In Love We Trust

For a long time, I was drifting. I had everything that traditionally gives people a sense of being rooted and whole. I had a beautiful home, a great career, a pretty good husband who was a decidedly better friend, but I had this unwavering sense of being removed from the world, from reality, and a feeling of being dispersed, scattered, and sometimes, invisible. Flowers arrived every year on my birthday from my mother, and at the stroke of midnight, my parents-in-law called. My sisters (both of blood and marriage) filled my Facebook with displays of grand affection. And then we all went on with our lives, which were decidedly and categorically separate, not entirely because we couldn't talk about how full the moon was at the same time of the day.

And then something changed. I think it was the birth of my daughter that was the harbinger of this change. I found a singular focus - Jahan and her upbringing. I thought about my own childhood in a small house in a typical middle-class neighborhood in Lahore, always bustling with activity: Neighbors coming by to borrow sugar or eggs, or to drop off a plate of biryani, relatives dropping in unannounced, because there was no expectation to call first, my aunt and her children staying with us every summer, my mother waking me up every Saturday morning by announcing, "There's halwa poori for breakfast," going to Sunday bazaar or a sabzi mandi with my father to buy fresh produce. There was so much to do. Here, now, rooted as I was finally, thanks to motherhood, I didn't know how to provide a sense of family for my daughter. It is not right for everyone - this sense of being surrounded by people who love you, which also means that you are surrounded by many individuals who want things their way. It was certainly not something I was used to after living alone for almost a decade. And still, I found myself wondering. Will Jahan ever have what I had as a child - the absolute certainty that I was loved and treasured, not just by my parents, but by a close circle of relatives, too? Was it important? To what extent did all that love and attention in my formative years make me the person I am today?

For the last 11 months, I didn't have to wonder because my sister-in-law and her husband were staying with us. We were among family - the longest stretch in the past 11 years. This meant that I didn't have to plan my shower around Jahan's nap-time or wait for my husband to get home from work before I could do something around the house. It meant also that most days I came home to vacuumed carpets and a hot meal. Most nights, Jahan was delivered to me, bathed, dressed in her pajamas, ready for bed. If something came up at work, all I had to do was text my sister-in-law, "Can you please give Jahan dinner - I will be late." But these are superficial details. The most meaningful thing was that if there was bad news, any kind of bad news, we all carried a bit of it inside us and eased each other's burden of that knowledge. And if there was good news, any kind of good news, we all carried that inside us, too, and made it bigger, happier, better.

Two days ago, this period of having family with us ended when my sister-in-law and brother-in-law moved to a gorgeous new apartment just a few miles from our house. Emotional things were said. Gratitude was given. Love was shared. Promises were made. Traditions were initiated. "You are more than my sister," wrote my sister-in-law in a farewell card (even though we were going to see each other again that same evening). "Don't forget me now," said my brother-in-law. The mood was bittersweet all around, leaning heavily toward the "sweet." The couple was excited about setting up house. I was excited about relearning the long-forgotten dynamic of having my house to the three of us.

Then came the matter of the last meal in our house, which was a challenge for me to prepare, because I had run out of meat and this is a family of carnivores. The move was hectic and hard on the young couple. They were frazzled and extremely busy. And what did I decide to do as their good sister? Well, to trick them, of course. I bought two packets of extra firm tofu and prepared tofu tikka masala. I marketed this as paneer tikka masala to the family. While my husband was immediately able to tell it was tofu, he agreed to keep my secret. My gullible sister and brother not only ate the meal, but called me the next day from their new apartment to tell me how good it was. Then, I revealed my secret. "NO WAY!" They both cried simultaneously. "That was very sneaky! I HATE tofu!" "Apparently not," I said. But they were willing to forgive me and conceded that they had thought it was a strange kind of paneer, but it still tasted good. They trusted in me and my love for them so completely that they never even imagined I would subject them to the atrocity of eating tofu!

