Buzz

Buzz is warm and cuddly and moody and ornery all in one. He’s my best bud and also the biggest pain in my neck. And I love him like he’s my own. See, Buzz wasn’t always mine. He belonged to Roger before I ever met him.

When Roger and I first started dating, I remember being happy that he was a cat person. I love dogs and rabbits and gerbils and just about any animal, but I’ve always been a cat person. And finally I met someone who was a cat person just like me. But there was a catch. Before entering foot in Roger’s home, we had a little talk. A talk about Buzz.

Buzz, he explained, was crotchety and set in his ways, and he didn’t take to just anyone. A person had to work to earn his friendship and affection. And sure enough Buzz kept his distance while we watched a movie. As the night progressed, I got more comfortable, eventually curling up on the couch while we watched tv and cuddled. And before long, Buzz made himself at home cuddling with me in the little nook in between my stomach and knees.

We spent a lot of time that way, Buzz and me, and over time I more and more began to think of him as being partly mine. Roger always told me that Buzz never liked anyone, but he clearly liked me. I’m pretty sure Roger noticed. And when I think back to the early days of my courtship with Roger, I like to think that Roger wasn’t the only one who chose me to be a part of his life.

Our pediatrician suggested I find a television show that Azita loved and only let her watch it during her daily nebulizer treatments. This is how Yo Gabba Gabba entered our lives. Azita loves this show. And in the interest of being open and truthful, Roger and I also love it. I’m not ashamed of it either. DJ Lance Rock is awesome and I challenge anyone to watch Brobee sing and dance and not think he’s freakin’ adorable.

So imagine my excitement when I heard that Yo Gabba Gabba Live was coming to town. I was really excited. So excited I yelled “Yooooooooo Gabba Gabba” and the rest of the people in my office gave me a look that made me fear they were calling the guys in the white coats.

I bought tickets the minute they went on sale, and we waited and waited for what would surely be the most exciting day thus far of Azita’s short life.

And the day finally arrived.

Free Bird!

Azita was stoked.

Waiting with bated breath

We all waited with bated breath. Literally. Look at Roger. I’m pretty sure he’s no longer breathing at this point.

And then the curtains opened, and DJ Lance Rock’s boom box appeared on a giant screen. Azita’s interest was piqued.

Hark! I see a boom box.

Then the Yo Gabba Gabba gang joined DJ Lance Rock on stage.

The show begins

And Azita, well, she got scared. She clutched our arms, furrowed her brow and tried her hardest to suppress a whimper.

The onset of anxiety

That is, she was scared until the dancing finally commenced.

Enter song and dance

She started to warm up to the festivities. But then they dropped balloons from the ceiling.

Balloons!

And things really started looking up.

Things are turning around

There was much singing and dancing and shouting and laughing. A good time was had by all.

Yo Gabba Gabba is #1

At the end of the night, we all agreed. Yo Gabba Gabba is #1.

And we couldn’t have asked for a more magical time.

Lately life has conspired against me, or more specifically, my knowledge of current events. I always taken a little pride in my ability to keep up to date on the goings on of the world around us, but like anyone else there are times when school, work, family all get in the way. And then I do “pick up a newspaper” (by which I clearly mean, head over to my favorite news aggregators), and I wish I could remain ignorant.

Last week was one of those times.

Michael Enright was a good guy. On paper. He was an honors student at a good college. He came from a “good family.” He volunteered in Afghanistan. He cared about the world around him. No one would look at a profile of Michael Enright and think “This guy is a bad person.” Meddling mothers might even drool over him for their daughters.

Today, Michael Enright appeared in court. Not for too many traffic tickets or running a red light or any other petty crime so many of us have committed. He will appear in court for stabbing a Muslim cab driver simply because he was Muslim.

I would say it boggles my mind, but it really doesn’t. Rather, it reminds me of my early years in elementary school. The year was 1980. I was in the second grade. I was hairy and swarthy and pronounced words weirdly. I brought kuku sabzi or goosht-e-kubideh sandwiches for lunch. And halfway across the world some Iranians, just like me but not at all like me, captured and held hostage 52 Americans.
A year after that  I sat at my school desk one morning and felt a pair of small, 7-year-old hands, not so very different from mine, close around my neck. And the words “I hate you. I am going to kill all Eye-ranians” were uttered softly, but vehemently, in my ear.

That event marked the beginning of a difficult time, not just for me, but for any Iranian who lived and loved this country. It was difficult not just because I had nothing to do with, and in fact did not approve of, the taking of any hostages. But it was especially difficult, because I didn’t even understand the politics or the specifics of what was going on. All I knew was that my parents seemed worried and the news seemed scary. And I was scared for my people, and now I also had to be scared for myself.

