Care Package
From the time our son was seven years old, we began praying for the girl he would marry – we knew she was probably somewhere in the world! We asked that God keep her sweet, and that when she and our son met, they would recognize one another and love one another faithfully.
Our prayers were answered bountifully. When he met his wife-to-be, he called us and said “there is someone I want you to meet.” He wasn’t talking about marriage – they had just met – but he knew she was special. From the time they started dating, they both kind of knew – this was it.
We knew from the beginning we would love this young woman. What we didn’t know is that we would love her family so much. As we partied together before the wedding, we had so much fun! Her family, like ours, has a great traditions of “aunthood” and “the cousins” and family gatherings. The cousins all attend one another’s weddings, gather together for special weekends (they went white water rafting and hiking this last summer, and are already planning the next gathering.) We all value family.
As my Mother has undergone surgery recently, one of my sweet daughter-in-law’s aunts has called my Mother twice, just to chat, and totally brightened her day. She also sent us a most wonderful Care Package – Texas Pecans!
It doesn’t take much to thrill my heart. I feel so blessed.
The Magic of Miso
(Image courtesy mediafocus.com)
Growing up on the west coast of the USA is like growing up in an international zone. When I was very little, in Alaska, we had lots of Scandinavian foods, along with – no, I am not kidding – mooseburgers, deer, fresh shrimp and king crab, lots of clams, and of course, salmon and halibut. Our Dads would go out in hunting season, and alternated garages for the cleaning and cutting up of the deer. We would get the eyes or tail to take to school for show-and-tell. Yeh, it sounds gross now, but we were kids, and it was a part of our life.
We waited to be 10 years old, when we could go to Rifle Club and learn to shoot. You can’t imagine how delighted I am to see a Women’s team in Kuwait, top-notch riflewomen!
In Seattle, there have always been huge communities of immigrants. One community, Ballard, is – or was – primarily Scandinavian, mostly Norwegian. (I had to look up the spelling on that one!) There is an area called Chinatown – the more politically correct call it the international district, and now, it is truly international, with Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Gambian, Nigerian, Cambodian, etc.
I don’t know exactly when I came to associate miso soup with good health, but last night, I had a small dinner planned, and Adventure Man said “Why don’t you let me bring you some miso soup?” He knows miso soup is one of my comfort foods when I am sick.
I was so sick, nothing sounded good to me. Better, though, that he bring me something than that I have to get up and cook!
He brought the miso soup. I didn’t even want to eat it, but I did. Then, before he had even finished his dinner, I excused myself, went back to bed and slept for three hours, really slept. Until then, I had been sleeping fitfully, waking often, never feeling rested.
At 10:30 I woke up and felt . . . better! I chatted with Adventure Man, took care of a few things, then went back to bed and slept peacefully through the night.
Today – I am not totally well, but I am mostly well. Thanks be to God, and . . . Miso soup!
Paying the Price
I had two wonderful days, Thursday and Friday, out and about all day in this wonderful Kuwait weather. Saturday was out again for a short time with Adventure Man and felt a tickle in my throat. No big deal, I figure it is just allergies, or the change in seasons; I drank some ginger tea and figured that would be the end of it.
Wrong!
Yesterday, it was hanging on, getting stronger. Here come the sneezes, the swollen sinuses, the watery bleary eyes, the sneezing and the coughing. Having a cold totally grosses me out. I’m not a person who gets dramatically and romantically ill, lying beautifully in bed while people bring me hot drinks and speak to me in soft voices. I look terrible! I want this cold gone now! I’ve upped the arsenel to Strepticils, Zinc tablets, Cranberry juice and antihistimines. It doesn’t matter; I am a wreck.
I’m better during the day, it’s night time that gets me – I wake up choking and coughing, my sinuses hurt, my nose is running. . . and I sleep fitfully, with weird dreams, so sometimes I can’t tell if I am dreaming or awake.
The Qatteri Cat faithfully follows me everywhere I go. I am sleeping in the guest bedroom so Adventure Man doesn’t have to suffer through this with me, but QC just makes comforting noises and snuggles up to me.
I have a lot to do this week. Please keep me in prayer for a speedy recovery!
