The Changing of Seasons (Tread Softly)

I’ve heard from a few of my six loyal blog-followers that it’s been too long since a post. They miss the hilarious mom I once was, raising four little kids, chronicling the daily ridiculousness that comes with parenting a tiny army of people made in my own image. Well, that…coupled with my own unique, lifelong ability to attract/stumble into shenanigans at a rate far greater than most of the general public (many of these episodes occurring through absolutely NO fault of my own). Ahhh…that mom. I miss her, too. While she was often hanging on by some invisible thread, she was always at all the kids’ events, she played outside with them, she cooked actual dinners that even included vegetables, she hosted the neighborhood kids and was sometimes confused with a daycare center (true story…there were THAT many kids at our house all the time!!), she always planned fun stuff and weekend events, she knew where all her vacuum attachments were, and she would sometimes chronicle thoughtful, funny musings about everyday life with the kids. She was a hell of a gal (or so she likes to think). 

Yet time passes. And kids grow. And family dynamics - and life - change. When I used to lament about wanting the kids to hurry up and grow up so they could cut their own meat and have the survival instinct of looking both ways when they crossed a street, there was always some older, wiser person who would warn me of the same things: Be careful what you wish for. Bigger kids mean bigger problems. You’ll miss this someday. And all of these statements prove true every day. I miss those sweet peanuts who loved me so much that I could cure almost any of their sorrows with a hug. I miss those sweet peanuts who were always in my presence to keep safe at all times. If only a hug was still a magic elixir. If only they even let me hug them. If only I could protect them all the time. If only I appreciated those days more. If only….

Somehow, I’m a lot less funny than I used to be, and so is life, in general. Life is evolution. And seasons change, both literally and figuratively. What was once a humorous observation of a particular moment is now observed through a much wider lens, for a bigger picture look. We were once the growing kids that our parents panicked about when we rode our bikes out of sight. We were once the teenagers our parents feared for when we were out past curfew, probably doing something stupid. We are (or were) all someone’s kids, and our parents surely felt the same way we do now, as they watched our evolution from little kids with little problems, to the bigger kids we are now with our much-bigger problems. I hope that continuously getting older doesn’t mean that our problems will continue to grow, because these middle-aged problems are pretty freaking horrifying and totally suck. 

Maybe we’re broken-hearted for our kids’ struggles (and, of course, their struggles are our struggles, since our fates and happiness are permanently intertwined, like roots). Maybe we’re broken-hearted for our aging parents’ struggles (if we’re lucky enough to still have parents), or we mourn our status as adult orphans and our loss of time to fix damaged relationships (again, those tangled roots…). Maybe we are looking at the sheer carnage that may be affecting our friends’ lives - whether it’s the shocking and premature loss of people we love; maybe it’s a cancer or another health diagnosis for someone too young and too full of life; maybe it’s the dissolution of a family through divorce; maybe it’s financial devastation of a health diagnosis or loss of a job. And, worse still, maybe this carnage hits even closer to home and to our hearts, maybe it’s our carnage. Maybe it’s our illness, or our child’s illness, or our own divorce, maybe it’s more than one thing, sometimes it may even feel like all the things, at the same time. Bigger kids, bigger problems indeed.

Nothing funny here at all, at least on some of the days. There’s a line in a poem I’ve always loved: “I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”* As these seasons of life change, and times fluctuate between good and manageable and difficult and what feels like impossible, I hang on to and have to remind myself to tread softly, both with myself (why is this always so difficult?) and those with whom I encounter. Sometimes we all need this reminder: Tread softly because we never know what someone else is going though. And if someone you know and love is currently smiling, still tread softly, as many people continue to smile even though they’re facing something insurmountable. And if someone you don’t really know that well is a complete and total asshole, still tread softly (this is the most challenging one of all) and try to give the benefit of the doubt…maybe they’re going through something we can’t begin to imagine. Tread softly in this life that is laden with trip wires. If it’s not currently our turn to be caught in the crosshairs of life, be grateful! But tread softly on those around you because, inevitably, we will, eventually, all have our turn(s). Whatever it is, whenever it comes, may we all come out on the other side, mostly intact, with a greater ability to tread softly for/on others. 

