As I mentioned yesterday, our four year old is pretty sick. She’s contracted some super virus that’s causing a very high temperature and, according to her pediatrician, this virus is running rampant through the child population in our area.

We will ignore the fact that among my numerous friends with children between the ages of 2-8, my child is the only one that’s sick.

We will do this in favor of the idea that my co-pay is being well spent on a subject matter expert who relies on science and not being spent on the idea that there is perceived solace in numbers.

Anyway.  This morning, I attended N.’s preschool orientation alone, and left her and baby brother at home with my husband.  Because I don’t want to be known as the mom who doesn’t care about her kid’s orientation, nor do I want to be known as the mother of the child who got the entire class sick before school even started.

As an important side bar, I don’t know how it is in your home, but in my home, mommy is the food maker, nose/butt wiper, and bedtime monitor.

Daddy, on the other hand, is Mr. Funtime (!!).

Obviously, we cross over to the other side quite often, but for the most part that’s how it is.

Given how sick our daughter is, it’s been difficult for Tariq, i.e. Mr. Funtime (!!), to convey to N. that right now what she needs is rest.  Playing will come after rest which she needs to to do in order to get well.  It seems so simple.  And, yet, up until today, this concept has been beyond even her well honed four year old analytical skills.

Today, however, when I came home from the orientation, as Tariq was frantically getting ready for work (it was 11 a.m.), I noticed N. was lying peacefully on the couch.

Resting.

Impressive, dear husband, impressive, I thought.  But, how in the world did you finally get through to her?

I, then, casually glanced at the counter and found this:

Apparently, this was my husband’s response to my daughter when she begged him to play hide and seek with her.

Frustrated with trying to explain to her for the thousandth time to no measurable amount of success that her fever and illness required rest, he explained the best way he knew how.  With a graph.

I’ve been staring at this graph for twenty minutes and am still trying to figure out what it means.

But it worked because, as I’ve mentioned, she was on the couch. 

Resting.

This?  Is why she’s probably a genius and  he gets paid the big bucks, I assume.

But, in defense of all right brained folks like myself out there, is that, like, the WORST drawing of a heart and stars you’ve ever seen, or what??

(And if you’re reading through my Facebook feed and can’t see an image here, you really need to click through to the original post this time).

It’s an odd thing for a woman to navigate and attempt to understand the concept of “manhood.”

For most, at least for me, the journey began when I knew I was having a boy.  “How, as a woman, does one teach a boy to be a man?”

This was the first thought that entered my head when I saw that sonogram.

The second was, “I have no idea how to do that.”

Which is funny, because I have a father, I have a brother and I’d been married to a man for almost eight years before I asked myself that question.

Tasked with the job of teaching something I know little about, I looked around for examples.  I did not have to search far.  He happened to live in the same house.  My husband has taught me so much in the past year about what a man is and is not.

A man is not someone who thinks washing dishes is women’s work.

A man is someone who comes home and asks what needs to be done in order to achieve the common goal of running a household.

A man is not someone who refers to watching his own children as “babysitting.”

A man is someone whose eyes reflect that playing, tending to and being affectionate with his own children is his absolute pleasure and honor.

A man is not someone who assumes his superiority resides upon the number of people he can control or manipulate.

A man is someone who offers himself up as a rock, a pillar upon which each person in his family can stand.

A man is not someone who keeps to himself and shuts himself off from the people who love him in a misconstrued plan to be “strong for them.”

A man is someone who expresses his appreciation and displeasure over situations in an open and positive way.  Or even less than positive.  He, at the very least, says something.

A man is not someone who compares you to others or believes that you are lucky to have him.

A man is someone who knows that because you are strong, kind, beautiful and talented, that you deserve to have him.

A man is not someone who thinks you need protecting because you are weak and less able.

A man is someone who defends you because he knows that his integrity demands that he stand up for what is right.

I no longer worry about teaching my son what it is to be “a man.”  He can play with dolls or trucks, it doesn’t matter.  He can play sports or read books.  He can wear pink or black or whatever.

It doesn’t matter, I’ll love him no matter what.

All I really want for him to do, though?  Is be a lot like his dad.  Because his dad is a “man” in every single way that counts.

Happy birthday to the two the beautiful men in my life.

( Photo courtesy of www.twitter.com/jamietamm )

Today, is MBTD’s birthday.

As I thought about writing this post, I tried to come up with something funny and clever that would reflect the teasing and cynicism that’s inherent to the relationship of a brother and sister.

But I couldn’t.  The older I get, the more I realize that there’s nothing funny or cynical about my relationship with my brother.