That's what love is in the end. The trust that someone is there, watching out for us. What I felt in my childhood home surrounded by aunts and uncles was not a brimming love, but a placid sense of trust that nothing bad could happen to me as long as they were all there. What is 11 months in the grand scheme of a lifetime? Nothing. What happens in that time-frame, however, is everything. The things you learn about each other and respect, the things you love to hate about each other, the things you hate to love, the small things, and the big things - it all matters. When they left, they took a part of our home with them, not in material things, but in memories, in habits, in thoughts, and left a bit of themselves behind. Now, this family, with its strengths and its weaknesses, exists in both homes.

Photos by Rebecca McCue - Rebecca took these photos on the eve of the move and inspired this blog post!

Rebecca is coming with me to Lahore IF...

Here are the FACTS: 

• I have not gone back to Pakistan since I arrived in California on February 1, 2003
• I am often found writing and whining about Lahore, who I was, identity, belonging, changes, time, et cetera, ad nauseum
• I am afraid of going back to Lahore - mainly because I will encounter a different city, but also because the people I left behind have changed substantially, as well. So have I. I left when I was 18. I am now 29 and have a 2.5-year-old daughter. When I left, I could have probably described myself in discrete terms. Now I know that reality is much more complicated. How do you define who you are, how do you contain your experience, your view of the world and yourself into categories (a blog post on this will be coming in the near future)
• My best friend is an awesome photographer
• Lahore is an amazing canvas for any artist, but holds special treats for those who hold a camera in their hand. Besides, the food is incomparable!
• I have been convincing Rebecca to come with me to Lahore. She has said no repeatedly because we only hear the absolute worst news in the media
• Recently, I found this gem and forwarded it to Rebecca. She has agreed to travel to Pakistan with me at some point in the coming months on the condition that the "security situation" in Lahore is under control and the news continues to be good. AND if I write 2 blog posts per week...

What I have to do: 

• Hope that we only hear good news from Lahore
• Write 2 blog posts per week 
• Ask you all for something (see below)

What YOU can do (if you are in Pakistan):

• PLEASE email Rebecca and me at yestolahore@gmail.com and tell her all the good reasons for traveling to Lahore, OR leave a comment here! She is an extremely nice person, and it is generally hard for her to say no to things (a quality I often use to my advantage). If enough of you extend a warm welcome, she will simply HAVE to come

If we make it to Lahore, I will post an announcement here, so you can meet (and be photographed by) Rebecca. We'll have a party over some really good goll gappay and chanaa chaat!

A Matter Between Our Hearts

We have a saying in Urdu, "Dil ko dil say raah hoti hai." People say this to each other when coincidentally or serendipitously they do what the other was thinking. Grandmothers say it to their grandchildren on the phone. "I was just cooking your favorite dish and was thinking of you, and you called! Dil ko dil say raah hoti hai." Such a simple, wonderful, poetic thing to say. "There is a road that links our hearts," is the rough translation, the implication being, "Our hearts know each other's desires" or "There is an invisible force that connects my heart's desire to yours."

My mother says this to me if I call her while I am driving to work, a rare occurrence, because I guard my commute hours with a jealous diligence as I listen to my audiobooks. "I was just talking to such-and-such about you, was just saying your name, in fact, when the phone rang. Dil ko dil say raah hoti hai." And I respond with an underwhelming, "Hmm," not convinced that there is an invisible string that links my heart beating in America as the dawn breaks over the sky to my mother's heart in Pakistan as her sky turns gray with the approach of dusk. I don't tell her what I am thinking. Our hearts are separated by the sky, mother. The sun from yours dissolves into liquid rays in the last few breaths of the day and appears just as languidly on mine. When my heart beats on the morning of a Saturday, your heart lived through that moment on your Saturday morning a full twelve hours before me. For twelve out of twenty-four hours, we exist on different days of the week.

Yet, I have an almost supernatural tendency to do things that make my loved ones say this to me. Sometimes I make a family member's favorite meal when they are secretly craving it. I randomly text my sister telling her I love her just when she has had a bad dream and wants consolation. And these things happen to me, too. Someone suddenly calls, or I get an email, and last night when I was about to block my Gmail and social media websites so I could get some work done, my best friend suddenly sent me a message on Google chat. "Hi!" I responded. "I was about to block my Gmail and you sent a message! We have a saying in Urdu that roughly translates to 'there is a road that links our hearts.' Looks like our hearts are connected!" "That's beautiful," she said. "You have to write about that."