She Did Everything Right
When I was a little girl growing up in Alaska, we had neighbors who lived just across the creek. Our neighbors had a daughter 6 years older than me; she was my first babysitter. Growing up, those six years made all the difference – we didn’t know one another as friends, the gap was too great. Our families were very close, however, and when my parents would go to parties at her parents house, they would take us and put us to bed in her bed.
I saw her now and then through the years, but our lives were in different places. When I was just getting married, she had big boys, by the time my son was a teenager, hers were getting married and going to college. We reconnected in Florida, of all places, where we both ended up at the same time due to our husband’s jobs.
Having our Alaska childhood in common, having grown up together and knowing each other’s family through all the years created a strong bond. We saw each other often; she was like a big sister to me.
She always had it all together. She had a group that bicycled together every morning, and then had outings later in the day. She was a fitness buff, and ran in the mornings before she bicycled. She kept herself thin, and she loved to cook, but she could eat what she wanted because she exercised it all off.
She was a reader, and would pass along the really good books to me. She and her husband were also news buffs, so when we would get together with our husbands, there was never a dull moment at the dinner table.
She and her husband were sent to Egypt, and to Rumallah, and to China, and they made the most of every minute. They loved traveling, they loved their sailing boat, they loved their family. They would come to visit us in our places of the world, and we would have great reunions. They were so alive.
She could be annoying. She would chide me about not exercising enough. She would comment on how much food people ate. She always knew the latest in medical research to back herself up. She kept her mind active, and she kept her weight down. She exercised, she travelled, she took care of her parents, she did good works for others. She did everything right.
A couple years ago, we joined her and her husband for dinner. She hadn’t combed her hair. She weighed about 20 lbs more, and didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t remember the last book she had read, and she couldn’t remember her recent trip to Mexico, or an earlier one to Spain.
It’s been downhill since then. Her loving husband is strong and able to care for her, this once-beautiful, sprite-like, spirited woman. I think she still knew me, when I saw her last summer, but she can no longer really express what she is thinking. She is restless, up and down from the table, and not able to participate in the conversation.
I am haunted. I am so much like her; I tried to live up to all that she has taught me. A part of me wants to scream at God “This isn’t fair! She did everything right!”
Perhaps doing everything right gave her a few extra years, and I am just not seeing things from the right perspective. Meanwhile, I get no answers, and my heart breaks when I think of her.
Manly Cosmetics
I vacated my bathroom for houseguests recently, and as I was moving my toiletries back in, with wry amusement I noticed how many face creams I have. Creams for eyes, creams for lips, creams for night, creams for going out into the sun, creams for after having gone out into the sun, creams for day, creams for “noticable reductions in wrinkles in 7 days or less.”
(The problem is, seven days later when I am looking for a noticable reduction, I can’t really tell if it is working or not. I look, but I am wondering what I might have looked like if I HADN’T used the cream? I don’t know!)
And I was thinking about men, who have skin, too. Particularly I was thinking about Adventure Man, and what would it take for him to feel comfortable using a skin cream?
First – it would have to have a very manly name. None of this Homme stuff, it would have to imply that this is a product a RUGGED man would use. Like Manly Lather. “Lather” is a word that goes with men, like barbers lather up your face before they shave you. Women use foam, men use LATHER.
Another name I thought might work would be Extreme Unction because manly men like flying near that edge of the envelope, it’s a testosterone thing, and unction means anointing, like with an oil. If you are Catholic, you receive extreme unction just before dying, or before people think you are about to die, so even unction has an extreme connotation.
Maybe Braveheart? Maybe Rock?
Help me out here.
If you are a guy, (please, keep it clean) what kind of names would allow you to use a face cream with dignity?
If you are a gal (and rolling on the floor laughing) what names can you think of that would encourage a guy to actually USE a face cream?
Have fun with this!
“Where’s The Bag, Daddy?”
My friends, please be kind. Adventure Man loves plays on words. So last night I could hear him and the Qatteri Cat playing in the bedroom, the Qatteri Cat’s favorite game, Dad hides him under a laundry sack and the Qatteri Cat thinks no one can see him. Then Adventure Man dangles his belt and the Qatteri Cat slashes at it from under the bag. It doesn’t take much to amuse these two; they love this game and can play it over and over.
