..Like Pasta on a Jewelry Box

"I wish i had wings like an angel! I wish i could have wings so i could fly up in the sky!"
Hearing those words was all it took to get my mom to cutting, gluing and coloring.
I was five years old, and we were living in the US. My brother had just been born, and i was feeling a little out of the spotlight. I suddenly wanted so many things, i had so many caprices, wishes and desires, and they all fell on my mom.
So with those words, she went about to making me wings.. angel wings to be precise.
A large piece of cardboard from the boxes in our garage, and some glue, glitter, and paint were the required ingredients for my wish to come true. An hour later, i was running around the backyard with rainbow colored cardboard wings strapped to my back.. my arms wide open, swishing and swooshing in the wind.. and my smile.. beaming under the sun..

My face couldn't contain just how happy i was.. not only because i now had wings with magic glitter.. but because mommy made them for me.. she did spend an awful lot of time with my new baby brother, but still.. mommy still loved me after all..
That's what matters the most when you are a child.. just how much mommy loves you. And with a new baby in the house, i wasn't so sure anymore..
The next day, at school, i enthusiastically hand-crafted for her a shiny colored jewelry box. After painting a round empty cheese box with bright colors, i added the final touch to the box.. four small shell shaped pastas dripping with paint.
It was mother's day. And i couldn't wait to get home and see mommy's face as she examined my hand-crafted gift. I could hardly wait!
When i got home, i rushed through the house to find her. There she was sitting on the couch, i jumped up and down in front of her, my hands, behind my back, tightly wrapped around my gift.
Happy Mother's day!!! i blurted, as i flashed the jewelry box so close to her face.
She gasped, exaggerated of course, but as a child, exaggeration is exciting. And as she gently stroked the firm pasta shell on top of the box, i breathlessly explained to her all the steps it took me to make her this most amazing gift. I always, and still do, loved explanations. Especially, when it was me who was doing the explaining part and others who were doing the listening part.
And with that, mommy listened to me, as her eyes teared up. My mommy, always so gentle and sensitive, teared over a painted pasta jewelry box.
She loved her new jewelry box, she told me, as she hugged me tight.
I felt so proud, i've held that moment in my heart ever since.
Years have passed, and my mommy still makes my wishes come true. Maybe not with the exact ingredients, glitter and glue don't really find their way into my more adult-like concerns.. but nevertheless, she still makes them happen.
On this mother's day, i wonder.. what could i possibly offer her to let her know just how much she means to me.. just how much i appreciate her.. and how much i pray and hope, with every little bit of my existence, that one day.. i will be just as wonderful a mother as she is to me.
Mommy, i love you.

Happy Mother's Day.

..Like Drawings Hanging on A Wire

I am not someone political. Anyone who knows me would firmly justify that. Neither am I someone who understands politics or is even interested in it. I can assure you that i am never included in political discussions while sitting with friends or family. However, i can say that i am someone who knows how bad politics can destroy a nation, and how war over politics can easily destroy a childhood. 

With all the political events recently taking place, it has become impossible to not attempt understanding my country's situation. But in the midst of this attempt, i couldn't block the images that bombarded my memory of my first encounter with "bad" politics.. 

I was barely four years old during the civil war in Lebanon. At such a young age, i was oblivious to the reasons behind the conflict in my country, but i was well aware that it wasn't something "good". I will never forget the small room which kept us safe during that war. Though rather tiny in width and length, it sheltered practically all the members of my family. That room, almost the size of a walk-in closet, is all i remember of the war that took place in 1988. As a child, my memory of the entire civil war lies in that sole basement of my grandparents' building in Ashrafieh.

The blasts and the bombings were quite horrific but somehow they don't cling to my memory like that small shelter room. If i close my eyes right now, i can easily picture myself sitting there on a wooden chair, drawing with my wax coloring pens, pictures of bunnies and flowers. I used to have a small notepad bound with white empty sheets, which i would forcefully fill out with colorful pictures of places little children dream of, while all hell broke loose outside.
But coloring and drawing my beautiful masterpieces was not the best part of the activity. The best part was how after completing each drawing, mom would stick them with tape to a dangling wire that elongated above our heads. And just as she would,  i would look up with my big eyes, and think of my next drawing, with the goal of filling the entire wire with my colors. What should i draw next? No wasting time, i would quickly open a new page in my little notepad, and color away. I'd hope, with all my heart, that my next drawing would be just as pretty as my last one, so that mom would just as well do me the honor of attaching it to the wire.