* W.B. Yeats, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” (old Journalism majors never die, but they do forget how to properly cite after enough years)

Celebrating Survival

I recently was discussing with someone how they were going to celebrate their upcoming birthday, and they said, “What in the last year is worth celebrating?” As background, this person has gone through so much personal hardship in the last year - a year that was already so full of hardship due to a pandemic that has altered life for most everyone, in most every way possible, and in a time of political vitriol that has stirred so much anxiety in so many. I was heartbroken at the despair in their statement, at the evident sorrow in their heart. Yet I’d said the exact same thing at my birthday, almost two months ago. In the midst of a very difficult personal time, my birthday had the audacity to happen, again. And I was so disengaged, due to life circumstances, that I didn’t want acknowledgement or any kind of “celebration” of a life that felt almost impossible to manage. I just wanted to bury my head in the sand and get through the annual milestone day meant to celebrate Life. 

Yet as soon as I heard them say what they said, I immediately fell into “there’s always something to be grateful for” mode, and parsed out things like, “Then celebrate the coming year, which will inevitably be better!” and, “Last year is OVER, and you survived!” To which they responded, “I don’t want to celebrate ‘just surviving.’” In their mind, survival is a given…something that happens ‘effortlessly,’ as long as the heart keeps beating, and is nothing that we might deserve any credit or congratulations for. But the truth is, survival is indeed something to celebrate - both celebrating our body, for being healthy enough to keep functioning, as well as ourselves, for mentally not giving up and for being strong enough to keep facing the hard things, and to keep on keeping on, day after difficult day. We rarely give ourselves enough credit, and this is a statement that applies to most everyone, in most every situation, everywhere. 

This is not a newsflash…this last year has been hard. Everyone knows all the external things (macro-level) that have been hard. And then there’s everyone’s specific life (micro-level), which comes with its own challenges. Everyone has been dealing with A LOT - both in the external world and in our own internal world - and some people have been dealing with EVEN MORE. And we feel bad, because sometimes there’s so much to feel bad about, and then we feel bad that we feel bad and beat ourselves up even more. It is a relentless and unforgiving circle.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t often (or ever) quote Scripture, but I often say out loud that I just wish everyone would be FRICKIN’ NICE to each other, which probably originates from the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  And it’s absolutely true…life would be so much easier if we were all nice to our ‘neighbors’ - not just our literal neighbors, but our figurative, ‘fellow human being’ neighbors. And I do love my neighbors. I always try to think of someone’s background and how that affects their current situation. I will stop to help a stranger, say kind things to people I don’t know. I hope I am a decent friend. I like to think that I encourage people, and don’t judge them, and tell people that they’re doing the best they can. I like to think I’m kind and sympathetic. I like to think I encourage people to forgive others and themselves. I give unasked-for hugs whenever they are merited/needed/deserved (less so right now, unfortunately). 

But I definitely should NOT love my neighbors as I love myself, because - like the person with the birthday - I, too, am fairly brutal on myself. I dwell on my shortcomings and ways I haven’t been who I should’ve been. I regret having done or said things. I blame myself for things that possibly weren’t even my fault. I judge myself and hold self-grudges. Quite frankly, I treat myself like shit. What I really should be doing is loving myself as I love my neighbors, and I know this a true statement for far more people than just me. As a society, we are trying to develop a culture of kindness where we teach our children to embrace kindness and compassion for others, yet we fail - so often - to do the same things with ourselves. I would never talk to a friend the way I talk to myself, and I wish I treated myself as I’d treat a friend. I am my own worst bully, if I’m being honest. 

