a Persian spring, and thoughts of my dad

It is spring and Persians around the world are celebrating Nowruz, the Persian new year with Zoroastrian origins. SISCA, a Seattle organization that hopes to launch a formal sister city collaboration between Seattle and Isfahan, Iran, held its second annual celebration of Nowruz at City Hall. I received an email a few weeks ago looking for volunteers and showed up hours before it began to help set up. There were so many volunteers I found I had plenty of time to roam the rooms and displays.

I wandered over to the haft sin table, where two impeccably dressed women were spreading table cloths. They chattered in Farsi as they set out and then fussed over a large mirror at the far end, ornate bowls of garlic bulbs, olives, coins, apples, and other items that represented the seven S's, as well as candles and fragrant hyacinth. They adjusted the folds of the rich fabric again and again. One said something to me in Farsi, but I could only reply in English that I’d love to help in any way. She asked me to put some of the storage boxes under the table. In my t-shirt and jeans, I dutifully crawled under, and then skated with paper towels under my sneakers to tidy the floor. When the event began and I helped direct groups of families and friends who wanted to take commemorative photos in front of the beautiful display, I couldn't help but feel on the fringe of a community where I didn't quite belong. 

My dad emigrated from Iran for medical study and married my Ohio-born mother in 1959. He was the first of his ten siblings to arrive in the U.S. Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin in the 1970s, my family didn’t celebrate Nowruz. I was in high school when Shah Pahlavi was ousted, the Iranian revolution began, and the American hostage crisis dominated the news for over a year. It wasn’t a time for anyone in the US to show Iranian pride, and it never occurred to me, anyway. I was a typical egocentric teen, focused on getting my driver’s license, my friends, and getting into college.

Over the years, we occasionally had family and other doctors visit from Iran – many of whom eventually settled in the U.S. Guests meant the arrival of pistachios, dates, strange candies, and other exotic foods. Gifts of little wool purses with inlaid mirrors and silky slippers for my three sisters and me that we accepted graciously, but were soon forgotten. Dad’s guests would sit in the living room – an area off limits to my siblings and me -- among the few Iranian items we had in our modest Midwest home: a samovar, ornate little tables, and a few Persian rugs -- and talk late into the night, and then they would be gone. This is what I knew about being Persian growing up. At times my mom would cook some of my dad’s favorite dishes that were simplest for her to make after working a full day – khoresh, egg kuku, and rice with tahdig -- but there was never an explanation as to what it was or why it was being served. It was just supper.

My mom and dad divorced soon after the last of their children left for college. I left Wisconsin 25 years ago and have built my life in Seattle. Building upon my connection to Iran became less important. I had an education to finish, children to raise, a divorce to get through, a career to develop.  I’d hear stories of my dad’s periodic travels to Iran and news about extended family members. I attended an elaborate Persian-style wedding of a cousin in California in the 1990s and began a friendship with another cousin a few years ago after connecting through Facebook. Yet, my attachment to Iran remained insubstantial.

Reaching middle age, though, I began to feel an urgent need to do more. I've started (and stopped) studying Farsi, a few times. I have made a conscious effort to cook Persian food more frequently and read more about the Middle East. When I was in London for work, I made sure to get to the British Museum just to see the Cyrus Cylinder, and sent my dad photos. He has never seen it. I have the paperwork I’ll need to travel to Iran, whenever that day may be. When I see my dad on my trips to Wisconsin, I try to draw out his memories of Iran, but it is never easy. He has other things on his mind, too. He hasn’t yet used the tape recorder I gave him several years ago, but I’m still hopeful he may.

When I began dating a man who immigrated to the US from Dublin, he didn’t understand why I identified as “half Persian and half German/Dutch.” He thinks Americans’ fascination with their heritage and insistence on saying they’re Irish, or Swedish, or whatever, and celebrating the holidays of other countries, is a bit odd. You’re American; I’m American, too, he’d say simply. And, honestly, despite my exaggerated indignation when the topic came up, I believed he had a valid point.

A few weeks ago, I was in Wisconsin for my dad’s 88^th birthday and he said something that had never occurred to me. He mentioned he had recently bought a DNA kit and was going to send in a sample. As a boy he found some heirlooms at home that made him wonder whether his family tree included ancestors from Russia and Georgia. He wanted to find out more. Turns out, my Iranian dad had questions about who he was, too.

We are both running out of time. When my Dad is no longer alive, will I still feel this need to connect to my Persian heritage?  Or will this search become dormant until, perhaps, my kids pick up where I left off?  Is this a mid-life identity crisis? Am I simply recognizing my own mortality?

As a child being held on my dad’s lap, there was something comforting about leaning into him and feeling the rumble of his thickly accented voice. He still uses his silly nicknames for his children. I am still reassured in some strange way to hear him speak, which is often on his favorite topics of history and medical research. I am like a little girl, soaking up magical tales. He asks me about myself; the same questions I’ve answered many times about my job, the kids, my long-term boyfriend. After all these years, he still knows as little about me as I know about him. Maybe, when I get to the heart of it, this desire to be linked to my Persian heritage is just me reaching my arms up to him one more, everlasting, time.

Of conifers and cohabitees

I've had a sneaking suspicion for a few weeks that the trees were up to no good again. I couldn't confirm it because the sources I usually go for confirmation were empty of information. Today, though, drinking coffee at the kitchen table and suffering through the newspaper, there was no doubt what my eyes were feeling was not heaviness from being awoken by my son and his girlfriend's late night prowls through the house (followed by two hours of insomnia). Bingo. There it was on the allergy clinic website. The dastardly HIGH 521 pollen count for the cedars that make me miserable for several weeks every late winter and early spring. Added to the compartments of my Monday through Friday plastic box row is yet another tiny white pill. Any more and I will need a dispenser size upgrade.