Because true love?  Is not funny.  And it demands more respect that can be offered by sarcastic quips and cynical commentary.

The way I feel about him is true love in every sense of the word.

We are soul mates.

We belong together, so much so, in fact, that God chose to bind us by not only our hearts but our blood, as well.

On this, your thirty second birthday, dear brother, I will tell you (and the Internet!) some things I have neglected to say until now.

I will set aside the role of elder sibling and replace sarcasm with truth.  No jokes.  No teasing.  Because everybody deserves a little unadulterated truth on their birthday, at the very least.

You are caring, humble and wise.   You are loving, sensitive and kind.  At the same time, you are strong, unafraid and ambitious.  You are a rare combination of all the traits that make me proud to be a human being.

Sibling rivalry?

No.  I could not rival you.  I could not rival your utter endurance for life.  I cannot fathom the courage you have had to employ to become the person you are today.  You represent a personal standard of achievement in many ways for me.

At my absolute darkest moments, you are the person that I seek.  You are the one who I know, no matter what, will understand me.
At my most glorious moments, you are the person I call.  You are the one person who will truly appreciate the extent of my achievement.

And every day, though you are not here, I need only look into the mirror and see your eyes looking back at me.

At that moment, I know… you are here with me.  Always.

And?  Yes.  This is your present.

City of music and magic
Longing to hear her song
Whispering in my ears
Song of songs, singing Nola Lily.

Adorning our lives,
Our hearts, our hopes,
Shimmering in our souls,
Jewel of jewels, darling Nola Lily

Welcoming this life
Carry our light with you
Glowing in my heart
Light of lights, precious Nola Lily.

Flower of New Orleans
Soft, sweet newness,
Springing upon us,
Dearest of dears, our Nola Lily.

***

This past week, MBTD and my dear friend, Traci, who happens to be married to him welcomed a beautiful baby into this world.

May she grow to be wise, strong and good.

May the world and its people praise the day she came to them.

May she always know that she is loved and cherished.

May we, her family, always remain worthy of her love and respect.

Insh’Allah, Ameen.

In the past few months I’ve written some posts in which my parents have been the subject.

I think I’m giving people the wrong impression.

See, a blog, to me, is a place where I can discuss things that don’t come up in the course of regular conversation.

Whether it’s political, social, or personal, I like to go with the flow of a conversation rather than direct the topics chosen.  Most of the stuff I discuss here, I wouldn’t bring up in the course of a conversation.

My childhood or my parents don’t come up a lot in every day conversation unless someone else has specifically brought it up, or it’s relevant to the conversation at hand.

As I said, on my blog I feel that I can discuss whatever or whoever I like.

The problem is I run the risk of leaving people with an inaccurate representation of who I really am… or who the people I’m talking about really are.

I need to tell you something.

Yes, my parents are flawed.

But no more than me, you or anyone else.

Yes, I care a lot about what they think.

But not simply because they’re my parents.

My parents are truly extraordinary people.

I care about what they think because they deserve it.

Not because I’m neurotic.

Not because they brainwashed me or mentally tortured me.

Not because they placed huge expectations upon me in an effort to prolong my dependence upon their approval.

But because they deserve it.

The United States, 1974.

They didn’t know anyone, save for some friends of friends.  A typical immigrant story?

It’s not.

My parents weren’t your typical “huddled masses” immigrants.  They were from wealthy, educated and highly respected families.  When they came here, they didn’t bring any of that money or status with them.  In fact, in a way, they didn’t even bring their educations with them since foreign degrees aren’t automatically accredited.

So, they left much more behind than what they gained in America.  They started over.  With less.

Part of the reason my father left was because of he felt stifled by his family’s status.  He wanted to live a life that wasn’t encumbered by expectations and visibility.  You might not get that, and I didn’t for many years.  But, that really is the reason.  His life, other than this particular detail, was better in Pakistan in every way.

My mother came here because she was committed to making a life with the man she had just married.  And I suspect because she was most likely a little too strong willed and accomplished not to encounter some sort of opposition in a mostly male dominated field in a male dominated society.

They moved from fairly opulent households where they had never had to wash their clothes, clean up after themselves, or go grocery shopping into a one bedroom apartment somewhere on the south side of Chicago.  Most people they encountered initially in America had never even heard of Pakistan.

My dad, who was a lawyer, worked in a bottling factory as a foreman.  My mom, a neurosurgeon, became a housewife.  At least, until she passed accreditation exams and got a residency in Florida.

