The fragile familiar.

Familiar is: being crushed against a chest whose shape you have accidentally memorized over two decades of touching. Being so wrapped makes you think that you will melt, or at least never let go. Remembering yourself with a kiss on the cheek – there is something else to do: you have to be introduced to the friends.

Familiar is telling your mother to stop calling you to check on 1) whether or not you’ve met Mr. Right and 2) your new part-time job every day. Too much pressure for news. And then feeling terrible and wanting to talk to her, and calling back to apologize, and hearing her say: I don’t just call for news. I miss you. I want to hear your voice. And you telling her you can’t make a life out of no life, and her protesting that she is the one who doesn’t have a life, so she lives vicariously through your tiny one. And both of you ending up laughing at the race to entertain each other.

Familiar is the feeling of your niece’s small body relaxing against yours and twitching asleep to your hushed lullaby that is actually a pop song. The tiny sigh when she wakes up and looks at you like a stranger. Little hands wrapped around your neck, and kiss after tickling kiss on your collarbone. Balancing her few pounds on your hip in the kitchen. Her laugh when you hold her against you and waltz. Going down the stairs one at a time, down, down, down, stepping backwards, holding your coffee and her toy in one hand, and engulfing her gripping fingers in the other.

Familiar is the sound of your own voice rehearsing a speech you don’t want to give to someone who is not your friend, and after the speech never will be. Wanting to be wanted and knowing that you’re not. Familiar is realizing that disappointment, like elation, is nothing new. You have survived, and you will again. Your own thickening skin, wishing someone would come along who would make those callouses wither and fade. Knowing it’s a fairytale. Wanting it anyway.

Familiar is the curve of your lower lip left in lipstick on the ten-thousandth coffee cup you’ve drunk from, and piles of papers around you in your thirtieth favorite coffee shop. Late nights of drinking coffee and tea, staying up to write or read, and not caring, not knowing any other way to be. Wishing you were a morning person. Your mother worrying about you being out late alone at night. You worrying too, but reassuring her, because what are you supposed to do? Some nights you have to get out of the house. It’s too quiet in here.

Familiar is the loud clicking sound of your high heels on the street, and the embarrassment of coming home late yet again and making a racket on the tile floor of your apartment building when you walk in. Your silent sorry to the people who live by the mailboxes. Shushing your cat as you come in the door so she doesn’t wake your roommate.

Familiar is the dread in your throat when you get two missed calls in a row from your mother. Your first thought now is: either Grandpa or Dad is is the hospital. They both were, too recently. Familiar is your grandfather’s labored breathing, and his telling you you’re pretty, and hugging him every time as though it is the last – because it might be. Familiar is everyone asking how your father is, because they met him, and they worry about him too. Familiar is your father’s advice, no matter the ailment, to focus on work. You feeling annoyed with him when he says it, and thanking him half-heartedly, and then realizing later that you’ll miss those weird things about him when death separates you for a time. Feeling terrible for every undevoted moment, because you will miss it all. What bothered you most will be endearing in hindsight. Hating that you think about that so much.

Familiar is monitoring your own heartbeat inside your chest, and wondering what makes it go. That feeling of it overflowing with affection for the people who have known you for so long that when you do something, they say, of course you did: the people you trust, and are trusted by, despite differences and time apart and failed plans. The eyes of those people, how they look at you and know you. How nothing can take away how you used to tease each other on the bus, and compete, and how that eventually turned into some sort of bond. How seeing them is wonderful, because you can gush, and it doesn’t matter, because they already know. A guaranteed I love you, too.

This is the new part. You pull away and hear the news: a mutual friend’s father has died. Someone you both grew up with, familiar to both of you. One of you has been home for the funeral. You start to cry. You didn’t know the father, but suddenly he is yours, because you are all growing up together or apart and none of you can help it. Because you remember when the mutual friend was a boy, and you had a crush on him, and he had a crush on you back, and he yawned and slinked his arm around you during a slide show in the fourth grade, and you were both so vulnerable – because that boy’s father has died. Because the father wasn’t sick, you’re hearing, it was a fluke complaint at a physical, that led to tests, that led to surgery, that led to a coma, and waiting, and death. Because a fluke at a checkup caught something that almost killed your own father not six months ago. Because life is barreling ahead, and the eight-year-old you once met, and then knew, and grew up with, is standing before you: a man with a beard, looking in his pockets for a tissue because he feels bad that you’re crying. And you’re standing in front of him, a woman who feels like a girl and can’t help it, a woman who can’t get rid of her childlike heart that wants to wrap her small hands around a neck, and be rocked and sung to sleep by anyone whose touch she has accidentally memorized.

