I Remember the 22nd of September
Five years ago today, my sister’s divorce was finalized. It had been a contentious, painful end to a complicated marriage. I spent the day with her and while I invited her to come out with us, understandably she declined to join us. We were in Kansas City for the 2nd marriage of a dear friend. After their festivities wrapped up, our last night in town happened to be our own wedding anniversary.
It had been too many years since I had lived in my home town. I was now more of a tourist than a townie. I called up a dear friend who had long before been a lover of mine and would later reprise that role, to ask him for a recommendation for a good dinner spot. Not knowing it was our anniversary, he invited himself along. The dinner was incredible and our friend entertained us with stories of his travels, projects, conquests and love life leaving us with only the stories about our children which tend to bore most child free singles. Two hours into the dinner it was revealed that September 22nd, that day, was our wedding anniversary. He was effusive in his praise and reflections on how our wedding was one of the best he had ever attended. While he was embarrassed to have crashed the dinner, I was relieved. On our own, we would have exhausted the reflections on our children, my family and the wedding we had just attended within 30 minutes, would have been finishing dessert and asking for the check. With our friend, there were laughs, big belly laughs that were so needed, particularly when my husband and I no longer possessed the ability to make each other laugh. Getting into my father’s sports car, we drove the 40 minutes back to his house in silence. When we climbed into my childhood bed, my husband lay next to me, never asking what was wrong as I cried myself to sleep..
Five years ago today, my sister’s divorce was finalized. It had been a contentious, painful end to a complicated marriage.
18 years ago today was one of the most incredible days of my life. Only 11 days after 9/11 we were much in need of something to be joyful for and our wedding brought individuals together from all over the country in community, celebration, and release.
Only days before, my Arab father and grandmother called from the airport in Kansas City to let me know that if they were profiled and not allowed to board the plane they were prepared to drive the 2,000 some odd miles to make sure they attended, bared witness to my long-planned ceremony and union. Having spent their days in Iraq, hiding as Jews, now they found themselves in an adopted homeland that was hostile to Middle Easterners. They were allowed to board the plane.
The day was magic. There is so much to say about that day, but I will save that for another time. Towards the end of the evening, our friend and DJ found my husband and me and invited us back onto the dance floor for one last special song that he had been saving for us.
Do you remember the 21st night of September?
love was changing the mind of pretenders
while chasing the clouds away
Our hearts were ringing
in the key that our souls were singing.
as we danced in the night,
remember — how the stars stole the night away, yeah yeah yeah.
Hey hey hey,
My thoughts are with you
holding hands with your heart to see you
only blue talk and love,
remember — how we knew love was here to stay
Now December found the love that we shared in September.
only blue talk and love,
remember — the true love we share today
As we joyously danced to that song, a drunken guest, committed the greatest crime. She had been arguing with the DJ over his choice of song when she intentionally pushed the tone arm of his turntable in protest, sending the needle skidding across this dedicated love song speaking to the eve of that full moon fall equinox of our wedding day. As the music came to an arresting halt that violation reverberated through the dancefloor, across the lake and into the crevices of the rocky landscape of the gorge, up into the blue black moonlit skies.
Today, my estranged family dedicates a tombstone to my 2nd mother, my fiercely independent warrior of a woman, my paternal grandmother. And while I cannot be there, back in Kanas City, a place that ties me to this date on so many occasions, I choose to honor her on this day by sharing the eulogy that I wrote for her one year ago on the morning of her funeral.
Growing up with Farah as our grandmother, and I think my sister and cousins will agree, was a sort of magical experience. She regaled us in stories from this mysterious and marvelous world we came to know as “back home.” We learned of our history, as fairy tales and fantastical stories woven together creating a tapestry of Bagdad that was alluring as it was terrifying.
There are words and names that are ingrained in my mind like Toba the housekeeper, who it seemed was always at odds with my Grandmother.
Some of these words are words that describe Farah so well and others are of places and people who belong to the magical world of Farah’s past.
One of the many words that describe Farah is FIERCE. She was not your conventional cookie baking, cookie-cutter grandmother. And I say this with all due respect to all the Grandmothers out there. And while she demanded respect and we did, I don’t know how many 89 or 93 year old grandmothers could instill fear with just a look. It took just that look -it even has a name, we call it the coo-coo eye, for anyone on the receiving end to comply or back down.
Presentation was also important to Farah. She made sure that she always looked sharp. I don’t know of any woman who rocked a pantsuit better than she did, especially when paired with her signature big and bold eyewear. She had a distinct fashion sensibility, favoring gold lame and grandeur over simple and basic.
And even though she had that beautiful long hair, she always wore it styled up and back, usually tied with a bold patterned scarf. Amira and I, as we always secretly longed for a more conventional grandmother, convinced Farah since she always wore her hair up anyway, she should just make things easy and acquiesce to her age like other grandmothers. You see, we bought into societal norms. However, she never did! One of the things I most loved about her.
