day 17 - you looked fantastic!

 left side

 rightside

head-on

so i got that text message from my friend tony today. i'd dragged the amazons to see him in macbeth and we were all a bit tired still from the eid festivities and my mum and dad visiting the previous few days. so i zipped myself into my standby herve leger skirt that is so stretchy, it fits immediately post-chemo and now that i am 12 pounds heavier, too.

i texted back, "not fishing for compliments but what looks fantastic?"

he texted, "hair looked nice, well-dressed, nice make-up and earrings."

since the extent of my make-up is kajal (which i put on once every few days) and blush (which i put on after the pool in the morning) and the only thing i was wearing which he hadn't seen before were my grandmother's earrings, my reaction to his enthusiastic compliment (and he doesn't give lots of compliments either) was:

"wow!"

so the cream is working.

i walked in on mary schook who is madly preparing the shop to be the msapothecary winter wonderland holiday destination and she said, "oh my gosh, your cheeks are higher!"

the current consensus: the beaucell cream has - in 16 days - taken about five years off my face.

again, it costs $2,000 and is only available in korea, japan and, possibly, at mary schook's shop (if it keeps working).

in case you couldn't remember what my face looked like in april (2 months after the end of chemotherapy) - here's my college trip with sasha and aaron up to syracuse university. sasha filmed me sitting on the shore of the river.

what's tragic is that i thought i looked GOOD. phew. i must have looked really really bad during chemo. i remember reading some kind of statistic when i was working on anti-ageing skincare for loreal. about 75% of women don't realize how much they are ageing and how much their faces have changed.

i do know that i don't look in the mirror often - and when i do, i am so surprised at how different i look that how i feel (like 10 times bigger, taller) that i rarely get past that to notice the details - like the little wrinkles around my eyes or my sagging jowly chin - until i see a photograph or a video.

those have to be pointed out to me by my daughters.

also, i am so thin and pale in the video that i am amazed i thought i could jump in the car and drive 6 hours back and forth to show sasha colleges. no wonder people were alarmed!

anyway, if you have $2,000 to spend on face cream - i should add that this is an ENTIRE kit: day cream, toner, eye cream, night cream, face masks, so you needn't have anything else and the texture and scent (very very mild) is really nice - this DOES seem to make a difference.

mothers with children

i had a dream last night that james decided to move to california and take the amazons with him.

i just stood there, baffled and silenced by the audacity, as i am so often. even in dreams, i never have a clever, snappy answer til days later. or for someone else's situation.

in my dream, i wondered what i should do with all the bunny plates. the beige royal doulton bunny plates that the girls inherited from me and my brother, that are, in reality, now packed up in storage. i remember looking at sasha's hard and defiant face as she said, "i'm going," with such finality that it was done already.

i was wondering what i would do with the life i had created that was designed to house and shelter three children (because in my dream, they were children).

it made me realize that as mothers, we are constantly defined by our children. in my dream, i felt i was ceasing to exist without them.

17 years' ago, when i had just returned to new york with a 6 month-old sasha, i was working at calvin klein. i was trying to find a way to house, feed and look after a baby on my own. a young colleague of mine said, "think about how hard it is for someone like ameena, a single mother with children."

i laughed, "how could you be a single mother WITHOUT children?"

when your kids are little, they don't exist without you. they are always touching you, they're attached to your breast, your hand, hanging on your leg. they are kissing you, hugging you, pulling your hair, grabbing your sleeve or your arm, interrupting you.

my biggest fantasies were of just being alone. once after sasha's first sleep-over party (she was six, thus a night of severe sleep deprivation and making pancakes in haze). i left the girls with james and went to stay in a nearby hotel. i took the cheapest room available. i said to the clerk, "i don't care if it's a broom closet with a camp bed, just so long as there are no small children in it." in the movie "date night," the most perceptive mum moment was when steve carrell (dad) asked tina fey (mum) about her weirdest fantasy. and she said, "just walking out of here, walking away and leaving everything. and having some soup and a grilled cheese sandwich without anyone touching it."

17 years' ago, i asked my boss at the time - he had young children - how he managed to juggle everything and be in the office from 9 am til 9pm. he laughed at me. "i have a wife," he said.


oh, the mothers.


when i woke up this morning, i lay in bed thinking of the bunny plates. that no one has used in years. no one fights over which plates they get any more.