I can hear Adventure Man saying “Where’s the Bag, Daddy? Where’s the Bag, Daddy?” and dancing around, and he is totally cracking himself up.
“Wouldn’t that be a great blog entry?” he asked.
I dutifully grabbed my camera and tried to get some shots, which is not easy under low light conditions when the Qatteri Cat is swatting at a swinging belt.
So it’s kind of an action shot – that’s what we call it when some of the sharp edges go a little blurry 😉
This cat adores his Bag, daddy.
Rock Star Parking
Ya’ll know that a lot of this blog is about cross-cultural experiences, but this one is cross-cultural in our own family.
You know, every family, every tribe of us, has its own rituals and ways of doing things, and even when you marry someone you think you know very very well, you are in for some surprises.
One of the surprises in our marriage was that my husband thought I was supposed to fill the gas tank. Hello? Fill the gas tank? That’s MENS stuff, don’t you know? We had some tense moments in our first couple months of marriage working that one out, especially when I would leave him with nearly empty gas tank. My husband was rightfully flummoxed by my ability to be both a feminist and a princess, thinking that filling the tank and fixing car problems was HIS work. I learned *huge sigh* to watch the level of gas, to fill the tank, and to take the car in for services. *another big sigh*
But one thing that drove my husband right up the wall was my thing about parking close to the door. Well, I will give him this, he did not grow up in Alaska or in Seattle, he doesn’t know about freezing cold winds and mounds of snow and driving rain and winds that turn umbrellas inside out. My husband didn’t know that husbands, like daddies, are supposed to find the perfect spot as close to the entry as possible, every single time, or to drop us off and meet us inside. No, given I was a feminist, he expected to just take any old spot and I would just walk with him to wherever we would go. We never got that one worked out.
Not until a couple years ago. I learned that my mistake was all in trying to explain the irrationality of family culture. I learned that it was all about marketing, about positioning, something that normally I am very sensitive to and very good at doing. I was hopelessly blind in my approach and hopelessly single tracked.
It all changed when we were taking a new employee on a sight seeing tour of Kuwait. When we got to the grocery store, suddenly a spot opened up right in front of the store.
“Wooooo Hoooooo!” hooted the new guy, “ROCK STAR PARKING!”
I could see my husband straighten up and preen a little as he thought of himself as a person who got “rock star parking.” The light went on. Once he started thinking of himself as a “rock star parking” kind of guy, I never had to walk a long distance to the entry again.
(Woooo HOOOOOOOOO!)
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Once I picked up Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, I barely put it down again until I was finished. I found myself thoroughly involved in the lives of Mariam and Leila, unwilling even to stop to fix dinner! The author of Kiterunner has hit another home run.
There was a time when we would listen to older state department types talk – with enormous longing – about their tours of duty in Afghanistan, pre-Soviet invasion, pre-Taliban, pre-American occupation. Have you ever read James Michener’s Caravan? There are two countries I long to vist, but the countries they are now are not the countries I heard people talk about – Afghanistan and Ethiopia. Our friends loved their times in these two countries.
A Thousand Splendid Suns opens in a small village outside Herat, and then takes us to Kabul. Mariam is born harami, a bastard, of a village cleaning woman in the house of a very wealthy man. Her father builds a small hut for her mother and herself in a remote part of the small village, and visits Mariam every week. Life is simple, and difficult, but also full of kind people who visit and who are concerned with Mariam’s welfare.
After marrying, Mariam goes to Kabul and learns a new way of life with her husband, Rasheed. What fascinates me with Hosseini is that while Rashid is one of the villians of this novel, he is just a man, doing the best he can given his own upbringing and limitations. In a sense, he is “everyman”, the strutting, domineering, sometimes brutal and abusive husband we find in every culture. But Hosseini also gives him transient bouts of kindness which blow through a little less often than the transient bouts of cruelty.
