Love is not kindness.

Love does not equal kindness. As I age I learn that the hard way. The people whom I love the most, and who love me in return, can be the most unkind and cruel people I’ll ever know in life. My mother was one of them this weekend. Mommy’s love definitely did not equal mommy’s kindness on Saturday.

Very bad, very sad things happened on Saturday. First, let me just tell you Mom is going on a month long trip to Afghanistan after almost 25 years. She’s going to visit her family, check up on grandma’s land and see her birthplace again. I’ve been very nervous for her trip for obvious safety reasons, but a part of me is also extremely excited for her. One day I also want to visit the place where I was born and took my first breath on earth.

So, I’ve been helping Mom prepare for her trip. From shopping, packing, following up on shots and meds, passport issues, etc... Well, ya’ll know how it went when I told her a week ago that Ed and I are getting married. It could have been uglier, but it definitely was not pretty. Anyway, at that time I asked her if she could find my ‘nikah’ dress so that I can get it dry cleaned. It's the traditional green wedding ceremony dress that Afghan women wear.

The mother whom I love beyond belief looked at me with a straight face and said that she had no idea where the dress was and the last time she saw it was in Chicago. So, I called my dad in Chicago and asked him to look around and he said it was not in that house either. Huh. Well, I decided that I’d look for it some other time when I had a chance since I’m so busy helping Mom get ready for her trip.

Well, there I am at Mom’s house on Saturday looking in her closet for one of her duffel bags when I stumble upon a bed sheet all wrapped up. I wonder, what is a bed sheet doing in here? I unroll it and voila! Out falls my beautiful nikah dress. Oh it’s so beautiful, all flowy and shimmery and golden green. It took my mom almost two months to hand-sew it for me back when I was in college. I helped pick out the fabric because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be a ghastly green color. A nikah dress is supposed to be green, but I wanted a subtle green since I didn’t want to look like a crayon. She took the bodice off from one of her old Afghan dresses and sewed it onto my dress. Let’s just say the dress is VERY ethnic, heavily detailed with little mirrors, ribbons, and tassles. There are yards and yards of fabric in the skirt alone.

Sooo, needless to say I was ecstatic! So relieved I had found my nikah dress for the Muslim ceremony of marital vows!!! My mom wasn’t home at that moment so I called her and said “yay!” I found the dress after all! Her response was a banshee-like wail that came through the phone like an ambulance siren. She screamed at me to put it back right away where I found it, that it is NOT my dress and it NEVER will be my dress and that she won’t let me wear it in a million years.

Whoa.

Whoa.

I was completely taken aback. I sat stunned as she yelled and screamed about how it’s a dress for a ‘clean’, ‘holy’, Afghan, Muslim ceremony and not for ME. How dare I think I can wear that dress and then take it off to lie in the same bed with a qufar?! She flat out declared that the dress is not mine even though she made it for me and I picked out all the detailing. I finally found my tongue and tried to talk, but Mom wouldn’t have any of it. She ripped into me with her words. I could physically feel them cutting me. I was speechless, I sat there on her bed staring at my nikah dress, listened to her cruel, cruel words and just cried.

And cried.

And cried.

They were those weird silent tears that make your throat hurt and feel like you've got a loaf of dry bread stuck in your windpipe.

Well, after that little loving, heart-to-heart exchange with my momma, I carefully rolled up the nikah dress in its giant bed sheet and tucked it away in the back of momma’s closet again. I stared at it all bundled up like a burrito and realized that even if Mom changes her mind and lets me wear it, I’d be wearing it with painful memories, reliving her painful words. Remembering feeling unliked, unloved, discarded by my own mother. I don’t ever want to see that dress again.

Later on as I continued to remember the episode, I kept thinking back to last Saturday when I told her Ed proposed to me. My mother, my heroine in life, lied to my face so effortlessly when she said she had ‘no idea’ where the dress was. The more I thought of it the more that fact actually hurt more than the tirade she unleashed on me. Or not. I don’t know.

It was a rainy Saturday. A rare occurrence in SoCal. I love the rain, I love thunderstorms. I always have. There is a sense of renewal, a cleansing of the earth that makes me feel happy. The land and the flora just sparkles. I was glad it was a rainy Saturday. I needed to feel that sense of renewal, of possibilities and of hope of happiness and peace in my family. I know, a lot to expect from a little rain shower, but what can I say? I was grasping. Give me a break.