15 years ago, when our kids were all in preschool, a friend (with twins the same age as sasha) asked the pediatrician what to do about her two year-olds getting into bed with her every night. he answered, "get a bigger bed. just enjoy it. because sooner or later, they won't want to come near you."

now that the amazons barely want to come near me, i long for the scent of baby skin pressed against mine and soft breath dampening my ear all night. i remember them sleeping wrapped around me like scarves. i remember nights with sasha curled up under my left arm, zarina sleeping on my stomach and rara held on my right. walking up stiff and still exhausted, stumbling towards the coffee grinder.

now that my attention is not what they most crave, i feel like a tent with the poles kicked out. i am shapeless and unwieldy. my shelter is no longer necessary. as a mother, i had always been intuitive. i knew when my kids were hungry or tired, when they needed discipline and when they need nurturing. i didn't need books or lectures, i did what was needed. they didn't question me and i didn't question my abilities.

as they emerge into adulthood, i am uncertain. they push the boundaries much further than i did in adolescence. their mother is not nearly as strict as mine was. all my theories about open communications, about understanding what they were going through, about being patient and allowing them to be their own people rather than part of my identity, have gone out the window. i wish i'd been more disciplined.

of course, it's hard to tell. in a poignant essay a man wrote about his pregnant teenaged daughter in the back of the sunday new york times magazine years ago, he said, "adolescence is a fever. you just have to wait for them to come through it." and then again, in the times in 2004, "adolescence is a fog, a kind of high fever. emotion swamps reason; rumination undermines introspection." it's like looking at a cake at the crucial moment of baking, there's no way to know if one's done it properly until it's fully baked. the proof is in the eating, as they say.

still, when i think about the round-the-clock, often back and soul-breaking work to keep their lives as happy and organized and uneventful as possible (as i could as a single mother and usually, the sole breadwinner), the time and effort seems to have evaporated. as the much-circulated email job description for a mother says, the return on the investment is startlingly ethereal. my family members point out my multitude of errors with lasting impact.

those bunny plates. they must have been a symbol to me. they reminded me of the best part of my own childhood. the beige background was worn and safe and gentle as a cup of milky tea with honey. the old-fashioned english nursery drawings transport me to the life i wanted for my kids. one where they felt protected and fed and loved and happy. one without conglomerate cartoon characters. nothing plastic or fake. (but i lie, we had the much-sought-after barbie plates, too.

i think about my own mother. how much more difficult when it must have seemed when you followed all the rules correctly. when one took the more traditional route and followed established wisdom, and still the children were wild cards.

no matter how hard you try to stay a separate entity from your children, to remind yourself that they are themselves and their choices are not a reflection on you; that you exist without each other; no matter how you try to remember that your role in their lives must be reduced and altered as they get older, it feels sudden and unexpected when it changes.

it's like when you buy the first pieces of baby gear. that baby bouncer feels so crucial, so indispensible and important to get right. you rearrange your living room to accomodate the battery-operated babyswing or the small, perfectly-proportioned table and chairs with a natural, non-toxic finish. it would be ridiculous now to tell anyone - any mother of a young child - that in 14 years or so, you, like the tiny chairs, will be almost irrelevant.

what seems so important will be a minor detail. prepare yourself.

because you can't.

14 or 15 years is such a long time. a long time to fill your house with rubber boots and bicycles and waterguns and freeze-pops and extra mittens. a long time to drive a minivan littered with wrappers and beach blankets.

14 years is not a blink,

it's almost a lifetime

until you're at the end of it.

isn't that like life?

is that all they needed?

since i barely survived the last chemo treatment, the cancer is gone and my body is suddenly manifesting every single bad reaction possible to the toxins, i decided to stop it. let's see what my body can do - along with the addition of $800 worth of supplements from the metaphysical oncologist.

2 weeks post-chemo and i am amazed at how much better i feel. i get out of bed and walk around. i am laughing like crazy. my anxiety levels have dropped. i am only nauseated when i talk about the treatment.

for the year of the tiger, my out-of-control teenagers are purring around me like happy kittens, all smiling and cuddly. i tell zarina she can't go out, and she says, ok, i'll stay and help you with rara's sleepover. she washes dishes, she tells jokes, she apologizes.

i tell sasha that she needs to go out a bit less and start working on her homework. and she does. her curfew is 12:30pm and she comes home - breathless and racing down the hallway - at 12:27.

rara stops crying over every little thing - though she is still eating way too much sugar (she inherited my addiction) - and she isn't as clingy either.

i decide that when i'm with them, i need to stop taking phone calls or cutting our time short for other appointments or including other people.

it makes me realize how unfair it all is for mothers. i remember reading in Oprah once that for women, there is no such thing as the family/work balance -

rara needs help with her math

you see, as a mother, you need to be able to drop everything you're doing and focus on your kids. so you have to make a choice.

you can focus on your work and your career and you can shoot up the corporate ladder and be able to afford school tuition and trips abroad and afterschool classes and new clothes and the mortgage or rent for living in a safe and easily accessible neighborhood.

or

you can make homemade food and all eat meals together (whatever you can afford), you can make it to parent-teacher appointments and never have to cancel at the last minute for a sudden presentation or a new client. you can trudge along carrying your groceries home rather than having them delivered or taking a taxi (i remember doing that, with a baby strapped to my chest). you can pay attention to who your kids are talking to and where they are going afterschool and what they are wearing.

but in the back of your mind, you're still not more cheerful because you're stressing about your late rent and you're wondering how you can afford to get someone in to fix the stove or the broken stairs or the leaky washing machine.

