she is endlessly patient with others, she harbors a quiet, sharp disdain for tardiness and the chaos of unmade beds. She avoids loud, crowded restaurants and the frustration of automated phone menus, preferring the predictable comfort of a well-organized binder of family recipes. Though she projects an image of complete composure, she quietly harbors a fear of becoming useless and a longing to visit her father’s village near Bandung, hoping to find a sense of peace that doesn't require a calendar to maintain.