And here I am, writing about it, because I can't stop thinking about this beautiful and implausible idea.  

Photo by Rebecca McCue

Telling Our Stories

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I drive the same way home every day. When I emerge from a bend on the freeway, circling on I-280 South past Page Mill, I see a breathtaking view ahead of me. On my left there are the domes of three hills, lush with small blades of grass today, a forlorn deeper green tomorrow, turning brown and patchy another day. On my right there is a towering house hidden behind trees. On an afternoon that blooms as an afterthought to rain, clear and clean, tufts of cottony clouds seem to be hovering above this house. On stormy days, the trees are swaying in front of the topmost tower's topmost windows. In winter, thickets of fog seem to leech on to the ocher exterior of the house and the naked tree limbs. In summer, the house looks bright, the trees full and fat, the sky glitters in the background. It's the same road, the same house, the same age-old trees, but they look different every day. As I merge on to the freeway, I wonder how the house past the bend in the road will look like and how it will make me feel, because it does evoke something different in me every time I see it. These feelings are colored by the successes and set-backs of the day, tinged by the bitterness of failure sometimes, flavored by the aftertaste of disappointment. Sometimes, I am able to find absolute beauty when I look at this house in the heart of the hills, because I bring my happiness with me. It may look like it is crumbling in a winter storm and I may still find it to be a metaphor for resilience, because despite the stony rain and the whipping winds, it stands like it always has, sand-colored with red trimmings around the window glass, peeking through the shivering trees. I find a new story during my drive home this way, and the image of the house makes me bookmark them.


There are so many stories I haven't told. Messy stories. Stories of fear and heartbreak and failure and disillusionment and strength and grit and joy. I don't even know where to begin to tell them. It's odd that I feel so full of these stories, but at the same time, I am so distant from writing one down on paper. To talk about just one, I want to shape a poem around an afternoon during my childhood that taught me a hard and menacing lesson about this world. I want to transport myself to that nine-year-old's body with the two pigtails and the new frock, the hammering heart, the small feet running past the iron gates, into the heart of the house, the trembling hands not knowing what to hold on to, the trimmed fingernails finding a sagging wax candle on a pillar near the stairs, scratching it, clawing at it, breaking it down. The mother looking at that nine-year-old girl curiously, pausing on her way downstairs, "What's wrong?" "Nothing," a croak from the child's parched throat, and all the while her soft nails cracking while shredding the candle to pieces.

How much does a writer choose not to tell in her story? How much should she tell? Anne Lamott, in her book Bird by Bird, suggests telling everything, but she also doesn't pretend that it is easy to do so. I can see how telling some stories that I have chosen not to share yet will be therapeutic, but I am afraid of the walls that I will run into over and over. I have built concrete mazes around these stories over the course of many years. How do I start breaking them down, how do I start peeling away the paint that is supposed to hide the ugliness of truth? How do I make myself remember...

Every day, when I come upon that house on the freeway, it makes its way into my story for that day. I package it into memory and put it away. I imagine different people living in it, caring for it, I embellish it in my mind, and sometimes I deface it. Today, having decided to write about the house and about the fear of sharing the other more sinister stories, I kept my eye trained on the hills, but I couldn't find it. One bend after another I searched the landscape, but I could not locate that house or the mounds across from it. I must have simply missed it as I was trying to merge with the oncoming traffic. However, this meant that I had to reach into the recesses of my memory and dig out the images I had filed away, unconsciously, for many days. I closed my eyes and I saw that house again when I began to write this post. I saw it as I had seen it on those wintry days, on rainy evenings, during high summer. I saw it and I wrote about it from memory. I must reach back to that nine-year-old girl. I must touch her bleeding fingers. I must hold her and tell her, It's alright. I can't make her say to her bemused mother, "I am so scared," but I can convince her to breathe, to close her eyes, to remember. I can look into her terrified face and say, Let me tell our story, and then somehow muster the courage to live up to this promise. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Reflections That Matter

