Story of a life

A few weeks ago, I lost a friend. I want to call her my friend. She was more like a person that I looked up to though. In fact, exactly the perosn I looked up to. The first time I met her, I felt as if the life I had always wanted had been plucked form my dreams, had been fashioned into reality and had been given to her. I looked in awe and wonder at the floor to cieling bookshelves in her sitting room. The minimal yet cozy home. The children she was about to drive to silat class. The backyard with children's swings, the way she wrapped her hijab, the little nook that she said she worked in after putting kids to bed at 10 pm, where her laptop still lay open from the night before, the perfect crepes she presented to me for breakfast after hosting me for a night simply because I was in her area to participate in an Arabic instructors retreat. The heart, the mind, the beauty of ehr face and soul, the house, the work she did, the children she was raising, her law degree, all of it, ...

Perhaps the beauty of mamahood is that one never does have enough peace of mind or just peace enough to ever write about it. The chaos of folding laundry over and over, picking up bottles, washing bottles, filling up bottles, warming up bottles, picking up toys, playing with toys, cooking, cleaning, reading the same cardboard books over and over, incessant planning, non-stop worrying, completing a Masters, working on a citizenship application, soothing a sick baby who caught a cold at his swimming lesson, taking baby to his swimming lessons every week, physical therapy for the yet-to-be-healed body from birth, trying to keep up with the remnants of a long-past social circle, evolving into new person oneself, 

12:13 a.m. Up. Put baby to bed about 20 minutes ago. Husband is working tonight. 20 minutes of absolute quiet. Peace. My time. I should be sleeping. Or praying. Or doing one of the ten million endless chores. At least according to my mom. I want a cup of apple juice. I want to drink it with my eyes closed. And imagine myself with some high end silk nightclothes, glitzy high heels, sitting on a boat deck, gazing at the night sky, watching the city lights recede in the distance. Escape. Good bye. Tata! But then I see my baby's face. Full of love. Trust. It hooks my heart to stay right where I am on the hard, uncomfortable, old, stained ikea couch, in my lace Victoria's Secret night clothes, torn in too places from the early days of breastfeeding. Swollen face, hands and feet glued to a screen that doesn't do me any good. Love. That's a face of love. Good night, world. Sleep tight, fellow time-zoners!

By Bangin - Own work, CC BY 2.5* Missing home can come in many different ways. It can be the skipped heartbeat when you hear a familiar sound but realize later that it was actually something else or the ringing ears that follow when you remember someone you lost eight years ago but just a year and a half before you left home and its as if time stopped. The memories become a time capsule. It still feels like it was a year and a half ago but then you count the years and it has actually been eight. It seems like yesterday when you were laughing, texting and making plans with them, all to be suspended, it seems, not in the air, some alternative space perhaps, forever. Watching an episode of Frasier today with the husband, just winding down from the day, the character's obsession with the sudden death of another character became my undoing. Things that he said, the particulars of the situation were so similar, that everything just reminded me of you, Vajiha. I tried to suppre...

I took a test today that tells what level of a particular bias one has. I thought long and hard about which bias test to take (there were many , details later) and decided on taking the race one because I had a clear-cut answer to most others. I kn o w for sure where I st an d on Gender, sexual orientation for example . On race, as it pertains to being Black or White, I do not think I am racist against either. I do not believe, for example, that in interviewing two equally qualified candidates for a job I'd give the Black or White person the job simply because of their skin color . I do think that I may be a little more inclined to give it to the Black person given the systemic injustice and inequality Blacks face as a people in the U.S. However, the real deciding factor will be the actual candidates themselves and who I feel will be the best fit for the company. In short, I believe that people are a product of their environments, not their skin color . H owever,in...