The meantime

The other night, a friend asked me if I thought it was possible to be happy while waiting for Prince Charming to show up, bang down the door, and whisk me up in his arms:

Gee, he looks about fifteen…that might be a problem.

This certain friend of mine, who is absolutely lovely, is, a little lovelorn at the moment. We’ve all been there. When the last person to walk out the proverbial door seemed like he (or she, as the case may be) was (okay, almost) everything you’ve ever wanted, the temptation is to brood a bit. To dwell on it. If only…

If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve sighed and thought if only, I would be able to afford a much nicer apartment.

My if onlys started right around the time I turned eighteen. That was the first time I got my heart properly broken into a billion tiny glittering pieces. I was a traditional if onlyer back then, and it took me about a year and a half and the most awful trip to Italy in the history of tourism (that story I’ll save for another time) to realize that I was better off as I was: single.

Alone, alive, alert, AMAZING!

Now, if you’ve been reading these posts, you probably realize by now that I’m not the world’s least romantic person. So it’s not as though I’m completely unenthusiastic about sonnets, or Italy. Or princes [note: princes must be much older than fifteen to inspire enthusiasm]. What I mean to say is that the time I spend sighing and piddling around my apartment waiting for my life to start is significantly diminished. Okay, maybe I have a few weak Sunday mornings, when I’m alone in the apartment and there’s no one to go to brunch with. Maybe those days I have a few pigeon-toed, wistful moments while I’m waiting for my tea to brew.

I know he’ll show up someday…but if it were today, that would be awesome.

But these moments have not commandeered my whole life, thank God for that.

Things are hard to appreciate when they’re right in front of your face. There’s a reason that Joni Mitchell is popular. This poor lovelorn friend of mine is getting over her first…serious involvement with a guy. I won’t call it love. But anyway, poor thing, there’s no end in sight. Maybe the first time is always like that.

I recently reread some of the journal I kept during my first epic heartbreak. I was the lovesickest puppy in town. Man oh man did I have it bad. I recorded dozens of bright, hopeful moments between us, things that haunted me, things that I couldn’t get over. And I relived them. And obsessed about them. For like, ever. Mind you, most of these delightful things happened during the first two weeks of the relationship. Those were the happy times. First date and all that jazz. Throw in some angsty folk music, a few springtime hikes and a sunset dinner in a tiny French restaurant, and almost any girl will fall for the nearest reasonably attractive single male. Alas, I was not the exception. These loverly things were followed by an awkward summer, an insecure fall, and a miserable, miserably long winter. And still it didn’t occur to me that maybe this guy wasn’t Prince Charming disguised in a pair of stripey overalls.

What. An. Idiot.

I pity my eighteen-year-old self. Wretched girl! I wasted all that time pining for some narcissistic fool who couldn’t go a whole hour without insulting me. But that was the best I’d had it, so I thought it was the best there was. I’m convinced that this is the misfortune of first love. It’s all fun and games until someone can’t let go. And someone always can’t let go.

This friend of mine is having some trouble letting go. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t work out and we can tick off several reasons for that on our reasonable fingers. The vacuum of flattery is consuming her attention. Meanwhile, she and I drive around belting out happy love songs in my car, make each other very tasty tea every morning, and carefully dissect our days together before retiring. We model our best dresses for each other, share perfumes, read each other favorite pieces of literature, pray together, eat together, study together, dream together. Last night, we sang along to a Disney ballad (and no I will NOT give you the satisfaction of knowing which one) and spun giggling circles in my living room. And yes, I was wearing a smashing cocktail dress and stiletto heels at the time. The point is this: while she’s yearning for her lost admirer, life is happening. And life is good.