That event haunts me to this day, mostly because the boy who took this action against me was a child, the same age as me from the same neighborhood. And yet he was filled with hatred, something I had never felt and didn’t know existed. Over 30 years later, I still cannot understand that kind of hatred.

Yes, I can understand hatred toward an individual person although I hope to never feel that, and I try my hardest to make sure I temper such feelings. An individual person, after all, can be responsible for irreparably harming another person in some way, whether physically or emotionally, and that is bound to stir up anger and in some cases even hatred. But there really is no such thing as an entire people being responsible for anything. An entire race of people cannot perpetrate an action. It is individuals who hurt others, so why do people hate those who are superficially the same?

Sometimes I think people are filled with hate and it needs to find a way out. Maybe it’s something humans are born with deep inside them, and it lies silently waiting for the right trigger. It makes me scared that perhaps I, too, am capable of such a thing. But mostly it makes me sad. We all have so much love to give to the world. I know this when I look at my daughter’s sleeping face, so peaceful, so naive. I know she is incapable of hatred. If I think about it too much when I am awake with churning thoughts in the middle of the night, I am overcome with fear for the things she will have to see and experience. I fear for the day she learns that the world isn’t only sunshine and happiness.

As with many issues in life I have no solutions, and I cannot shield her from it all. I can only make sure she has enough love in her life to make small and inconsequential all the hatred in this otherwise beautiful world.

We all have bad times in life, and I am no different. During these times I always try to remember that others have been in the same boat, and also somewhere there’s an open window to better times waiting for me to find it. Earlier this week when I was exhausted from lack of sleep — teething baby, work, school, being ill myself — and I was off the charts stressed, a friend pointed me to a discussion forum post containing the following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

I’ve been pondering the quote ever since. I do believe I’ve found a new motto. Or just a motto, since I’ve never actually had a motto before. No matter how bad any day gets, all you really need to do is finish it. And it’s over. If you ask me, we don’t even need to get to tomorrow to become too high in spirit. Especially when you come home to this (cue gratuitous pictures of cute toddler)….

Pondering the meaning of it all

Yup, life is good. Even when it’s not.

Then I thought I would buy a pair of dice, but I never got around to doing that. And then I thought, in typical Zahra fashion, I would create my own random number generator that was really pretty and fancy-looking. They are after all really super easy to create if you know even a little Javascript or any other scripting language. It’s basically about 3 lines of code. And, as I was having this conversation in my head I realized, “Wow, Zahra, you will do anything to make even the simplest task more complicated, huh?”

It’s true. I will. So, random.org random number generator it is. And without further ado….

The winner would be comment #3, or the lovely Marcie. It’s fortuitous that 3 was the random number, because it’s also my favorite number. So much so that I even chose 03/03/03 as my wedding date. Seriously.

Anyways, Marcie wrote the following comment:

Hey Zahra,
Your blog looks great! It was such a nice surprise to see you at BlogHer– wish we’d run into each other sooner instead of the last thing at the last day! I’m really shy, too, and was intimidated by so many strangers and packs of bloggers who all knew each other and had parties to go to.
One thing to know about Baltimore– you do not want to hang out around UB after dark!

So, Marcie, shoot me an email at zahra@roeandstuff.com with your mailing address, and I’ll be sending you a Washington D.C.-themed care package.

But of course this also gives me the opportunity to make another observation about BlogHer (will the musings never end? Probably not.).

Running into Marcie was one of those uniquely BlogHer moments. See, I think everyone knows blogging is one of those things that helps people make new connections with people they would have never met otherwise. We’ve all certainly had our share of those experiences. One of the best moments of BlogHer for me, however, was running into Marcie, a former classmate of mine from grad school.

I expected to meet new people, but I didn’t expect to reconnect with people I already knew. And when I did, when I ran into and chatted with Marcie in the very last hour of BlogHer (literally — it was at the closing keynote), I realized that so many people we encounter in life have more in common with us than we think. That if I make the effort and find the guts to get over my shyness and really talk to people, I will find that my life can be full of rich and meaningful connections. I think my life is full of meaning, but many times I feel like it is devoid of connections. I now know that the connections are there. I just need to pay attention to them and most importantly, cultivate them.

I have two younger sisters, and our relationships could not be more different.

L and I were always close. She was born when I was still a baby, about the same age Azita is now. We were tight from the very beginning. We actually had our own rooms at the time, but it was not uncommon when we were growing up for us to end up in the same room by morning. I remember the both of us huddling under the covers whispering secrets and stories to each other until the rest of the world was long asleep, when even the crickets had stopped chirping. In college we sometimes stayed on the phone with each other for the entire night while we did our homework and studied for exams. It was as if we just needed to hear each other breathing to be all right. Maybe it was the fact that we made it through some horrible things together, but knowing that we are there for each other has always sustained us. A therapist once told me that maybe we kept each other alive, because she was surprised we could have survived otherwise.