I can hear people wondering why they would leave wealth, status and power behind for a humble existence in a foreign land among people who spoke a different language, looked nothing like them and, for the most part, didn’t care to know much about them.

But, I don’t wonder.

I know why.  Because of me.  And my brother.

And that’s one of the reasons I care about what they think.

I know what they gave up for me.  They deserve for me to care what they think for that reason alone.

And, yet, there are more.

When I was growing up, my father sat with me almost every day after school and tutored me.  In math.  In history.  In politics.  He asked me to read passages from different books and then write one page essays about them.  He never returned the essays.  He never corrected them.  He always looked them over and said in heavily accented English, “This is very good.  Are you sure you didn’t copy this from somewhere?”

A deep sense of pride would well up inside of me and I would say, “No, daddy, I wrote that myself.”

And he would say, “Wow.  Even people my age cannot write this well.”

I know there were grammatical errors on those essays.  I know there were spelling errors.  But he looked at those papers and said, “Even the people who write for Reagan cannot write like this.”

I was eight.  He was lying.  But he made me feel like the smartest person in the world.

When I was seven, my father’s younger brother died in Pakistan of a heart attack.  He left behind a wife and five children.  My father went to Pakistan to see to their affairs.

He has visited them every year since then to make sure that they were alright.  In a patriarchal society like Pakistan, a widow with five children is in the position of being under siege in the social and financial sense.

I remember resenting my father for the time that he devoted to my aunt and my cousins, but, now, I get tears in my eyes as I think about how if that were my brother’s family, I would do the same.  No questions asked.  Besides the fact that my brother is generally awesome, I think part of the reason I care so much for him is because I witnessed how much a person can, sorry, how much a person should love their brother.

I care about what my father thinks because he deserves that much from me.  And more.

Even casual readers of my blog know something about my mom, I guess.  But they know what I’ve written about accomplishment, respect, reservedness and calculation.  And about how her and I are very different.

I’ve written that, sometimes, I feel like I’m not good enough to be her daughter.

What I haven’t explained is that I think she’s amazing.  Sometimes, I don’t think anyone is good enough for her.

My mom is not just a doctor.  She is the woman who will leave her home with sleeping children at two in the morning so that an eighty year old woman who is breathing her last breath won’t have to die alone.  She is the one that holds that woman’s hand, and whispers, “It’s alright, I’m here.  You’re going to be fine.”  She is the one who does not get paid to do that, but does it because it is good and right and because that woman is somebody to someone.

This hasn’t just happened once.  I have witnessed this dozens of times.

I feel like people should know this before they decide who she is.

I feel like people should know this before they think I respect her only because she’s my mom or because she’s a doctor or because she’s made a lot of money.

Those are such small parts of who she really is.

I care what she thinks because she deserves that from me.

My mother at the apex of her career made more than a lot of CEOs of smaller corporations.

All that time, she drove a used Toyota Camry and shopped at JC Penney.

Why?  So that when I went to college, I could graduate completely debt free.  She did the same for other members of my family, who were not her children, as well.

Once, my mom paid the tuition of a friend of mine for a semester.  She said that the girl was a good student and shouldn’t have to miss a single semester because the people in the student loan office couldn’t get their act together.

It was not a loan.  It was a gift.

A gift from a woman who has never bought make up from a department store, a designer purse or even perfume for herself.  (Luckily, she has me.)

I also haven’t mentioned on this blog that my mother tells me she’s proud of me all the time.

She tells me that she wishes that she could have been the kind of mother to me that I am to my child.  And she says these words without knowing that if I could inspire my daughter to a tenth of the greatness I see in her, I would consider myself successful.

She tells me that she loves me all the time.

If I tell her that she looks nice, she says, “Not as pretty as you, you are the most gorgeous.”

See, what I don’t tell you on this blog is that if I think I’m a disappointment to my parents it’s not their fault.

It’s because I see them.

I see them for who they are.

I know a lot of people thinks their parents are wonderful.

But mine really are.

They didn’t just build an entire life in a brand new country out of nothing.

They did that, preserved the life they had in the country they came from, and improved the lives of hundreds of people in the process.

I don’t like to think about their passing, but this I know, there will be hundreds of people who will cry for them.  Who will think it’s unfair.  Who will wish it didn’t have to be them.

I will be just one.

I would care what they thought even if they weren’t my parents.  In fact, I would probably care more because I wouldn’t be encumbered by the feeling that I was somehow selling out by caring too much.

At any rate, please don’t misunderstand why I care.

A lot of people care what my parents think of them.  And for good reason.

Because they deserve it.