Beautiful friendships are under-appreciated. I wish I had paid more attention to mine, when I was eighteen and stupidly, stupidly in love. My friends had a lot more to offer me, and I brazenly ignored the fact that I was much, much happier with them than I was with my overall-clad chap. I had a friend whose entire room was plastered in Absolut ads (each one different, mind you). She called me “Mang” for a forgotten reason and had a penchant for burritos and Simon & Garfunkel. She wore all black the day the last episode of Seinfeld aired. I can’t remember a single afternoon we spent together that I didn’t laugh so hard that I couldn’t stand up. Another friend of mine used to run through giant leaf piles with me in the fall, would dance to any Shania Twain with me, and never made me feel anything less than a fascinating person. We used to go for long drives. I could spend any amount of time with her and never get sick of her. We never, ever fought. I had the kind of mythical good friends that exist in movies, or Nickelodeon sitcoms. And yet I managed to let a bad relationship get me down – and keep me down. Why didn’t I ask the same of him that I enjoyed with them? I don’t know why I didn’t hold the happiness bar higher. I would have been better off if I had.

Friends take us as we are. It’s not complicated. I love my friends, and it’s not hard to love them. They seem to love me back, and they don’t act like it’s a chore. But finding a romantic attachment of this nature is rare. It’s the Bigfoot of relationships; it’s out there, but the images we have are so grainy and overexposed that no one believes the witnesses.

But it could be a bad relationship in disguise!

Everybody says that you’re better off single than in a bad relationship, but for some reason this is hard to ingest. I don’t know if it’s the ego-stroking that comes hitched to romantic attachments, or the feeling of being wanted, or what. I’ve had some pretty legendarily bad romances by now, and the truth of this has finally (thank God, thank God!) wiggled its way into my head. And I’m happy. Happy! Imagine that. I’m happy not to be under the boot heel of a less-than-generous man, and happy to be busy making myself the sort of girl that the sort of guy I’d dig would like to sweep off her feet. (How’s that for a garbled sentence?)

Of course I won’t object if Prince Charming shows up. Unless he’s fifteen, in which case I will slam the door in his face. But until the day the non-jailbait, non-cartoon version comes a-knockin’, there’s plenty to enjoy. Including the fact that I’m not too busy pining after some overalls to hear the door.

This is a blip.

This is what I tell myself: this is a blip. This can’t possibly be permanent.

There is no way that my professional career is over, kaput, at the age of twenty-five. Being out of work is temporary; it must be. I’m too well-educated, too smart, too young for it to be otherwise. It can’t possibly be that studying abroad in a non-degree program, followed by six months of unemployment, will be prohibitive to my gainful employment forever. There simply is no way. This doesn’t happen now. I can’t be pigeon-holed into obscurity and idleness yet. Right?

Loneliness. This too is something I will laugh at later. The convert, especially the late one, has the special privilege of feeling out-of-place and different in every situation. I am an outsider, an unknown, a minority, a mystery, to the people I grew up with, the people with whom I have all but one thing in common. And among born Muslims, there is so much running just under the bridge of my spoken words, a whole world of experience that is unknown, a whole landscape full of my regrets, my hopes, that is simply untouchable. They talk about things they dream of, new things, pure, untouched, unknown, and I’m thinking: I miss that. Or: It’s not worth it. You think you want that, but you don’t. More trouble than it’s worth. The recollection, the extra conversation I have with myself, is sweet, it is bitter, and I’m looking around for someone who knows, and there are no knowing eyes to meet mine. Alone in a crowded room.

It takes time to enter fully into a new community, and really there is no complete knowing another person. Does my mother wish that she could introduce me to her own twenty-five-year old self? Does it fill her with melancholy that at twenty-five, she still hadn’t met my father? Is it strange that most of the people in her life then are gone from it now? I doubt these are things that plague her – and yet, I don’t really know. Perhaps this happens to everyone, and the extremities of my own experience only give me the illusion that I’m the only one. I’m not the only one with a past. I’m not the only one whose social circle has shifted completely in her twenties. So what makes me think I’m so different? That I have more extravagant stories? That makes me feel older than I actually am – like there are two generations encompassed in my life. Two lives lived. I can say things like: In my wilder days…and I don’t say it often, but the fact that I can, and it would make sense for me to, sometimes makes me feel like a bit of a grandmother. You wouldn’t believe it of me, kids, but when I was your age I used to…

And then there is my constant affliction of underachievement. My brother, who is nearly two years my junior, is fluent in a foreign tongue, is on a Fulbright scholarship, and is nearly halfway through a Master’s degree. And is happily married (may God increase their happiness!). And there is me…the family diletante and court jester, theater-dance-biology-literature-politics-Islam-journalism enthusiast [note: scholar of none of the aforementioned fields]. But I’ll figure it out. I’ll do something. I’ll accomplish something. I’ll do my father proud. These are the things I tell myself in my day-to-day incompetence. Someday. Someday soon, too. I sit and watch people, people with fields of study and cultivated interests, people who have not only chosen but taken a path, and my skin prickles a little with jealousy. Just a little. I tell myself my ship has yet to sail. It’s not that there isn’t a ship. I’m just doing extra polishing. I’m thorough. I’m preparing. I’m cocooned. In just a moment I’ll emerge as a gorgeous butterfly, and then I won’t care that anyone else did it before me…