Which brings me back to the statement from the upcoming-birthday-person…the “I don’t want to celebrate just surviving” statement. I say this to that person, and to myself, and to anyone who needs to hear it: 
’Just surviving’…YOUR survival…is worth celebrating. It is a gift to you that may be hard to see in hard times. There is so much ahead for you that has nothing to do with your life right now, and those things will be wonderful and you will feel joy. Your survival is also a gift to those who love you. You bring joy, even in hard times, to others…through who you are, and your humor, and your strength. Your life is worth celebrating…not just on your birthday, but on every single day. 
Treat yourself as you would treat a friend. Offer yourself the same understanding that you would offer a friend in the same situation. Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself. Know that you are doing the best you can. Know that you are loved, and worth loving. Know that hard times won’t always be the way. Know that you will emerge from this stronger and more compassionate and better. Know that you are not alone.
Every breath is worth celebrating. Your survival is worth celebrating. Love yourself as your neighbor. You are MY ‘neighbor’ and I love you with all my heart. Love yourself like that. Even in hard times. 

The Best Medicine

Good things about the coronavirus pandemic: things everywhere are much cleaner than they’ve ever been (excluding my personal residence, because kids are home full-time). Our family schedule has freed up (even though we can’t actually go anywhere to do anything). I can get a parking place at the coffee shop WITH EASE every morning (woo-FREAKING-hoo!). There’s so much less traffic on the roads (although…why am I even out of the house???). And thanks to no school and working from home, I played Monopoly with 13-year-old Nadia today, and she said she developed a nine-pack (!! that’s 1.5 times more than a six-pack!) from laughing so hard. Moments like this, where any kid has an enjoyable time with me, much less 13-year-old Nadia, are few and far between. I feel like a selfish ass when I say this, but if it takes a freaking global pandemic and societal shutdown to inspire an hour where my kid LIKES me, then bring on MORE global pandemics and societal shutdowns! 

As soon as I typed that, I knew it was wrong. As is sometimes the case in this thing called Parenting and Life, common sense kicks in, and I remember that there’s far more bad than good with this pandemic. There’s the whole economic turmoil as the stock market is on what makes Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride seems like a leisurely, Sunday drive in the counrtyside. People are out of work as businesses shutter. Grocery stores are empty of protein and dairy and bread (NOT talking about TP, nor am I going to talk about the peculiar frozen meat product that went into our dinner tonight that had the texture of tofu and the flavor of burnt hot dog, yet was somehow labelled as “chicken”). Schools are closed (dear God…someone please help me!) and I’m supposed to be home-schooling (math: A bottle of wine costs $11.99. When you buy 6, you get 10 percent off. Calculate the total of 24 bottles, plus sales tax at 6.375 percent). Then, of couse, there’s the fact that America has gone toilet-paper crazy (seriously, I was in a bathroom at the mall this weekend and ALL the stalls were empty of toilet paper, which I think had been STOLEN!). And then there are the quarantined, the sick, and the deceased. Nothing. Good. Here. Nothing to even justify the 13-year-old who laughed so hard she got extra abs.  

Personally, 2019 sucked, in epic proportions. My family went through some serious crap, and the days were dark, and many, and long. I kept going through the motions, because that’s what we do when we don’t have the luxury of throwing in the towel, giving up, and retreating to a dark place with a cat, a bottle of vodka, and a fuzzy blanket. For a while, and sometimes still, I thought that I lost my sense of humor. I couldn’t find the humor in things and, as I realized, if you can’t laugh at shit, it’s really hard to get through a day. And if I’m being completely honest, I know I’m not the same as I was. I’m still navigating it all…the boat hasn’t sunk, but the water is still choppy. Sometimes land is in sight, sometimes I can’t see it. I’d been so anxious for a return to “normalcy” (whatever that is) over the last year, and - a month or two ago - thought that’s where things were headed. And then…the pandemic. 

A little perspective never hurts. I am healthy(ish), the family is healthy, and we’re likely to emerge from this all unscathed. Though my business is definitely affected, I still have a job and I know that we’re going to have a roof over our heads at the end of this, and everyone is going to have food to eat (although it may be called chicken, but taste like tofu meets hot dog). There’s an excellent chance that I’m not going to run out of toilet paper, in spite of not having overbought, because there’s a million-pack at work, double-ply, and I can make those rolls last a really, really long time, if necessary. 