or

if you're a single mother, you can hook up with a guy who is desperate to reinvent himself and you can coddle him and indulge his insecurities (another full time job) and then get him to pay your bills.

or

if you're married, you can hope that your husband is willing to swallow the resentment, emotional burden and physical exhaustion of being the sole breadwinner while it seems to him that you are having picnics in the playground. and in trade, you will generally cook and serve four meals a day (one dinner for the kids, one for the adults) during the week and six on the weekend (adult meals and kids' meals), as well as find his socks in the morning and entertain or indulge your in-laws in a big way.

unlike president obama, if you're a woman who drops everything to get to a recital or a birthday party, they mutter behind your back and you don't get asked to step up to the next job because you "can't get your priorities straight." i know it's a common complaint, but if you're a man, being an active parent is a sign of nobility. if you're a woman, it a weakness.

basically, for women - and for mothers in particular - there is NO balance. you choose one or the other (maybe you shift back and forth, like i do) but one or the other suffers.

currently, for me, the choice was focusing on ME, getting well or focusing on the amazons and letting them drink in the liquid of my attention so they could grow properly again.

the amazons immediately responded.

it always reminds of that line in the air safety presentations and cards that you ignore as the plane is preparing for take-off. "parents: put on your OWN oxygen mask first and then help your children."

it's so simple and so NOT easy.

old world new world - or the drama the drama

on saturday, my mum called and said, i know you are so lonely and have no one to talk to anymore - but please, you must end this facebook thing!

but first - i had 5 kids in my house, a depressed friend, hormones out of control and was still reeling from an incredibly nasty email in which my first ex-husband andrew blamed his being a MIA dad on my "trapping him with a marriage and a baby" that i engineered (despite the fact that baby and i cut our losses and split in 8 weeks of her birth and he refused to get divorced because i "abandoned"him...)

next a 45-minute sobbing phone call where my mother begged me to get off facebook because 1. people as far away as dubai and france were reading my mad family stories and laughing (they are MEANT to be funny) 2. in our culture, we don't praise our daughters and my daughters would now never get married, make lasting friendships or get real jobs because people would remember they were terrible teenagers 3. in our culture, there is a concept of "shame" (read salman rushdie for more explanation) and that seems to have bypassed me entirely 4. she goes to dinner parties and people know that my cousins are visiting or i have a job interview before she does.

i tried to explain to my mum that i don't write anything on facebook that i wouldn't say to someone in the supermarket line.

and admittedly, i sometimes express exasperation, frustration, irritation with my kids and/or ex-husbands and finances - but wait, isn't that a normal human state?

this is the new village, i said.

this is the over-fence, on the sidewalk chat that people have these days.

when i was in college, i shared a flat with a guy at one point. not a boyfriend or a romantic interest in any way. douglas is a lovely brilliant person and now a professor at UCLA, i think.

my mum stayed with us and said, oh, this is terrible - what do you think all my friends in india will say when they hear that you are LIVING WITH A MAN?

i said, um how will they know?

and she said, oh i'll have to tell them!

it's funny, because i remember, when i was a teenager, aunties coming up to me and saying, tell your mother not to talk about EVERYTHING, it's not nice.

so in her world, she's right.

in the old world, the internet is a vast and scary place where you post the wrong thing and your identity is stolen, your children kidnapped.

in the old world, your "privacy" is a jealously-guarded secret.

a friend of mine got upset a few months' ago because i said her baby was crying while she was on the phone. she said, but you WROTE HER NAME on the internet. that was so uncool.

and i said, first, why does it matter? you might tell the guy who serves you a burger at the shake shack her name.

and second, who will ever remember?

i was trying to explain to my mum that paris hilton got famous for having sex on youtube. and now she is selling fragrances to pre-teens.

in the new world, the collective memory is very short.

in the new world, we realize that privacy does not exist.(and perhaps it never did - live in a small village anywhere and you'll discover that everyone knows how many croissants you buy on sunday and whose car was parked outside your house last weekend)

do a quick search on almost anyone on google, dogpile, about or zoominfo - you'll be surprised by what you find out, or don't.

in the new world, internet absence is mark against against them.

but also, your medical records are computerized, so are your credit reports. if you use ezpass, the state has records of every place your car goes. there are records of every financial transaction you make if you use a check, a credit card or a debitcard.

and don't you think the grocery check-out girls discuss the bizarre contents of your shopping cart as a chance to deconstruct your personality? (please, i worked check-out before)

look online, chances are, you've been tagged in a photo somewhere. mentioned in school records.

as i said to my mum - what do i have to be ashamed about?

in old world, men were "trapped into marriages" by women who got pregnant as a strategy. (should i mention that my ex-husband and my mum are quite close in age?)

in the new world, we take responsibility for our choices.

it's not scary - it's thrilling!

we're not victims, we own our narratives.

we invite people in and realize our common humanity.

and isn't that the point?