I had a long conversation with a friend of mine today about something that matters a lot to both of us. Evidently, it matters more to her than it does to me. And how do you quantify something like this? I used to think you couldn't. But I learned otherwise, and here's a story to tell you how I did so. For a long while I did not speak with my father - familial differences and those of perspective, too, no doubt. I never stopped loving him, though, and being a parent now, I know that I could never love him the way he loves me. But in his Shakespearean way, he often complained to my sisters, "You girls, you don't love me at all, and that eldest one doesn't even think of me." "No, no," my sisters would rally back. "She does, too, so, so much. She thinks of you all the time. And she writes about you constantly." "She doesn't write to me," he'd reply. "How am I to know how much someone loves me if I don't see it." After learning of such conversations I would fume for weeks. Trust my father to be very much the King Lear in our lives. "So young and so untender," Shakespeare whispered to me  with the inflection of my father's voice in moments of weakness and guilt. 

But I get it now. How am I to know how much someone cares for me if their feelings don't translate into action? This is the very line I employ when I nag my husband. "You say you're sorry about putting the wet towel on the bed again, but you're really not, or you would listen and stop doing it." Cue in the emotional blackmail, "You don't even love me enough to do this simple task that I have asked you to do a million times." It doesn't work on him anymore, but I have already milked it beyond its worth. Essentially, we need to see reminders of caring and love and friendship and feelings to know they exist. 

Circling back to my friend and the thing we both care about - something lifted today. I was able to not just see but also recognize that what she was telling me was absolutely correct and had merit. How can I claim to care about something if I don't show with my actions that I do? Flashback alert: When I was eight or nine years old, I asked my father for a new pencil case. Some girls in school had ones with magnetic clasps, and I desperately wanted one. To this day, my father has never let me ask for something twice. That day, too, my request was promptly granted. We went to a stationary shop and he bought me a beautiful pencil case. When we came home, I arranged my pencils and erasers in it. A few hours later, my father called me to the sitting room and showed me the new pencil case lying forlornly on the floor by the sofa. I had forgotten it there. He didn't say anything. Instead, he waited for me to be embarrassed of my carelessness. He didn't have to wait long. I tried to explain that I would have put it in my school bag before going to bed, but that was not the point. I had been given something I desired, and I had discarded it after the novelty wore off. I would like to think that I have not forgotten this message, but that would be a delusion. Such messages often times need reinforcement.

I used to invest my feelings in people and things and endeavors. I still do, because this is something I cannot help about myself. I am not happy unless I am dissolved in something: a project, a birthday party, a family member's health, et cetera. But I have also started to reign in my enthusiasm for getting carried away with my feelings when I encounter new interests. I depend on people's appreciation of my efforts for encouragement, even sustenance. When my effort and attention go unnoticed, I become angry. I build fortresses around myself. I turn away, turn against, turn around. It didn't used to be this way. I did things selflessly. I did things because I wanted to, because they made me happy. Somehow, over time, my happiness became associated with what people were thinking of my efforts rather than the effort or the act itself. This is a weakness, and I am lately stunned by the inroads it has made into my character. "You transplant yourself into every conversation," my husband told me the other day. "You make everything about yourself. You like to be the martyr." Others have called me a "drama queen," in jest, but probably with a degree of seriousness behind the assertion. 


I realize that they are right. They are all right - my friends, my father, my husband. And it's all connected, but there has to be a balance! I believe that credit must be given where it is due. The kindness and generosity of people must be acknowledged and praised. Similarly, care and love must be shown in actions and behavior for the things and people that you claim to love and care about. However, I must strike a balance in my personality. I need to be alright with what I see in the mirror without embellishments. I need to ground myself in the belief that I am fine with or without anyone's appreciation. I am still me. I cannot and must not expect that everyone will acknowledge all the good I have done. Indeed, I should not do good with the vain hope that someone will see it and appreciate it. I should simply do good. Do what matters to me. Do what matters. And trust that it is enough.

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Chocolate Bread, and Starting Traditions

I never say that I am a remarkable parent (I do, sometimes), but I also never highlight the mistakes I have made as a mother. For example, I could have tried harder to introduce more vegetables into Jahan's diet early on. With family members who don't feel full if they don't eat meat, it isn't often that I cook vegetables. It is a rare day in our household when the dinner menu is entirely vegetarian. Moreover, I was a working mother. Yes, yes, I read all the books that said "give your baby everything," but I discovered that she liked rice and chicken, so I got into a rut. I am frequently in a food rut myself. And to be honest, I didn't discover vegetables until I started going to college here in America. As a child, I remember my youngest sister complained one day upon finding lentils for dinner, "It seems I have forgotten what chicken even looks like." Drama, I am afraid, runs in the family. 