There’s plenty to be scared of every day, but I’m approaching this pandemic, at this point, with a sense of humor because I’ve learned over the years - and this past year more than any other year - that finding the humor in things is one of the best ways to get through things, even when nothing is funny. If the choice is laughter or tears, choose laughter. Or tears from laughing too hard. 

One Hilarious Mother*#!

I always tell my kids that I am freaking HILARIOUS, because I am not always sure that they know. It’s not that I am quietly funny, like Mike, or secretively funny to a select few….I’m not shy and I make no efforts to hide how hilarious I am. All day long, I am doing hilarious things, throwing out zingers, and just waiting for the world to laugh. It’s part of who I am…trying to lighten the mood of LIFE (all capitals, because LIFE is no joke, and it’s a freaking SERIOUS business that often needs levity). So I am goofy and full of shenanigans and I have a pretty sharp wit, because I feel that that is a necessary component of living….to lighten the mood and to be an antidote to the very serious business of BEING ALIVE. I am willing to provide that levity and am pretty much impervious to embarrassment. I am all about having a good time and living in the moment, because life is hard and life is short, and you might as well just enjoy it and try to lighten it for others along the way. 

Having said all that….I am also a parent to 12- and 14-year-old girls. Which means I have a constant audience of people who don’t think I am funny. AT ALL. IN ANY CAPACITY. Which is tragic, because…seriously…I am freaking hilarious. Take, for example, what happened yesterday.  Grace (the 14-year-old) and I went to purchase new glasses for her. The optician handed me two forms…one was a basic info form, which I passed to Grace to fill out. The other form was more of the same, but with a few different questions, which I took to fill out. One of the questions was “What do you like to do in your spare time?” A bit about Grace…she is an easy kid to raise, gets good grades, and gives us minimal grief. But I couldn’t help myself and wrote “kung fu” as her hobby because, whenever I try to hug Grace (she’s allergic to affection), she physically defends herself from my love, often with a defensive posture and possibly a kick. I recently nicknamed her Kung Fu Grace and have plans in my head for a children’s book series about a girl named Kung Fu Grace and her cat, Hairy Houdini, who may or may not be based on Grace and her actual cat, who is about the worst cat in the history of cats. She dislikes the nickname, so I continue to call her Kung Fu Grace, because I have so few methods of revenge. So when my giggling gave me away, she promptly checked to see what I’d written, gave me a disgusted look, threatened me with a kick, and scratched out her Kung Fu hobby. I let it slide, knowing that I would eventually find an opportunity to write a new hobby in the blank. I bided my time, until she was no longer looking and the opportunity arose for me to write “yodeling” as her hobby. I successfully handed the questionnaire to the optician, and promptly told Grace about how I’d written “yodeling” as her hobby. For the record, Grace does NOT yodel. Needless to say, Grace saw NO humor in what I’d done, but I am still giggling about it, more than 24 hours later. Like I said….I am freaking hilarious. 

Sadly, most of my humor is lost on my 12 and 14-year-old girls, no matter what I come up with. Cerebral comedy, physical humor…doesn’t matter. When you’re 12 or 14 and you’re mother is the comedian, it’s just not funny. Because mothers aren’t funny. They’re embarrassing, out of touch, old….but never funny. My 7 and 8-year-old boys find me slightly funnier than the girls do, but not by much. Sadly, the girls have poisoned the boys against my humor, and I may never be appreciated in my time. It’s the curse of being a mom. Or, more specifically, the curse of being a hilarious mom.

Yet I persist. It’s what funny people do. We carry on with the shenanigans, even when the audience isn’t laughing. Even if no one (in my family) finds me funny, I keep myself laughing, which is NOT an easy thing to do. Being a parent of four is NO. LAUGHING. MATTER. Seriously. I’m just warning you, in the event you’re a parent and not already at the point in your parenting career when there is NO LAUGHTER. Prepare yourself, and have a prescription handy (because one or some of you are going to need it). Sometimes I think the secret to surviving it all is the ability to keep laughing, even when the days are impossible and there’s no reason to laugh. Just keep searching for a reason to laugh. Search out the ridiculous and the silly. Find something in the day that makes you giggle. Because these days are freaking hard. And sometimes the silly laughs are all there is to get you through to the next day. And if the laughs come at the sake of mortifying your kid, so be it. I’m sure they deserve it for some injustice they inflicted on you. 