And I am hopelessly underfaithful. This is my biggest and most pressing problem. No one is promised tomorrow. I live and pray in fear of never achieving life’s only worthwhile accomplishment: closeness to my Creator. Thankfulness for my blessings. Sincere worship. I know – in my head, I know that nothing else will matter to me in my grave. I know it, but my heart has yet to ingest and implement this knowledge. Bowing in prayer, I attempt to be aware of the fact that, God willing, come the Day of Rising, I’ll be bowing before the Magnificent, the One I have worshiped lovingly all my life. I try to imagine how real that bow will be, how deep and meaningful – how fulfilling…and the same feeling I’m imagining – of urgency, of I spent my life preparing for this, I am afraid to say, does not permeate my prayer. I hope and pray that these things will get better…I imagine myself a better person, a better daughter and friend, a better sister and aunt, a better Muslim. There’s hope for me. I’ll get there. I go about doing dishes, feeding my cat, ironing and pinning my scarves, dimly aware of the fact that saints have tread this earth, and every moment was thankfulness, nothing was petulant, that in reality, they were in love – with God. They looked at their families and the people they loved, at their homes and jobs and property, at themselves, and instead of wanting more and more, instead of being laterally in the space of love, they took it up. They upped the ante. They were aware of the blessing and its Bestower all at once. And that was enough – it was more than enough – their lives inspired real devotion. I am only scraping the surface. I am thankful, but it is far too easy for me to forget that my life was given to me. I forget that I, too, am a creation, and have no claim on my Creator. It’s as though someone has handed me the keys to a shiny new Prius for no reason at all, just because, just out of love, and I’m upset because it’s not a Jaguar. I mean, who cares? Who do I think I am? Was there ever a perfect life?

Today’s lesson (and thank God for it, too): I went out to dinner with a couple of good friends, and the hostess at the restaurant was lovely, warm and nice. But her face, which was not unattractive, was completely lopsided. One side was scarred with obvious surgery, and it looked slightly pinched – as though her features had emanated from a point by her right ear. But she was friendly and completely unafraid, and quite beautiful because of it. I marveled at her. Here I sit – how many moments have I wasted fussing over every pimple, every slight imperfection – how much time have I spent searching for things on myself that didn’t meet my approval? How much time? God forgive me for every second I didn’t praise Him for every touch of beauty He gave me. What was I thinking? What did I want? What more could I have asked for? What would have been enough? Really. Insecurity is a bottomless pit. Nothing would have satisfied me. What foolishness.

The truth is, I don’t need for anything. I’m independent and mobile and self-determining. I’m free to pursue my interests as I wish. I have youth, and health, and faith, and a working mind, literacy and bookshelves of books, and more love and admiration for my friends than I could hope for. My parents love me and are in good health. I have three lovely siblings, the best sister-in-law in the world, and a cat that chirps like a velociraptor.

Meow.

I want things from life. Sure. That’s human. There is a beauty to wanting, to hope. But my fault is in allowing that to distract me from what’s there. How stupid I would feel if tomorrow I were paralyzed, or diagnosed with a serious illness. I would have missed the opportunity to recognize my blessings while I could still enjoy them. Would I feel cheated? I hope not. I hope that I can want things – a proper job, to be known, to become accomplished in some field, to feel close to God and thankful for my blessings – without feeling entitled to them. I feel that is missing the point. I don’t deserve any more than the next person. Who am I to claim a larger share of employment, of wealth, of health, of beauty, or faith, knowing that we are both creations, and that our bodies, personalities, abilities and hearts have been bestowed upon us just as our external circumstances and material possessions have? Have I a greater claim to anything? Surely not. But I forget. Again and again, I forget.

Remind me, forgive me. Mostly forgive me.

(for Nuha.)

Come crashing down.

The inevitable end of Atonement has come crashing down on my lonesome little twin bed in Brighton.