It is time to confess something - when I say that my baby eats everything, what I really mean is that she eats everything as long as it consists of meat and/or grains and/or select fruits and/or desserts. Yep, no vegetables (unless you count potato). We have made progress - a few days ago, she smelled a piece of broccoli before throwing it away. That is an improvement from holding it and tossing it straight away. 

In an attempt to get her more interested in different foods, her auntie and I are inducting her into the kitchen. Jahan's aunt programs her cooking excursions in a more controlled manner, namely she chops vegetables for an omelet every weekend, and Jahan adds them to the egg. She then adds spices that her aunt measures out for her and mixes everything together. Tadah! Omelet! I have a slightly different method. It's no secret that I love to bake. My best friend and Goll Gappay's official photographer, Rebecca, gave me this amazing cookbook on my birthday that I had been wanting for a very, very long time, The Cake Bible. I have only tried two recipes from it, and they are both divine! The second recipe, chocolate bread, has become a household favorite. Jahan particularly loves it. So, what I do is this: I bake, and I give Jahan some steel mixing bowls with a cup of lentils or beans in them. She takes either a steel spoon or a wooden spatula and pretends to cook while I get all the ingredients ready for the bread. It's a quiet time of concentration and bonding, each of us absorbed in our tasks, mine more real than hers. It almost always gets more noisy in the end. Jahan scatters the contents of her bowls on the floor and then pretends to clean the mess with her toy broom (which is surprisingly effective, I often sweep the floor with it). 

At the very least, I hope that Jahan will acquire a love for cooking as we do more together in the kitchen. Gradually, maybe she will start to measure out ingredients for me. Perhaps we will bake cupcakes together one day, or bake a cake. At best, we will transition into making salads and grilling vegetables and she will expand the boundaries of her palette. At least I hope so. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

What I forget, what I remember

Sometimes I am astounded by the depth of time that stretches between now and the morning I boarded a plane from Lahore International Airport. Eleven years. I sound it out to myself. I enjoy the music in the three syllables that make up the number 11. I roll it around in my mind, I roll it off my tongue. I pretend to cup time in my hands, like bringing them together in prayer, in supplication. I bring my palm to my heart - how many times has it beaten since I left home? Home - because there is no other word for it. It is not really home. I have made my home here in California. I have built it painstakingly, carefully, each piece of furniture, each book, each light-bulb represents an intention, a preference. But there is something I left behind, too. Not home - something deeper and intangible, something that can be felt but not heard or seen. What was it that I left behind - people obviously, but something undefinable and unquantifiable, too. I don't know what it is, but it has the power to take me back one day, and it will. 


There is a certain richness in being an immigrant, in having your origins rooted in a place that is geographically distant from you, in the bravery of the decision to pluck yourself from your land and your people and travel in search of knowledge and success, in the cowardice of the decision to not go back unless you have to, in the fear encompassed by the fluidity of belonging or not belonging, in the taxing change dictated by years when you pass through them in a new place, in learning new ways and giving in to the natural transition of accenting your English differently so that you are caught off-guard when you hear yourself saying something in the old way without intending to, suddenly, without a warning - your tongue having a memory of its own, but your voice sounding strange because of this inadvertent regression to the past. Yes, there is metaphorical wealth in the immigrant experience, something that my American daughter born in California will be lacking, who in all likelihood will be raised in the United States exclusively with annual visits to her parents' home country. In some ways, I feel a little sad about that. I will probably never be able to make her understand how magical it was to lounge in a makeshift hammock constructed with long bolts of cotton fabric by my father and erected between two trees on a hot May afternoon, small beads of sweat forming all over my face so that when I licked my lips I tasted salt and earth, while I read A Little Princess and watched the sun go down on the other side of the sugarcane fields at our farmhouse, and then became enchanted by fireflies lighting up the night all around us. The farmhouse came alive in a different way at night. The cicadas started their sonorous hum, a soft breeze began to sway the grasses that tickled our feet, the tube-well was turned off and it groaned until it stopped, a fire lit up in the hearth, someone put an age-blackened wok on it, the smell of caramelized onion and roasted garlic permeated the garden so that our stomachs began to grumble and we stopped noticing how fragrant the jasmines were. That was our perfect vacation. I would never be able to make my daughter understand the simple perfection of such a time because even the farmhouse doesn't exist anymore. It has been replaced by a brick house with a proper kitchen, running water, and wooden four-poster beds with imported mattresses. Or so I've been told. The call of the cicadas is drowned out by the drone of a power generator, and I don't expect one can see fireflies when the house has plenty of artificial light. I don't think I can wrap my memories in shiny paper and tie them with a ribbon. I don't think I can take them to my daughter and say, "This is the past, this is your mother's history. It's important. Keep it safe so it is not forgotten."