Well, if good ole mom wasn’t enough, my sister, K, had to add to my misery. I’ve been holding her stuff for her in storage since last year April. The storage is in my name. The money to pay for the storage ran out in August, so now any storage fees are my responsibility to pay. K is a long story, but I’ll just say that once again I allowed myself to fall for her lies disguised as desperate pleas. I was going to move all her stuff out of storage and sell the larger items, but keep her personal effects for her to pick up whenever she showed up again. She begged and begged and begged and begged to please leave her stuff in storage for just a few more days until she can come and get them. She promised me she’d send me money yesterday for the fee, but guess what? Yah! You guessed it. I never heard from her. Shocker. So, I wasted a Saturday dealing with the storage folks and with U-Haul and poor Ed just tried to help as much as he could. God, please give me the strength not to fall for her desperate pleas again. I need to learn once and for all that she will never follow through on her word.

My dad’s birthday was also on Saturday. Happy Birthday, Baba Jaan. I love you. Poor thing, he had to listen to me cry like a baby on his birthday. S took him out for his birthday to Kabobalicious for yummy Persian kabobs in Chicago. I gave her money to buy him a new pair of sneakers for his birthday. S said he picked out the craziest looking black, red and grey Nikes. Aaah, fathers and their sense of style, huh? K was probably hung over somewhere and forgot it was his birthday. M is another story and I don’t feel like bloggin’ about it right now. She sucks. Sorry, but that’s how I feel about my two sisters, K & M, right now. I’m tired of constantly worrying about hurting their feelings.

Yesterday was Sunday (duh). Ed and I had an appointment with Father Steve after mass. After how rejected and awful my mom made me feel on Saturday for marrying outside of Islam, I was so nervous about meeting with Father Steve. I tried to tell myself that the worst he could tell me was ‘no, you can’t be married in our church’, but I kept envisioning him just going off on me like my mother did. This, if you knew Father Steve, is absolutely absurd. The man is a quiet, mild soul. But still, I was freaked out.

Well, I couldn’t have been more relieved! Father Steve was the epitome of warmth, very welcoming and understanding, and if he had any negative judgments or opinions, he didn’t give us one hint of it. He explained how we could get married in the church, but the ceremony wouldn’t have the traditional mass given that it would be awkward for me, the token Muslim. Ha! We’d have to complete the normal wedding counseling on 2 Saturdays that all couples have to complete to be married in his church, but nothing more. We asked him to be the priest at our wedding and he was actually pretty flattered.

If it weren’t so important to Ed, I wouldn’t care if we married in the church or not. But, now that we met with Father Steve, I’m thinking it’ll actually be pretty cool. Father Steve whipped out his little wedding planner and reserved 08-08-08 at 11:30 a.m. for us. They only two weddings a day, so we were very lucky since another couple had already booked for that same evening. Whew!

After that was all taken care of I was excited for my Sunday sensing it would be better than my Saturday. Well, not exactly. While it was not as bad as Saturday, it was definitely a challenging day. We had some "issues" surrounding a new microwave we needed to buy. Ours just blew up on Thursday and Ed has been going through microwave withdrawal since then. We looked for a new one online. We went to Target and Sears yesterday. Ed and I had some, ummm, "debates" about the process. We finally found one we liked at Best Buy and Ed went to buy it last night. It's really cool, all stainless steal and modern looking.

In the midst of all that microwave drama (believe me, this lasted like hours and hours yesterday) I saw the hated Packers win their game and my beloved Bears lose theirs. Grrrr!!! God, I was so fucking pissed off!!! I wait all week for football and then see that crappy ass performance. It makes me want to kick and spit.

Kick and spit, I tell you!!!!

Of course, then there was the pile of laundry that had to be done! Aaaaah, Sundays.

I think my today is coming along well, knock on wood, which is sometimes hard to say about Mondays. I had my spin class this morning. My students are so wonderful. If we do have a wedding and decide not to elope (it’s really looking tempting right now to me), I’m going to have one table with just my spin peeps as the guests. They make me smile and feel happy. A great, eclectic bunch of guys and gals from all walks of life. Great for my soul they are. (Ok, Yoda.)

Ed and I had to move our appointment with our ring designer/maker to tomorrow afternoon. We get to approve the final drawing and then it’s off to the creation phase. Ever since Ed proposed to me I’ve been making these Lord of the Rings jokes about how my “one ring will rule them all”. (The ‘one ring’ being my engagement ring and the ‘them all’ being Ed and all those within my realm, furbabies included.) I follow up the statement with a wicked laugh, kind of like “bwuuu-haw-haw-haw-hu!”

I tell Ed that once that ring is forged he’ll never be able to rein in my power and control, my incessant demands, that I would be the Sauron of our married life! He gets such a terrified look in his eyes. Poor, sweet man. I don’t think he gets that I’m just KIDDING! Relax, honey, just relax. It’s just a joke....

Bwuuuu-haw-haw-haw...(insert the eye of Sauron here)...

Hee hee. I love messing with him!