My aunts, uncles, cousins, they have all been an important part of my life. I am Iranian-American, and I often think those two sides of me clash as much as our governments do. My parents instilled in me a strong sense of my Iranian identity, but I was born in the U.S. and I always keenly felt the difference between me and other Iranians, even those in my family. It was my extended family that made me feel like I belonged to any group at all. The Iranian side of my identity is so strongly tied to having them in my life, and when Azita was born I wanted to make sure that she had them in her life also. Because she is half-Iranian, and I often feel like I cannot make sure she is fully connected to that part of her without my family. My extended family is her village.

Earlier this year, S tried to befriend me again. I was wary, and I told her so. Nevertheless I relented and invited her to Azita’s 1st birthday party. I immediately regretted my decision. Every interaction with her was filled with stress, almost anguish really. Not only did I want to always be present and positive for Azita, but I wanted to be happy. For once. I talked to a therapist, and there was no doubt in her mind that I needed to sever this relationship.

So I did.

What I didn’t expect is that the relationship with my extended family might also be severed. Recently S moved back to our home state. Amazingly she began to reach out to our family. Based on opinions she previously shared with me, it was shocking to me that she would ever reach out to them. Imagine my surprise when I saw posts on their Facebook walls and even worse, she showed up at a family picnic.

I am now in a position I dread. My sense of propriety makes me reticent to make others uncomfortable. I will not require others to make a decision between inviting me or inviting my sister. But I also do not want to see her, and more importantly, I do not want my daughter to be exposed to her dysfunction. It is clear to me that I will no longer have people and events that mean so much to me in my life. No more Nowruz (Iranian New Year) with family. No more dance and music-filled family picnics at Burke Lake. No more impromptu breakfasts with the even more impromptu jam sessions that follow them.

I not only feel gutted, I can see large chunk of my identity slipping away from me. And also from Azita. I fear not only that I will be adrift but that I will deny her of a rich heritage. Today I doubted my decisions. Maybe my happiness was not worth this.

And then I remembered the end of A Tale of Two Cities, that final line: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” Sometimes in a life brimming with chaos and hurt there is no real happy ending. Something must die for happiness to ultimately be achieved. I can only hope a really good thing, the best of my times both past, present and future, does not die with it.

Our refrigerator was filled with medications. My other sister and I learned how to give her injections of prednisone or epinephrine and how to administer nebulizer treatments. Middle-of-the-night visits to the emergency room were frequent.

All of the above was the least of it all, however. Our lives were far more consumed by my sister’s asthma in other ways. My mother and father were unusually strict with my other sister and me. We were allowed no friends, almost no television. We had chores in spades. In fact, we were essentially 100% responsible for keeping the house clean and our family’s clothes laundered and ironed. We were expected to study hard and be the best in our class.

But our youngest sister had asthma. To my mother this meant she should not be required to do anything. She was to be treated with kid gloves, and that meant she should do whatever struck her fancy. She did no chores. She was not well enough to do homework. My mother argued with many teachers who threatened to fail my sister, and when she couldn’t argue she made my other sister and I do her homework. To add insult to injury, she beamed over those “A”s we earned for our sister. Our sister was so smart, she proudly told us.

I never understood how asthma could cripple a child to that extent. What exactly was it about asthma that made homework or making one’s bed difficult? And I could not understand the disparity in our mother’s treatment of us. I chalked it up to something a person would never understand until one was also a mother.

Fast forward three decades. It is the 3am on the day before Christmas Eve. Azita is wheezing loudly. Her chest sucks inward with each labored breath. She cries with each clearly painful cough. When we arrive at the emergency room, they quickly rush us to a room deciding to postpone registration until they have stabilized her breathing. I watch the numbers on a monitor decrease as my infant daughter’s oxygen levels fall, and I have never been more scared in my life.

At that moment I understood a little of what my mother went through. Modern medicine can effectively treat asthma. It no longer is a deadly disease if treated properly. But a mother cannot watch her child struggle to breathe and not be scared. And not want to hold her tight to her chest and do anything to make her better.

My life since that night has been filled with nebulizer treatments, cool mist humidifiers as my daughter sleeps and dehumidifiers during the day to keep mold and mildew at bay, and even the occasional late night steam in the bathroom as we attempt to open up her airways. During the roughest times I coddle my daughter a little. I allow her to suck on her pacifier all day, because I know it gives her comfort. I let her play in the bathtub for as long as she wants, and let her have the ice cream or cookie.