All the same, I find myself aching for the past - for the places that don't exist anymore, for people who have aged and changed and in some cases, died. The "back home" I wish to go to sometimes, in moments of extreme awareness, or conversely, those of weakness, is only present in pictures. When I go back to that house in the pictures I keep in a box under my bed, it won't be the home I grew up in. My sisters whose voices and footsteps I can trace on each wall of that house in my imagination will be gone - one to her new home in Tokyo, the other to hers in London. The baby brother I held on to is 6 feet tall now and can lift me up and twirl me in circles just to make me scream, "Put me down right now!" My mother's perfume, still the same one she used to wear years ago, will still linger in some of the rooms of the house. I will walk through them, touching the familiar and unfamiliar things. "When did you get this?" I will hold something and ask her. Her answer will surprise me. "Years ago," she'll probably say. And I will feel betrayed - unrealistically and unfairly. Maybe, my mother will feel betrayed, too, because of my brooding silences, my lack of participation in the routine she is so used to and one that I used to be a part of, and my divided attention among my daughter, in-laws, and the family I left behind. 

The past is the past is the past, I tell myself, but it's a slippery understanding, it escapes my fingers before I can examine it fully and memorize it, its grooves, its character, its lack of pliability. And as I am telling myself this, absorbed in my thoughts, I see someone coming towards me from the corner of my eye. I perceive this person to be someone I love - a family member or friend I have not seen for 11 years, and I experience a lurch in my heartbeat, a moment that has no rational thinking associated with it. I look up and it's a stranger. They smile at me, and I smile back. That could be such-and-such ten years ago, I think to myself. Something about the stranger's gait, or their arm swinging by their side, or their hair waving in the wind, reminds me of another person, a dearer person, changed now. The eleven years have happened to all of us, or more aptly, we have all lived through these last eleven years. The past is the past is the past, I tell myself, and the fickle thing, it slips away.

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Naivete

All good things come to an end. 

I don't think I ever quite believed this. I felt goodness in things (and in people) was a circular quality, that it kept looping around, never ending. In certain cases, I thought, maybe the circle of goodness even expanded with time, became bigger like each ring of a spiral. Good things don't end, I thought, they multiply. 

Naivete is the lifeblood of the uninitiated. It is a shroud we shed eventually, and when we do, we overtly despise it, but secretly wish to internalize it once again. It is irrevocable unfortunately, this gradual emergence from the veil of innocence. What's interesting is that from the other side of this divide, everything is so much clearer. It's like your vision suddenly expands. You realize that your view of the world before was hidden by a giant boulder. Before you appeared on the other side, that boulder was the center of your world, but now you can see that it was just a tiny rock in the vast landscape that surrounds you. The boulder wasn't the entirety or the boundary of your world; it was simply a very small part of the whole. What I am trying to say is, there is some truth in what we tell ourselves when we're naive. It isn't right, but it isn't completely wrong either. It may be, at best, only partially false, and at worst, only sparingly true. But it is always a combination of the two. In my naive belief that goodness in things lasts forever, at least I was partially correct - it has a finite lifespan, but in those moments of its existence, it feels infinite, as though it could stretch out and curve and loop and go on forever. 