Don’t forget…they’ve embarrassed you countless times over the years, too, whether it was when they told Dad that “Mom got pulled over…again!” or when they told their pre-school teacher that mom’s favorite juice is wine. It all evens out in the end, and maybe…just maybe…they’ll be lucky enough to grow up to be one hilarious mother, too.

Time as Related to Place

Great novels start with lines like, Call me Ishmael. Mediocre blogs start with lines like…

Call me Sophia Petrillo. When I tell a story, I like to set it up Sophia-style. “Picture it…a pay toilet in Boleslawiec, Poland, 2001.” Or, “Picture it…the breakdown lane of I-70 in Richmond, Indiana, 2014.” Or, “Picture it…the Yakov Smirnoff Comedy Club in Branson, Missouri, 1999.”  For the last 20 years, my memory has been structured geographically. When I need to figure out when something happened, I determine where we lived at the time, and then I determine if the event happened early on, in the middle of, or late in our stay….calculations, tabulations, carry the one, and voila!…the year of the memory! 

Give me an event from the last two decades…the Japanese tsunami? I know that happened on March 12, 2011, for two reasons…it happened on my brother-in-law’s birthday and it happened right after we moved to Junction City, KS (arrival date: 12/31/2010, so that puts that year as 2011). When did Michael Jackson die? I watched the news of that event in our Fort Leavenworth, KS, living room, and we lived in that house from November 2008 until Dec 2009. It was warm out, so that means Michael Jackson died in summer 2009.  Columbine? I was glued to the news from our living room in Jacksonville, AL. It was spring and the only spring we lived there was 1999, so Columbine happened in April 1999. When my brother from Florida came to visit? That’d be October 2007, which I remember because it was at the West Point, NY, house (where we lived from July 2007 until November 2008), and it was the first time I needed to turn the heat on (the heat, of course, didn’t work and my Floridian brother’s family nearly froze to death as the temperature inside dropped to a brisk 54 degrees). I can remember when babies were born, when people we knew passed on, when friends got divorced or married, all based on the memory of the house in which I heard the news. 

In general, my memory is not the best. What happened yesterday? Ummm….not sure. Whether it’s short-term or long-term memory, I have a fairly serious case of CRS (while likely not found in any medical literature, Can’t Remember Shit affects a LOT of people, though I forget how many exactly). Some people might brag that their mind is like a steel trap, but I think of my mind as more of a colander…a porous device with many holes through which information constantly escapes in a steady flow. On the positive note, I keep finding my way home every day, so that’s the good news. 

Currently, my brain is in a stage of complete and total Information Overload, at about 125 percent capacity. If my mind were a school, someone would be positioning portables in the parking lot to hold the overflow. On a good day, I have a lot going on. Right now, as we are attempting to transition from Army life to the “normal people” life I never quite believed we’d ever reach, we are neck-deep in extra stuff to think about, worry about, and remember to do. I’m thinking about and trying to remember the myriad of things we need to do in our current house, in our next house, for the kids, for us. I also feel like I should be Christmas shopping already, since things are going to get really busy really soon and stay that way for several months. But one of the most random things I’m thinking and worrying about is how I’m going to remember stuff once we’re settled, living that “normal people” life I’ve only imagined.

How, exactly, will I remember when things happen when we live in the same place for a long time? How will I remember when stuff happens when our living room will always have the furniture arranged the same way? Will one year look like another year and another? How will I know when *random kid*  had their wisdom teeth removed? How will I know when *whoever* broke their tibia? How will I know when we put new tires on the car? When your life is Settled and Stable, how do you know when anything happened? Or, when your life is Settled and Stable, is it easier to keep track of things? Or, is the concept of Settled and Stable a myth, in the same family as the chupacabra and Siblings Who Get Along?