And if you’re wondering about that haircut, she gave it a try. She had the most stylish and beautiful bob cut. It revealed the body and curl of her hair. We loved it! She HATED it! And she grew it out and never forgave us for that period she suffered through life with short hair.
Presentation was important too in the work that she did. Whether it was her seamstress work or her cooking. I don’t know a restaurant that created a more beautiful tray of baklava than Grandma Farah, with each clove centered so perfectly in the diagonally cut pan of the most delicious dessert I’ve ever enjoyed.
Oh, Grandma Farah’s cooking. When I think of Farah’s cooking, I think of another word, PRIDE. Farah did not cook “back home” Her housekeeper Toba did the cooking. Here in the US she worked hard teaching herself how to recreate the dishes for which she was homesick for, like T’beet, a Jewish Iraqi signature dish involved stuffing and stewing a chicken with spiced rice along with what we called Tarzan eggs. Farah cooked so many delicious foods like potato chops, which were more like knishes, but better! And she hands down made the best tabouli ever! I’ll tell you her very simple secret. More tomatoes and less tabouli grain. I could talk to you for hours about Farah’s cooking, her food and her love for expanding her repertoire by watching cooking shows and from recipes in magazines. And her pride in cooking was evidenced by her watchful eye on her dinner guests, as she studied the pleasure on their faces, devouring in minutes what she labored over days to share with us.
She was also most proud of her family. She loved her children, her grandchildren and great grandchildren with a fervor like no other. Perhaps, because she sacrificed so much to have a family that grew from this single matriarch, she took the greatest pride in all of us. The only thing that would have made her more proud, is if we each had had 15 more children. She loved having a big family!
No one made her happier than the presence of a child. Amira reminded me that Farah never lost the gift of seeing the world as a child. That is likely one of the reasons that she seemed so magical. Children have the magic of discovery and Farah did too. She made going to the market an extraordinary event, describing the apple she found that was THIS BIG!
When she came to visit me in Portland, we would walk through my neighborhood and she would spy a grapevine with excitement and tell me that we would need to circle back to harvest some grape leaves for dolmas. She did so, with the same fervor that my own children would display as toddlers when collecting wildflowers and other natural objects.
And at the age of 75, she was young enough to “dance the macarena” and voluntarily surprise jazz great Leroy Vinegar, by sitting in his lap. You may not know that she had a beautiful singing voice, that she rarely shared with anyone. She used to hum a lullaby, Youma Habooba, just a simple endearment, while patting us firmly, on the back. I do not say firmly lightly. I often wondered if she was patting us on the back or restraining us in disguise of being lulled to sleep. Such was always the dual value of her actions.
And while all seemed so magical, her life was very much a struggle. From her life in Bagdad. Knowing how in danger she was there, it was difficult for myself and others to reconcile how much she loved and missed this scary, dangerous homeland. And her life in the US, struggling to make ends meet.
And so many other words flow in to complete the picture of Grandma Farah,
Independent Defiant Determined Fighter Industrious Loving Beautiful
She was always solidly aware of who she was.
She taught us that there is always a new path to carve and a different way of doing things. And I think that along with pride, we learned that we could do things differently.
Ask me sometime about her talent of creating a gravity-defying piece of architecture from the contents at a salad bar or why she chose to pierce a cat’s ears or how she shunned Sadaam Hussein long before anyone knew who he was.
There are just so many stories to tell and I and I’m sure others, whose lives she’s touched will continue to tell those stories.
She taught us how to take something so simple, to maximize it, to not accept the “smallness” of it, or the boundaries, but to make it yours, to make it what you want it to be.
She was a bender of rules, a rule breaker. Something only a survivor, a warrior knows and if you know this family, you’ll know that we’re all warriors of a sort. We learned it from her. And it is for that reason that I see her in all of us.
We will miss her so much, but she is here because she lives in each of us and inspired those who knew her because she was just brave enough, crazy enough, to do it her own way, as counterintuitively as her way may have been.
And I wish for everyone here to be brave enough to invite Farah’s brand of magic into their lives by breaking the rules sometimes, inviting wonder and enchantment to mingle with reality.
Three years ago on this day, I had just landed in Los Angeles and was driving with friends and my children to the beach on a weekend getaway. When I checked my phone, a text brought tears to my eyes and confusion to my clarity. My exhusband, now with a new fiance had messaged “Happy Anniversary.” His acknowledgment of the day was a painful assurance that our love was not an illusion. When two people deeply love one another but don’t know how to love one another, it’s truly a tragic thing. I did not respond to his text.
If you see me today, I’ll likely be smiling as I’ve known love in so many ways. The end of a marriage, the death of my dear Grandmother, neither can extinguish the fullness of joy or the depth of pain that are so familiar.
If you do see me today, hold me in your thoughts, in your arms or in your gaze, whichever is available to you and to me. Or better yet, let’s get down to some Earth Wind and Fire.