All good things come to an end. The monumental things, like a life well lived, and the seemingly insignificant things, like a wonderful meal. But I always knew this, didn't I? What's changed? What's the new discovery? The big realization of the newly enlightened? That's the question, and I can't put my finger on the answer. The closest I can come to capturing it is by describing an amalgamation of feelings - anger, disappointment, resentment, helplessness, desperation - directly juxtaposed with the naive understanding of attributing the opposite of these feelings to something not worthy of them. I don't know about you, but side by side like that, they make me momentarily feel nothing, almost empty, and then, invariably, a fierce rage, and simultaneously, a melancholic yearning for that old naivete. That's all. 

Photo by Rebecca McCue

The Art of Losing Your Mind

Wednesday is my least favorite day of the week. You have successfully traversed two days of the workweek, but there are still two whole days looming ahead. Like most Wednesdays, today was marked by a normal headache exacerbated by virtue of starting work really early in the morning on poor-quality sleep for the third day in a row. Effectively, I function on half the normal brain power I usually have on this wretched day in the middle of the week. I have demonstrated this spectacularly in the past, like telling a co-worker about her surprise farewell cake in front of the whole lab. Revealing which central character died in a popular show when a co-worker had explicitly told me he had not seen that particular episode - this happened without any provocation, or even the slightest inquisition from said co-worker. I just couldn't contain all my slippery thoughts and they tumbled out in a really careless manner, after which I had to cover my face to hide the embarrassment and horror at what I had done. Other elaborate displays of a case of "Wednesday Mindlessness" include graceless tumbles in the office, talking with a guest in the lab and preternaturally losing my grip on a cup of lukewarm tea, which proceeded to splash all over the carpet in an elaborate display of mud-colored fountains, calling a male coworker (Baggy) by a female coworker's (Gabi) name multiple times in the same meeting, and others...

What unfolded today was worse than my usual Wednesday Mindlessness, however. It was several rungs above (or should I say below, hmm...see I  can't think straight today) my pregnancy brain mishaps, and following that, the mommy brain incidents. Now you might think after you're done with reading this blog post that this wasn't so dramatic. It wasn't even that funny. But you have to understand, in the two moments I am going to relate here, I felt like: 
a. In Moment 1 - like I had been put under the Imperius curse
b. In Moment 2 - like I had used Hermione's time-turner and come face-to-face with myself, and as you know, even the most powerful wizards can lose their mind if they meddle with time. 
(If you don't know what I am talking about, tsk, tsk, I am SO disappointed in you. Please do yourself a favor and start reading Harry Potter RIGHT NOW!)

Moment 1: I have arrived in the office and not immediately gone for my customary cup of coffee. My head feels like it had a forceful impact with something cold and metallic and has been wrapped in an ice-pack. It feels full, heavy, and like something's sloshing in there sickeningly. My nose feels similarly under the weather. This is not a cold - it is a case of allergies. This is a bad day. Around 8 AM, I drag myself to the break room and start brewing my coffee. Rebecca, my best friend (and manager) follows me and starts brewing her tea. A coworker walks in and starts talking to me about a project we are working on. I try to articulate a response, which sounds very clear and straight-forward as I am thinking about it (albeit a bit bumpy due to the choppy tide in my head). I open my mouth and say "Usman." Rebecca snickers. My co-worker looks at me like I have gone crazy. "What?" I have the following realizations in this order: my husband has put me under the Imperius curse; no, he probably hasn't because I wouldn't be cognizant of this if he had; dammit, Harry Potter isn't real; I really meant to say my boss Sean's name; how do I get out of this situation, will it sound weird if I follow-up now with my original train of thought; oh, screw it, I am doing it. This took maybe 5 or 6 seconds, during which time my co-worker was staring at me with a mixture of concern and surprise. Here's how I salvaged the situation: "Excuse me, but I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet and my allergies are killing me, I am really not even present, part of me thinks I am still sleeping." Awkward laughter. "What I meant to say is, Sean asked us to do such and such by such and such date." Whatever. Life goes on. 