After contemplating this for the last 770 words, I’ve decided that, in the grand scheme of things, the important part of life is having made memories, and the memory’s place in time is only the concern of those suffering from type-A tendencies (guilty). It probably doesn’t matter when things happen; it’s more important to be living life in a way that things are actually happening. And the past 20 years have been pretty full of happenings, for better or worse, as Mike has undertaken a career of service to our nation, and the kids and I have hung on for dear life during the ride. As this chapter in our lives comes to a close, I am grateful for the many places and friends and adventures and memories made along the way, and I look forward to and am hopeful for a future full of more memories. Even if I can never place them in time, as we embark on this new Stable and Settled life.

A Letter to My Children

In 2001, when Mike and I lived in Germany, we had the privilege of attending a 25th wedding anniversary party for our landlords, Henry and Gisela. The party was held at a castle in Kamien Slaski, Poland, near where our landlords were originally from. This was in the region of Silesia, an unlucky area disputed by Germany, Austria and Poland for centuries. About a hundred guests traveled to the party, and many of these guests were of an age and from a place where World War II changed the course of their lives. 

There was a woman who, at the time of the war, was a little girl who's father had been an economist-turned-soldier, who fought and died for his German homeland. After the war, this fatherless child grew up poverty-stricken in a war-destroyed country. There was a couple who now lived in Canada, both of whom had fled their native countries - Hungary and Czechoslovakia. One was orphaned during the war and moved from orphanage to orphanage seeking safety, one had fled from country to country seeking safety with his family. Both had ended up in Canada, where they met and married. There were so many other people there who had been displaced, people who had suffered, people whose lives were forever changed by the circumstances of the politics of the time. The many people we met and the stories they told were almost unbelievable, except that history books prove their truth. It was a formative and humbling experience to meet so many who had been through so much.

During this trip, Mike and I boarded a train and traveled from Wroclaw to Krakow, where we got on a bus and traveled through rolling, sparsely populated countryside to the sleepy town of Oswiecim, home to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Auschwitz was neither the first or the last concentration camp we visited during our years in Germany but it was, however, the most profoundly emotional and horrific place we ever visited.

The Russian forces that liberated Auschwitz recorded finding 350,000 men’s suits, 837,000 women’s garments, and 8.5 TONS (17,000 pounds) of human hair, shaved from the camp’s victims. The camp became a museum in 1947 (in the two post-war years, it fittingly served as a German POW camp), and in the 1950s, an exhibit opened displaying these remnants, stolen from the million+ people exterminated at this one camp. Enshrined in these buildings are rooms full of eyeglasses, mountains of shoes, entire rooms full of infant clothes, and so, so much hair.…all taken from human beings terminated in gas chambers, in ovens, against the brick walls that remain, still full of bullet holes. The horrors still haunt this hallowed ground, the silence deafening, as visitors mentally conjure images of the atrocities that happened here. One person in our group vomited into the dirt, so horrifying is this memorial. 

Hitler’s reign resulted in the deaths of more than six million Jews, but “six million Jews” is too broad, too generic, too simplified. Those “six million Jews” consisted of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, children, infants, brothers, sisters, grandmothers, and grandfathers. There were also non-Jews, the sick, the mentally ill, homosexuals, gypsies, and those in whatever group Hitler deemed unworthy and expendable. People from many nations, all classes. People who were loved by others. People who became victims as a twisted ideology took root and grew into something horrific that changed the entire world, while claiming tens of millions of lives in the process. 

Our three years in Germany were a constant history lesson. It is with this personal experience that I look to what happened in Charlottesville earlier this week, and wonder where the disconnect is between the white nationalists of today and the truth of the reality of the past. The people who identify themselves as Neo-nazis, or white nationalists, or whatever terms they choose, are clearly incredibly limited in their grasp of history. They say they want to “take America back,” but America has never belonged to any one type of people. The original Americans — the Native Americans — would argue they are perhaps the ones America belongs to. But then came the first foreigners - white Europeans, who stole and enslaved other foreigners — the Africans, who helped build this country on the strength of their whipped backs. Then came generations of more foreigners, fleeing religious persecution, famine, poverty, tyranny. Each new group of immigrants was vilified and loathed by the people who were here before. Yet somehow, so many people have forgotten that every one of us who has white skin came from someone who was once a foreigner. Except for Native Americans, we are all immigrants, some of us more recent, some of us from generations ago. 