He also gives us good men, in this book, in the person of Jalil, the father of Mariam, who steps up to the plate in acknowledging Mariam and supporting her and her mother, but fails to nurture in the very real way women need nurturing from their fathers in order to reach their full potential in life. Hosseini also gives us a very strong man in the book, Tariq, who, although he has only one leg, is more wholly a man than any other man in the book. I imagine that this is not unintentional. (How Kissingerian is that for a double negative?!)
Written almost entirely in the Afghan world of women, we see through the eyes of Mariam, and later Leila, the transitions in Afghanistan and their impacts on daily life. We experience happiness with them, and peaceful scenes in quiet moments, raising the children, stepping outside into the garden at night to share a cup of tea and a shared bowl of halwa.
Between the moments of peacefulness, we also experience incoming morter rounds, explosions, marauding bands of warlords, and starvation. We go into a women’s hospital under Taliban control, where there are no medications, no running water, no instruments, and an Afghani female doctor does a C-section with no anaesthesia and is required to keep her burqa on. We watch a mother abandon her role and take to her bed when her two sons are killed fighting the Soviets, we experience betrayal and we experience helplessness, and we experience a Kabul women’s prison. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a rich feast of experiences, juxtaposing the everyday chores of women around the world – cooking, raising children, laundry – with events on the world stage.
(Available from Amazon for $14.27 plus shipping.)
Big Red
Adventure Man and I have an agreement. We leave each other’s lives alone. Like I don’t try to tell him how he should work (I do try to tell him how to drive, or how not to drive, he hates it and I can’t help it; I don’t want to die!) and he doesn’t tell me how to run the house (but he does make “helpful suggestions”, he can’t help it.) We cut each other a lot of slack – it’s the only way you can stay married for a long time.
He monitors my blog closely. I don’t mind, he is like my personal security agency, making sure I don’t tell you too much about myself. I know he is protecting us and I honor that. It also helps me to think about what I am writing as I write – he has never asked me to change anything, but the awareness that he is watching helps me remember to be careful.
But I draw the line at him telling me what to blog. Here is what I say:
GET YOUR OWN BLOG, ADVENTURE MAN!
Yesterday he brought me some Big Red, with a complaint and with a compliment. Many of us in our family are addicted to Big Red, a cinnamon chewing gum. I like it because I drink coffee, and coffee can make your breath bad. Adventure Man just likes it because he likes it.
“This Big Red is not the same!” he complained. “It tastes wrong!”
I tasted it and I thought it tasted normal, but I have been buying Big Red here for a while and maybe my “normal” has gotten skewed.
“And look!” he said, triumphantly “Big Red is supposed to be RED!”
And he was right – this Big Red is WHITE?? How can that be??
But here is the compliment – look what is printed on each individual gum wrapper. (You have to read it from left to right!)
Pretty cool, huh? And this blog entry is for you, Adventure Man.
“I Miss Hamad. . . “
Talk was desultory as the book club broke up, several women had already left when Hannah hit us with this bombshell. It was a most puzzling statement. We had all passed Hamad in the hallway on our way to bookclub. He would greet us gruffly, but not really look at us as we buzzed into the women’s diwaniyya.
“What are you talking about?” popped up Lena, never at a loss for words. “How can you miss Hamad? He’s right here!”
Hannah exchanged glances with Diana, also married to a Kuwaiti. They grinned, ruefully.
“You’ve only been back a week,” Diana said.
“Yes, but I MISS that sweet, loving husband. When we are away, he turns back into the delightful, charming man I married! He holds my hand, he takes me out for dinner, it’s like when we first met! He’s a different man! Oh, how I miss him! And we’ve only been back a week.” She echoed Diana.
Diana sighed.
“And is he playing the ‘ayb’ card?” she asked? “‘Ayb’ how you walk around the house, ‘ayb’ how you smile too much, ‘ayb’ here, ‘ayb’ there, ‘ayb ayb’ everywhere?”
They started giggling. Others joined in, their giggles were so infectious. Soon, the seven women remaining from the book club meeting were gasping for air, they were laughing so hard.
“I’ve stopped changing!” Hannah hooted! “Every time I changed what he asked, he found something new!”
And the laughter started again – it’s an international group, and the critical husband thing is something that is easily understood by women of all nations.
“I want him back!” Hannah moaned, weak from laughter. “I want my Hamad back!”
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