Moment 2:  Around 2 PM, my body is once again screaming for caffeine. The 3 cups of coffee all day have not been enough, but my head feels much better because Rebecca gave me an anti-histamine to take in the morning. I walk to my co-worker (who is also an awesome poet) Sara's desk and we chat for 10 minutes about an upcoming talk we have to give to a guest. Ironically, our conversation circles around not being able to recall exactly what we're supposed to tell this guest. Neither of us remembers the details because we didn't write them down, which clearly was a mistake. We try to retrace our steps to the time when the meeting was first set up and draw up a rough plan to tackle the topics we will be covering. Easy breezy - I am so glad I have Sara to do imaginary things with, like retracing my steps to three weeks ago when we first talked about this particular guest's visit. "I really need a cup of coffee now," I say and go to the break room. I brew a cup of Newman's Own and add my usual cream and two packets of fake sugar (I know, it's not even coffee by the time I am done with it), take a huge gulp, and jauntily walk back to my desk to prepare for my next meeting. I walk into the office with my coffee cup and see a full steaming cup of coffee already on my desk. What the what? I stare at the cup in my hand and back at the cup on the desk. What in the world is going on? I taste the cup on the desk. Yep, it's mine. An inch of cream and two packets of fake sugar. I have no memory of making that cup. Fleetingly, I think of time travel in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but am too awake to actually dwell on it. I take both cups to Sara's desk. In a stricken voice, I say to her, "I have to share something with you. I think I am losing my mind." I tell her what I have just done - made two cups of coffee, not having any memory of making the first cup. She bursts out laughing. Correction. She cackles delightfully. It is too funny for her. She says, "Yes, you are really losing your mind, but I can relate to it!" And then follows up with, "Are you getting enough sleep?" As I am lamenting the loss of my senses, I suddenly remember making the first cup. I went to the break room, came back to my office, had a few sips of my coffee, and even told Rebecca about a conversation I had with someone while making coffee. I then went to Sara's desk to talk about the upcoming talk I had on my to-do list. Then, forgetting all about the cup on my desk, I went to the break room again and brewed another cup of coffee, after which I felt for a moment like I had made bad use of Professor McGonagall's time turner, and subsequently like I was headed for a psychotic break. Yes, I don't dramatize and exaggerate a situation at all. 

It is almost 9 PM now and I have recounted this bad case of Wednesday Mindlessness for you so that I can look back to this on future Wednesdays and pacify myself, "See, so what if you fell on your face, or told someone their favorite character in a book will die at the end, you are still having a better day than that accursed Wednesday." But I also find myself wishing that I had been under the Imperius curse, or I had meddled with time using the time turner, because that would mean Hogwarts is real! I really should get some sleep now, not because I am afraid that you will think I am not a serious writer if I have silly wishes of being at Hogwarts, but because of this: If I am wishing to be under the Imperius curse, then I really must be very tired indeed. Good night, folks. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Some Yeats and Some Chocolate (Also, poetry)

I have been away from work this whole week - I am blaming the lapse in my routine for the lapse in my writing (here). The truth is, I have been focusing a lot more on my poetry lately. I am trying to write and edit about two poems a week, which is hard work for me. It takes several sessions of writing and editing BEFORE I share a poem with a trusted network of friends/readers/critics. Then there is another round of rewriting based on the feedback I get. Then there is the whole business of sending the poem out into the world, updating my submission spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet, it's very nerdy, but it works for me). And then there is the most annoying part - the waiting. I suppose, there is one other thing that is worse than waiting - it is when I select a row on my submission spreadsheet and highlight it in red - rejections, yes, they are most certainly the absolute worst thing about this whole writing business. No, nope, wait, I misspoke - the worst thing about this writing business is not writing at all. As long as I am writing, I am one (or several) rungs above the most unfavorable state. 

The sort-of good news is that I am sort-of back on Twitter (@noorulainnoor). My tweets are not exciting or entertaining yet, but I am working on it. I really don't get Twitter - I mean, I get it, but I am really not very good at expressing myself in 140 characters, and it's really a lot of pressure because I want to say something useful and intelligent. I know, I know, I am over-thinking it.

Anyway, it is February, and since this post is not about love, I am leaving you in the very capable hands of Mr. Yeats and with this parting advice: Forget laughter, chocolate is the best medicine, preferably dark, but milk will do in a pinch.

Brown Penny

William Butler Yeats

I WHISPERED, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

Photo by Rebecca McCue