Hi Mama, Baba,
Happy birthday Baba. Time keeps moving on and you are always the way I remember you. The numbers never change. Just get further away in the rear view mirror, huh. Will never get used to that feeling...
Where does one start on an update to people they love so dearly who are out of reach - in a time when the world is on fire, and the year has been full of trials.
Gaza is still a gaping wound in a world that is still turning and bleeding out, and ignoring it at all costs. As slowly and slowly it's drained of the humanity, those of us who are grabbing on to our humanity refusing to let it fall out feel the pain of it all the time - and so the pain is doubled. Pain of what we see, and the pain of having to fight to hold on to humanity. It's exhausting, and tiring, but inevitable. And I fluctuate between thanking the universe you're not here to deal with it, and wishing you were here to tell me it will be ok - and that in the end justice will prevail, good with outweigh the evil.
Because from where I'm standing it feels like the world is going mad, and fast, and I'm spinning so much I can't keep my head straight. More often than not I feel I'm in the twilight zone, or the theatre of the absurd, where up is down and black is white and all the pages in the history books have suddenly lost their purpose of reminding us where we faltered. And this is a world that will be Laith and Zayn's, and that makes the fear ever so much deeper. The fluctuating between being a part of the fabric of the world as a whole in all its crazy anxiety-inducing glory, working towards the greater good, and trying to survive in the small microcosm that is my life and my family and the small universe creates a fatigue that I haven't felt before. The feeling of just getting to the next day, surviving it with all our minds intact feels Herculean.
So you can see why a big part of me is relieved, not happy, but relieved that you aren't here for the big wide world side of things. But the other part that is surviving the microcosm of our life wishes with every fiber you were here...
The kids are growing up and I'm holding on to you for them. It feels sometimes like I'm holding on to the string of balloons, still in my grasp but not really in reach. And on bad days, it feels like my grasp is slipping, and the string slack is shortening as the balloons hover higher up. They're still there, but sometimes they feel further away. And it's a struggle to point them out to the kids.
It feels like a marathon - but I'm trailing behind and I just feel so tired all the time, and I'm sure there are so many more things I could be doing to hold on to you and the kids and bring you together in my embrace, and to keep things as they were but they're not as they were and some things never even were and and and...
And all I can do sometimes is take a deep breath, cry a little bit about the ghosts of things that could have been, and try to tell myself that I'm doing what I can - knowing full well that I don't completely believe what I'm telling myself.
I miss you both so much, and even when you are not in the foreground of my mind, which I hate to admit to myself happens more and more (add that to ever-growing list of things to feel guilty about) the longing never leaves.
Baba, I strain to hear your voice - I still have your laugh, but I feel I need to hear your voice. Maybe I need to face my fears and find footage of you...
Mama, akh ya mama. I heard your voice a lot this year. And actually, perhaps more than usual.
You see, of all the obstacles I have faced, have had to face, I was presented with one a few months ago that rattled my core, and shook the foundations that I assumed were rock solid. It took me places in my mind that I shouldn't have gone, and planted seeds of doubt that should never have been there.
But thankfully, those seeds didn't take root. They never would have found the fertile soil for that.
But just knowing that had been tossed there recklessly and irresponsibly was struggle enough to deal with.
I had to dig through things I didn't want to dig through, that wasn't my place to dig through, all the while afraid of being proven wrong.
My trust in my relationship with you, my knowledge of who you were in essence, Mama, was suddenly on trial. I was thrown into an abyss of questions about you and your past with no one to answer them, and with the heavy weight of my duty to protect you, especially in your absence.
I wanted to shield you from the unknown while trying to figure out the unknown itself.
In my core I knew what was what, I see that now. And I don't know how to apologise enough for letting those seeds stay as long as they did, polluting the earth that hold me and you. I heard your voice in my mind, saying "Walaw, Karma" so many times, accompanied with a vision of you giving me a look that initially felt reprim anding but as time passed, and as I was able to process the mess that had landed on my head, felt more and more like you teasing me in jest, with a loving warmth that is all too familiar with you.
I'm sorry that I allowed something to pull me away from you the way it did. It is something that I will have to reckon with and forgive myself for over time. I somehow know that your forgiveness would not be hesitant in the least.
But I suppose the silver lining is that my deepest knowledge of you, of the thread that makes the fabric of your being, was proven to have been true.
And how could it not.. it's the same weave that makes the fabric of me too...
So I'm sorry I had to dig into things and ask questions that no daughter should have to, but also I am your daughter, and if there ever was a daughter raised in a way that could do that with the humility and respect, you raised me to be her.
Ana bintkon.
And I'm doing my best to raise boys worthy of being your grandkids, and to be honest, I think that they make it so easy, despite the usual hardships of parenthood. What beautiful boys I have. The weight of my love for them is only nearly matched by the sadness that you are not here to see them.
But I'd rather leave you on that happy note, that they are beautiful boys, smart and witty and loving. And I will always believe that you can feel them wherever you are. And I can only ask that you protect them, as much as you can, in this world that is showing a lot more of its ugly side these days than its beautiful one...
Happy birthday again Baba
B7ibkon dayman, always and forever.
Hug each other tight for us. Visit me in dreams when you can.
Bintkon
Karma
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