I was still very young, I barely knew what was happening beyond the shelter’s walls but i nevertheless always felt scared. I would glance at my parents, their twisted faces with blank, empty eyes. Eyes empty of hope and yet desperately clinging to some sort of faith. I would turn towards my two older cousins, hear them sob in their mother’s lap, as she placed her hands softly yet firmly over their ears in hope of blocking out, obstructing the blasts and the gunfire which would resonate every moment or so. I would search for my grandmother, find her in the corner, praying the rosary..her eyes closed, as her voice trembled with every murmur of prayer. I was very young at the time but i was not merely another chair in the room. I felt every speck of fear that vibrated in my father’s veins, i tasted every tear that rolled down my mother’s cheek and i heard every cry that wailed outside my protective walls. And the smell... i can still smell the dampness that evaporated from the walls. That poignant aura that accompanied every breath we took.

The war was, well, simply put.. horrible. But at the age of four, i was distracted by my coloring pens and my paper. I was distracted by the simple obsession of coloring as many pictures as i could so that the entire wire elongated above me would hold my treasures, my drawings.. my hope of better places with yellow suns and pink bunnies. I was preoccupied with sharpening my pencils before going to sleep, and returning them all in my pink pencil case.. i survived the civil war because of my crayons.

While training in the counseling clinic, it used to baffle me how children, who had been through horrifying experiences, such as trauma and abuse, were able to overcome such adversities in one way or another and lead happy satisfying lives. "Such resilience", as i'd read in textbook after textbook, "appears to be more common in young children than in adults". People wonder why i ended up working with children instead of adults, in terms of psychological assistance. Well.. because children are flexible, they are malleable, open to change. They believe in the unbelievable, they have hope in the hopeless.. and.. they can turn little things, like hasty drawings hanging on damp shelter walls, into bulletproof jackets.

 

..Like A Song From the Past

Recently, i've been finding myself staying in on Saturdays. With the exhaustion of the week piled up, in addition to the fact that my other half lives abroad, sometimes there virtually is nothing to do without feeling like a third, or even a fifth wheel in some cases.. So on this particular Saturday night, i found myself watching a TV game show with mom and dad.
I am still not sure precisely how the game goes, but participants mainly guess songs based on word excerpts taken from original songs, and they end up singing them. So for over an hour, my parents and i were genuinely  entertained listening to various songs; old and new, in all languages..
Towards the end, in the midst of these classics, and sitting in between my parents as they would reminisce over one song and get excited about another, one classic arabic hit by Warda popped to my mind.. Batwannis Beek..
When i was a little girl, i used to love spending time with my grandmother; my tati. I still adore her, but when you're just a child, well, you just tend to have more time for these little visits. Every day was full of surprises, and schedules, appointments, and time-management were never heard of.
Our time spent together had many forms; we'd sit together and watch TV, she'd knit while i'd describe to her the dress i wanted her to make for my doll, we'd play simple card games, we'd eat chocolates and cookies that mom would have frowned upon (if she were to find out)... We had many fun times together, tati and i. But my favorite of all was our time in the kitchen.
I loved sitting in the kitchen while my tati cooked. I can still  remember so clearly where i would sit, on the wooden chair with the uncomfortable hay-knitted seat. The open balcony door with the midday sun shining in... and Warda, singing through her old cassette player.
I can still remember the color of the cassette; blue and yellow. Tati would instruct me to slide it in the tape holder.. "trick".., close the holder.. "clack".. , and  press play.. "click".. And that's how those three simple steps marked the start of the best time my grandmother and i would ever spend..
"Trick.. clack.. click.." that's how those three simple steps marked themselves eternally in my heart..
The music would take forever before Warda's voice would actually appear, and i remember guessing "NOW!" and "no NOW!" many times before i actually guessed right. And my tati would smile, and sing loudly as i watched her prepare our meal of the day.
Nothing makes us feel anything, i tell my students while explaining the chapter on memory. It's the memory you attach to an object, or a place, or even a song that makes you feel anything. And this song from the past, with all its instruments and melody and lyrics, makes me feel good inside. This song that embeds the sweetest childhood memory that i have of me and my tati in the kitchen has etched itself in my heart forever and forever..
"Trick.. clack.. click.."