And, as spring starts to kick in, I've got two young adults nesting in my basement. My son casually left for a few weeks in New York just before Christmas to see about a girl and stayed a few months. He returned with her last week. We're still sorting out this new familial relationship. Mother to two young adults and now landlady to a third in a very tiny house. I'm not sure how this works.

My old chocolate lab girl, Sugar Face (not her real name) is taking it in stride, though. With spring rains and warming temperatures emerge more opportunities for what she loves to do most -- smell.  And the appearance of human Option No. 4 for ear rubs, dropped snack chips, and kitchen can disposals that increase the level of opportunity for canine nose nudges of the lid, is just fine by her.

Changing views

It's been a rocky start to my son's senior year of high school.  He's a bright kid, and has always done well in school, but at the end of last year, he started skipping classes.  The year didn't end well, and, despite his dad and my best hopes he'd change his tune over the summer, it's been more of the same.  We've had meetings with counselors, talked and listened, worried, asked, and even pleaded, but every day is still a coin toss.  The past several months have not been without moments of sheer frustration for his dad and me, but, thus far, neither of us has given up on our son. When it's your child, how is that even an option?

In the meantime, I go ahead and schedule a haircut appointment to trim his thick, wavy hair that seems to grow in inches in proportion to his long, thin legs.  Mission accomplished, I schedule an appointment for a Saturday at noon with a local studio for senior pictures. The deadline for submitting pictures to the yearbook staff is rapidly approaching.

Once upon a time, I had purchased a family portrait package at the studio, and, at least half a dozen times  before my son was six years old, our family had pictures taken there. Family Christmas photos, photos of  my son and daughter, a mom and daughter photo for Mother's Day. Most have been put into frames at some point or tucked into envelopes with Christmas newsletters or birthday cards

Just before 11:00 a.m. on appointment day, my son shows up in the rain at my house after spending the night at a friend's. His hair is wet, his jeans damp, but he insists he's showered. I had nearly given up that he'd show up at all and am angry at his cheekiness, but iron his shirts anyway. I ask him to go brush his teeth, and we're off.

We check in and an overly enthusiastic young woman, just barely out of high school herself it seems, tells us she'll be his photographer. She shows us back to the assigned room and Griffin goes into the adjoining restroom to change.

I don't recognize the dark red backdrop covering the back well at first, but then I notice the artificial Christmas tree in the right back corner of the room. I then realize it is the same room where we'd had our last family picture taken. It was my daughter's first Christmas, and my son was about three-and-a-half-at the time. My daughter wore a jumper of burgundy plaid and black Mary Janes. My son sported his first pair of khaki plants, matching his father. I wore a black velvet dress. In the photo we selected to buy, I hold my daughter, whose eyes brim with unsure tears at the strange man telling us to smile. My husband stands behind our son, with his hand on his shoulder, as our son leans against his dad's leg.  We may divorce, graduate, grow older, and grow up, but, the rooms we enter and leave often remain the same.

My son comes out of the restroom wearing a red plaid shirt that compliments his sparking brown eyes and shiny hair. He is so handsome. The photographer starts directing him into various poses and he obliges. No fussing, no steadying hand of his father today.

He looks into the camera with a self confidence I'm still learning to grasp.  I know, though, that some of that outward fearlessness belies the anxiety he is experiencing about school, about what lies ahead.  I have no role but to sit back in the background, watch, and hope. Hope that he graduates. Hope that it's okay that we haven't been back here as a family of four. Hope that we are all doing okay. Hope that he'll be looking straight ahead always, with no regrets, long after the camera shutter stops clicking.

Twenty minute crush

I was a mile into the first of two three-mile loops at Green Lake when I noticed her. She was a long-legged woman with short, grey hair.  About six to ten years older than me, I’d guess.  I was just getting over the hump of stiff legs, my left Achilles and right hamstring beginning to loosen up, when I fell in behind her.  At first, I didn’t intentionally step into her stride, but as we continued along the gravel path, my interest in staying right there with her grew.  Neither of us wore watches, but I knew she was helping me pick up my usual, lazy pace.

I followed at enough distance so that the crunch of my steps didn’t distract her, watching her relaxed arms, her elongated posture, and fluid turnover.  She never looked around her, but I could easily tell she wasn’t working as hard as I was.  We continued our circle of the lake in the late afternoon's hazy sun.   As I began to match her smooth stride, I became conscious of my wild left arm swing, and tucked both arms in closer.  I straightened my back.  I lifted my feet slightly.  I began to relax, too.  The leg aches faded and then were gone.  My breathing slowed.

As we began the third mile, I had come upon her right side, so I moved to the other side of the trail.  At mile’s end, just before I veered off to use the rest room, I spoke to her, thanking her for pulling me along. Something prompted me to tell her that I thought she was a lovely runner.  She smiled and thanked me, and politely complimented me, too. We chatted a few moments before parting ways and I didn’t see her again.

I contemplated the shared run during my second loop and wondered if other women ever felt the same way while running – purely platonic admiration. A male runner friend recently told me that he often things about sex while running.  I can honestly say that in thirty years of running -- including many marathons that have been long, painful tests of a wandering mind -- sex has never crossed it while my feet are in motion.  Of course, I occasionally notice good looking, fit men while running, but have never consciously followed one, tried to emulate running like one, or even finished a run still thinking about him.

But, perhaps at times when I most need them, I have had fleeting girl crushes on women who leave a lasting impression long after my I’ve completed the last mile, my breathing has slowed, and the endorphin high has waned.  Beautiful women I want to be more like, the next time I run.