While I hold this truth to be self evident, that we are all created equal (and not just Americans, I believe that ALL human beings born ANYwhere are created equal), we are not born into equal circumstance. Because of the color of our skin or our sex or our sexual orientation or the class of our parents or our religion, we will all have differing experiences that will shape our lives and chart our course. Racism exists. Sexism exists. Xenophobia is real. Poverty is its own self-fulfilling problem. I would never presume to assume someone else’s experiences are the same as my own, without having walked a mile in their shoes. 

In short, the intention of this letter is fairly simple: Don’t judge. Love one another.  Tell other people to do the same. Make the world more tolerant, a better place, by your words and actions. If someone is misinformed, try to help them see the light (this will NOT be easy but nothing worthwhile is). Know history. Travel if you have the ability to. Read. To borrow a quote from Ghandi, be the change you wish to see in the world. 

This is Them

They’re your above-average, all-American family. The dad is an internal medicine doctor, the mom a primary care physician. Their three boys are all smarter and funnier than your average kids: the oldest is a soccer-playing, straight-A student who loves to sing, dance and play guitar; the middle and youngest boys are 14 months apart and always together, always being comedians. Grandma, a former architect, lives with them and helps out with the boys, and she’s “always on her phone, playing Candy Crush,” or so says the oldest boy. 

They’re also Muslims. And from Iraq. 

Abdul and Zara met in medical school in 1996 in their hometown of Baghdad. They are Shi’ite, and life under Saddam Hussein and Sunni rule was hard. Each family experienced their own hardships - Zara’s uncle had been killed by the Hussein regime, and Abdul had a cousin who’d been unjustly imprisoned for eight years under Hussein. Without being Sunni, Abdul knew he had no future in Iraq, despite being a doctor. When he finished medical school in 1996, he left the country of his birth — his home — for Jordan, with his parents’ blessings, knowing he would never be able to return.

Zara, six years his junior, stayed in Baghdad to finish medical school, graduating in 2002. During her residency at a hospital in Baghdad, the Americans began their quest to oust Saddam Hussein. “I’d go to the hospital and I’d walk on blood because everyone was dying and there wasn’t enough time to clean it up,” she remembers. “Ever since I was born, there was always war.” She was 25 years old at the time, watching her country disintegrate. 

Zara left Baghdad late in 2003 and joined Abdul in Pittsburgh, where he’d secured a residency in 2000. During their time in Pittsburgh, they welcomed their first child. After residency, Abdul got a job in New Mexico. Obtaining employment wasn’t easy, and Abdul could only apply for a job that had been posted and unfilled for six months, to be sure he wasn’t taking a position away from an American. In New Mexico, they had two more children. Zara took and passed tests in between having babies, and eventually found a residency in Maryland, where the family moved in 2011. 

The process to become legal U.S. citizens was lengthy and expensive, and they earned their citizenship in 2012 after a requisite five-year wait after receiving their green cards. It was official…the entire family were Americans. Over the years, many of their family members left Iraq, settling in the U.S. and Canada. Zara and Abdul always knew there was some anti-Muslim dissent in America, but people were mostly quiet about it. They felt safe here, which is why they’d left their homeland in the first place — for a place where they could have opportunity, be free and feel safe. 

And then Donald Trump came to the forefront of American politics, first as a candidate and then as President. Zara and Abdul, and half of America, watched in alarm as Trump’s following grew and grew, though they never thought he would be elected president. Trump had no filter, but people loved him; he said outrageous things, but people loved it. After the election, Zara hoped that he’d been all talk and that he wouldn’t be nearly as provocative as he’d been on the campaign trail, that he wouldn’t do the things he talked about doing. But, as it turned out, Trump’s doing what he said he’d do. And his supporters love him for it. Zara thinks his election gave people the ‘courage’ to speak their prejudices openly. After all, if the leader of the free world can say it, why shouldn’t they be able to?