I always experience the end of books this way. Or at least the end of beloved novels. The bulk, the bulge of their momentum gathers behind me as I read helplessly on, wanting to savor the delicious details one by one, but unable to stop myself from cramming them into my head pagefulls at a time. I binge on prose. I love it, and then it ends. And I am, frankly, bereft. I grieve the loss of my looking glass into the lives of beloved characters, people I feel that I have come to know and love. People whose most intimate, solitary moments I have witnessed. They are gone, and I will miss them. I will miss their lives unfolding. I will miss looking in.

I have the sensation of a wave building especially with tragedies. Especially with tragic love stories. I want to slosh around in that moment of declaration, when the lovers are young and beautiful and full of the possibility of loving each other…I don’t want to leave. Yet the narrative moves on; it must, and I must.

The crash of separation comes down hard on me (harder, I imagine, than on others – but of course this is impossible to know), a dedicated optimist, and I remember, every time, body-surfing on Nantucket when I was about ten. It was a grey, overcast day, not very warm but not raining, and I insisted on swimming. Ten-year-olds do. The waves were huge, making foam a permanent presence on the surface of the ocean to about fifty feet out or so. Everything was grey – grey-brown beach, grey-light sky, deep grey water. And then there was me, in some horrible black-and-fluorescent swirly suit. Trying to take part in it. This one wave came that dragged me the length of its curling, pummeling the breath out of me underwater, flipping me senseless. I came up at some benign depth, but immediately was slapped down by another curl of water. And so on, until I rolled up on the grey beach, breathless, having had my fill.

This is what tragedies are to me. It’s all fun and games, however foreboding, until the letdown comes…and then I just get beat to a pulp until the end. It won’t stop; I’m already steeped way in there, a helpless observer of my own weepy fate. I suppose the end is merciful, in its way. Really I couldn’t bear to go on.

I don’t think I could write such a story. Not now; not while I inevitably cast myself as the spirited heroine (for who would cast themselves as Briony, the unwitting Iago of her own story?) . Not while she and I share the barely caged heart of a twentysomething single woman. Not while my life is to be lived, my husband, God willing, to be married, my children, God willing, to be born and raised. I couldn’t do it. It’s too ruthless. I would feel like I was cutting myself, or downing too many pills. A story decades away, in a different country, whose heroine doesn’t even remotely resemble me in appearance, inclination, or manner, is still too close to my own fragile reality. It’s that simple; to me, it is not just a story…a great one can be almost a prayer that I will ardently wish to live out.

I don’t think I’ve grown completely out of that childlike fascination with stories. I am still able to lose sense of my separateness from the page. Perhaps there is some missing developmental link there; more than one person in my life has delicately hinted to me that I lack some sagacity. I daresay they’re right; still, I’m reluctant to let go of that complete entrance into another world.

Will I forever be this girl?

[note: I really am unable to keep these posts from being appallingly personal. Perhaps I'll learn with time - until then I hope these aren't too bare to bear. So to speak.]

Relief

Why do we ignore it when we are promised relief?

There have been times in my own life when pain stretched out in ever direction; it was all I could see, it ate every desire that I had. W.H. Auden was a description, a companion, but still he offered no relief:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
I’ve felt that…I’ve forgotten optimism in the mad ecstasy of grief. And yet it passes. The worst things pass. The worst times are got over; people make up or move on. We fall in love again, when we thought we wouldn’t. Even wars will eventually end. Every scrap of history, even our own, points to the fact that this, too, shall pass.

And yet we all drive on as though pummeling through life will win the day. Every tragedy is new and urgent, every lover must be rescued from the clutches of a breakup – it’s inevitable. Our passion overtakes us. Of course we’d be in human without it – but the balance is often overshot.

I tend to be consumed by my own sadness, however trivial, in the end, it will turn out to be. I’m stubborn, and I have a hard time accepting that what I want isn’t always what’s best….but I’m fairly convinced that learning the exercise of patience – waiting for it to get better, for the pain/grief/anxiety to subside, rather than stomping my foot as loud as I can every time something doesn’t go my way – will make for a lot more happiness in the long run than chasing after everything I want.

It occurred to me the other day while riding the subway that it’s actually very fortunate that we don’t get everything we want. Imagine that! Imagine if every toy, possession, person that we’ve ever wanted was something we had to lug around and maintain for the rest of our lives…how grateful I am that I don’t have to find space for my Barbie playhouse in my tiny tiny apartment, and that I didn’t end up with any one of the crushes I had in middle school.

I guess sometimes a pout is worth a thousand smiles. I hope I can remember that next time.