I have these memories

Today Mama and I stood at the kitchen stove, talking for hours while we took turns stirring the lentil soup, chopping and steaming and mashing carrots and potatoes, turning the dials on the stove up and down and up again to keep the simmer going.

A was reading his novel and Baba was driving D to his EidFest volunteer training session and it was all so lazy, but not stay-in-bed-all-day and read a book lazy. More of, we-can-just-stay-here-all-day between the hustle and chaos of a million things to do lazy.

I have these memories of when the boys were young and we were living with Mama and Baba while our house was being built. I would get home from work to find 6 year-old D sitting on the floor on a cushion, face screwed up in concentration. He’d have a notebook in front of him on an upturned milk-crate, ‘preparing his notes’ for an imaginary lecture. Beside him on the big black armchair, Mama would be reviewing her notes for an upcoming lecture in Toronto or in Paris or in Dallas or in Chicago, wherever it happened to be that coming weekend.

I have these memories of falling asleep while I rubbed 2 year-old A’s belly. How he would wake me up to keep rubbing because he wasn’t sleepy yet, he was never sleepy, he would never sleep. Oh the lengths we went to try to make him sleep! Keeping him up through naptime at daycare. Tiring him out at the park. Bribing him with candy and sugar if he would just stay in bed all night.

I have these memories of standing in the office kitchenette, waiting for the water to boil for my coffee. Of a poor unsuspecting colleague coming in to heat a plate in the microwave, and saying “how are you?” and that question unleashing an avalanche of panic. “I’m tired all the time I never sleep my son is two and if he sleeps 3 hours a night I’m lucky I know why they call sleep deprivation torture it really is—” and on and on while my poor officemate tried to back out of the room.

My mouth motoring on a mile a minute, stream-of-consciousness styles like Joe in Johnny Got His Gun.

Photo by Rene Bernal on Unsplash

I have these memories of taking the boys and spending the weekend with my sister and their cousins and the whole two days would be a haze of laughing kids and shrieking kids and crying kids and endless sandwiches and band-aids and mediating whose turn it was with the toy or on the swing or in the chair and cooking huge pots of oatmeal and adding raisins and honey and watching the bigger ones carry the smaller ones and card games that ended in victory and card games that ended in tears and watching them stand in crooked lines for prayer and that feeling like your heart is going to burst because you know these are the memories that will stick and you love everyone in the big crazy house so much, so so so much that you almost can’t bear it.

I have these memories of sleeping in the spare room at my sister’s house when her oldest daughter was a baby and ducking under the blankets when she woke up in her crib so I could get just 10 more minutes and trying not to laugh while she said “khalto noosa, khalto nooooosaaaaa! are you awake?”

I have these memories of riding our bikes along the river trail with Baba at the front, weaving between the walkers and the Canada Geese and smelling the breeze off the water and speeding up so we could pass each other and coming home smelling of sweat and dirt and victory.

I have these memories of sitting on the second floor landing after prayer at 16, making our remembrance and the silence and the slowness of it all and the way the minutes would stretch out in front of us like promises.

Today just standing in the kitchen with Mama and cooking around our conversation was like time travel, like getting to relive every era of my life in parallel, like jumping into the lake of my existence. Is this the magic of time with your mother? That she is your root, and so you flower again and again in her company? How many flowers will I give my children?

Letters is Two! A gift.

Letters from a Muslim Woman turns two this month. I started with exactly zero readers and now there are over 3500 of you here. Coming home to writing after years away has been clarifying and lifechanging. Even when things are hard, even when I am struggling in other areas of life, this space reminds me that I have a voice. That there are people like you who value the words of an Arab Muslim Canadian.

Today, I’m asking you to consider a paid subscription to Letters from a Muslim Woman. To support this writing in a practical and tangible way. To help me reach more readers with words that humanize, not demonize.

To celebrate the two year anniversary, I am offering a massive discount on paid subscriptions—40% off for a full year.

On top of the warm, fuzzy feeling you’ll get from helping me continue to write, you will also get access to my unfinished letters series, where I go into the unvarnished stuff I’m not comfortable sharing with the whole internet. I publish two new unfinished letters every month, and there’s over a year’s worth of archives to catch up on.

Tell me

• What makes you nostalgic? And what era of your life do you get nostalgic for?

• How do you feel when you look back on your childhood?

• What do you want to pass along to the next generation?