What I don’t do is spoil her. I can understand my mother’s desire, even  need, to cater to some of my sister’s whims in an effort to make her feel better. I do not understand how she could give her a pass on being a good citizen and a decent human being. My sister grew up to be a mean and self-centered person. Things are handed to her on a silver platter and she believes she has earned them. Her mistakes in life are tidily cleaned up by our parents, so she has never learned that bad decisions come with negative consequences. Her expectations for herself are as non-existent as my mother’s were for her.

My parents have done her a disservice. I want more for my daughter.

Asthma is a serious disease, but people live with asthma. People achieve great things with asthma. People achieve great things when they are burdened with far worse diseases. I can give my daughter special treats every once in a while, but as I revisit this childhood experience from another perspective, that of a mother, I know she will not receive special treatment. I expect her to do chores and homework and to treat others with love and care and respect. She will learn to take care of herself and to work hard for what she needs and wants.

In other words, she will get no special passes on being a responsible person. Because in the end, it’s not only important that she learns to live with asthma, it’s important that she learns to live a good life.

What I can do is write lists. I’ve been making lists since childhood. It helps me force order on the chaos that always seems to surround me, and it makes the insurmountable seem manageable. I am known by any who’ve worked with me for walking around with a notebook and obsessively writing and maintaining checklists. If I can check something off a list I know I am moving forward. People poke fun, but this is my secret for getting insanely large amounts of work done quickly and efficiently.

But I really digress. Back to the topic at hand. I present to you my first, very short BlogHer recap list. I will add to this list in the coming days as I think of more, but for now….

Bloggy Networking 101: I am a wallflower, but I actually do very well in a purely business networking situation. The problem I have when it comes to blog-related networking is that it isn’t purely business. It has a largely social component — it is “social media” after all — and I can’t seem to get past that. Thus I seem to fall back on my introverted tendencies when it comes to meeting other bloggers and potential readers. I attended a session on marketing your blog by Taryn Pisaneschi, and she said something that really stuck with me: Find the other person in the room who looks just as shy and awkward as you do and introduce yourself to them. I did this within the hour, and it works. If you are an introvert, try this the next time you’re in a big room full of people.

Healthy Conference Eating: I’ve traveled a lot for my day career, and every time I’ve attended a conference I’ve always returned home a little heavier. Conference food is not healthy. There are a million coffee breaks with giant trays of cookies and brownies, the lunches are laden with oil, the breakfasts are 90% butter, and who normally eats dessert with lunch? No one. That is why most of us don’t gain 5 pounds a day. The BlogHer swag bag came with a water bottle, and every room had lots of water. I therefore drank a lot of water, and you know what? I ate exactly one cookie the entire weekend. And I ate no dessert with lunch, and I had fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Add in all the walking, and I didn’t gain any weight. It can be done. And if possible at a conference, it is certainly possible at home.

Old Friends, New Friends: I’ve made no secrets about my difficulty in making friends. It’s part introverted nature and part childhood trauma. I tried to get above this at BlogHer. I wouldn’t say I was wildly successful, but I was successful. I made some new friends, and I reconnected with old friends. I put myself out there just a little, and it not only didn’t kill me, but it was kind of nice. I ran into an old classmate from grad school, an old coworker, an old friend from Baltimore. I made  new friends from the midwest, the Pacific Northwest, Canada. I look forward to building more connections with all of these people and to making new friendships with people in their community of readers. And this is my focus today.

I’ve never done a giveaway before, but I want to express my gratitude and a giveaway is the only way I can think of to do this. So here are the rules, people, and I’m trying to make this as broad as possible to include as many people as possible.

If I met you through BlogHer — whether you stumbled across one of my tweets, I met you in person, or you were doing HomeHer and you somehow found me through the BlogHer online activity — write a comment. If I didn’t meet you through BlogHer, but you followed it a little bit, write a comment. In that comment:

1. Let me know something about yourself and a lesson you learned from BlogHer.
2. Let me know where you are from and a little interesting fact about your hometown.
3. Do this before 11:59pm on Friday, August 20th.

Your comment will enter you in a drawing for a Washington, D.C. care package. I was born and raised in the D.C. area, and I love my hometown. I’d like to share some of that love with one of you.

* If you’re a Yo Gabba Gabba fan, or live with a Yo Gabba Gabba fan, you probably recognize this little song lyric. I couldn’t help myself. It is no secret that I love Yo Gabba Gabba, and “Friends” is by far my favorite episode. It stars Jack Black after all. He watches flowers with Foofa and has a party in his tummy with Brobee.