While Trump’s travel ban didn’t specifically apply to them because, legally, they are American citizens and hold American passports, they are frightened. They cancelled their trip to the Caribbean over spring break, fearful of what surprise executive order might come while they’re out of the country. Grandma, who is here on a visa, was affected by the travel ban. She had a trip planned to Dubai on February 10 to see the son she hadn’t seen in almost two years. Though the ban is now lifted, she cancelled her trip, fearful of being unable to get back into America, subject to the president’s whims. 

Zara tearfully acknowledges that while she doesn’t worry about herself, she is definitely worried about her children. She says she doesn’t care what people think of her, or her faith, because she knows who she is. But the boys are young and innocent, and she is fearful for their safety — fearful they will encounter hateful people who will say hateful things to them. Some boys at school called her oldest son “ISIS;” and when he found out about the travel ban, he worried whether their family and cousins would ever be able to visit again. 

Zara and Abdul want their children to grow up in the Muslim faith, to be knowledgeable about the language and culture and faith of their ancestors. Abdul recalls the hard times in his own life, when he felt all alone, except for Allah. He knows, statistically, people who have faith are generally happier, more successful, and less likely to turn to drugs, alcohol and suicide. But now Zara worries about sending their kids to the local Islamic Sunday school, a fear legitimized by the recent murders of six Muslims praying in a mosque in Quebec. The shooter was a Canadian, white-Nationalist who admires Trump.  

Emotionally, the election of Trump has taken a toll on Zara. She has less interest in social activities in their mostly white, Anglo neighborhood. Some of her patients and co-workers are outspoken in their admiration of Trump. Since the election, she second-guesses everyone and everything, unsure of how they might feel about her or her religion or where she’s from. 

Abdul is hopeful that the future will be better, but still worries the day will come when he will have to register as a Muslim, submit his phone for monitoring, or wear an identification badge of some sort. He worries that it is within the realm of the president’s powers to strip him and his wife of their citizenship, of what would happen to his American-born children if that happened. He doesn’t know where their family would go; he says he no longer has a country. They have no more family in Iraq; Zara’s father, a cardiologist, was the only one in the family who’d stayed there, in an attempt to help his failing country and countrymen, and he recently died. The family wouldn’t want to go back to Iraq anyway; they left so long ago on a quest for a better life. America has been their home for almost half their lives, and it’s the only home their children have ever known. But Zara says that, if things ever truly became terrible in America, they would leave because “the world is bigger than America.” They left their homes once before and, for the sake of their children, they would do it again, if they had to.

Abdul and Zara still believe in the goodness of America and most of its people. But they are also fearful for their children, in the very land they adopted and that adopted them, in the country that has been their home for so long. Words and actions have consequences, and both the common people and especially those in power need to think of the actual people who are being affected by their policies, implemented without thoughtful analysis…people like Abdul and Zara and their kids, people who are the face of the American dream.

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Abdul’s and Zara’s story is compelling for so many reasons: they are highly educated and fluent in English. They are the neighbors we call when our kid has a cough that makes us nervous; they are our doctors. They are taxpayers who pay more than average; they are our fellow soccer mom and soccer dad. They set a powerful example of courage and hope by sacrificing everything they knew to make a better life for themselves and the children they hoped to someday have.

I know all this about them because I’ve asked them at the bus stop, at neighborhood gatherings, in random conversation. I wanted to know their story because everyone has one, especially those who were born somewhere else. 

Do you know someone who is of the Muslim faith? Do you know someone who left their birthplace in search of a better life? Have you ever talked to them or asked them questions about their background? As a personal plea, I beg you to ask questions every day so that you can put a face to “the Muslims,” to “the immigrants,” to “the gays,” to “the blacks,” to “the women,” or to whoever else happens to be in the group being persecuted. 

Find the individual stories before forming an opinion about the group. The only way to refute a stereotype or to confront a fear is to learn. So I offer to you the story of Abdul and Zara, an all-American family, so similar to my own. Who just so happen to be Muslim, and from Iraq.