my mother's first American date

My mother crashed my date two weeks ago. [take a moment to let that sink in.] It had been a beautiful night. The June heat was tempered by soft zephyrs, and New York was in a good, celebratory mood. I watched the confluence of naked cowboys and tourists with fanny packs and locals with furrowed brows, as I sat at the Rockefeller fountain eating a Magnolia cupcake--with my friend to my left and my mother to my right.

There was much logistical deliberation that day. I was to get dinner with an old friend (who shall remain anonymous for the sake of his reputation and sanity) and my mother was going to visit her sister in the city. My aunt and uncle had come for a physician's conference, and had an event at 6. My mother said she would meet me after work so we could ride the bus home together. I told her I could meet up with her after having dinner with my friend, and my aunt suggested my mother stay in the hotel room for a couple of hours to relax, nap, watch TV, until I was ready. It seemed like a solid plan.

My cousin and his girlfriend came up to the city. My mother felt out of place, and wanted to give them some privacy. She does not like to impose on young people, has always believed in the "live and let live" mantra--which is why she left my cousin and his girlfriend to hang out with my friend and me.

I had barely dug into my smorgasbord of spinach, sriracha, and tofu before I got my mother's first text. She must have initially thought she would feign composure, and asked me, "Ruch, what's going on?" I didn't respond right away, and within twelve seconds I got four consecutive messages from her, each exponentially more desperate than the next. The truth finally came out. She said she wouldn't even mind walking to where I was, so I wouldn't have to take the trouble to get her.

For my mother, anything. It's never trouble. And this case was no different. I was surged with a sense of familial protection, and explained the situation to my friend. I assumed he'd be disappointed, or would want to part ways after dinner, but instead he shrugged and smiled. "I love Mrs. Desai. She's a great woman. I'd love to see her."

And that's when the sense of duty to my mother turned into gastro-intenstinal discomfort. I clearly envisioned the way the next hour would come to pass. I texted my mother, informing her that my friend wanted to come say, "hi." She ignored my information, and continued to pursue my whereabouts. I would provide her with my ETA, and reiterated that I was with my friend but she seemed unabashed. She then called me, telling me she didn't have her reading glasses on and it was easier for her to call me rather than text.

In fairness to my mother, she was in a tough, awkward position. She was trying to give my cousin and his girlfriend time to themselves, trying to give the next generation the opportunity to come into its own, and unintentionally gave me a coronary whilst destroying any perception of cool anyone had of me. The night hadn't turned out the way she had planned, and she felt perpetually uncomfortable and out of place.

Poor thing.

In all fairness to me, my mother should wear her reading glasses.

After we got cupcakes, we met my mother across the street. Her face noticeably changed as her eyes darted from me to my friend. Her face flushed. My friend and my mother exchanged the usual niceties, hugged, she noticed his change in height and he noticed her change in weight, and then everyone sat down by the fountain. I assumed my mother was hungry so I gave her half of my cupcake. I wasn't sure why they were both willingly present. My mother seemed frozen to her concrete seat, clicking away at her blackberry, finally comprehending the messages I sent her. My friend was a good sport, and engaged my mother in discussions on our high school friends, his new job, New York City life. I stuffed my face with cupcake, so I could be relieved of the obligation to speak.

I still felt bad at how terribly the night had turned out for my mother, as I was still too numb from shock to realize how horrifying the night had turned out for me, and for my friend nonetheless. So, as we were walking to Port Authority, I constantly reached back, trying to grab my mother's hand to give her solace. She wanted to give me privacy, and so would not meet my hand, prompting me to reach back even further. My friend was walking slightly ahead of me, and so I was looking ahead, trying to match his enthusiasm as I internally combusted. I was therefore walking sideways, with my chest facing the street. I walked like that for three avenues.

We took the bus back to Ridgewood. Together. Before we got on the bus, my mother had begged me, in Gujarati, to sit with my friend, and apologized profusely for ruining my night, and his, especially. I told her not to worry; I had of course planned on sitting with him, and she had ruined my entire life, not just my night. She then slept soundly in the front, as we chatted in the back.


My mother's first date was almost twenty five years ago, when she got ice cream with my father. Soon after, they got engaged; and the history of my existence thus ensued. The comfort and stability of marriage gradually settled in, and the thrill of adventure and ice cream parlors subsided. About 21 years into the relationship, my parents decided to spice things up. They bought Optimum for our home, so they could see a free movie every Tuesday night. It's usually the 7:00 show, but it hasn't always been a successful endeavor. Sometimes, my father comes home from work too late and collapses on the couch--shoes, shirt, half-eaten bowl of lentils and all. Other times, my mother falls asleep in the movie theater. It's free, so she never feels like she wasted money.


I guess my mother had just needed a change.


As I was getting off the bus, I apologized again for the way the night turned out, and my friend reassured me, "Don't worry about it, Rucha; next time, I'll bring my mother."

SENIORITIS in the geriatric sense

I'm pretty stubborn. So despite the fact that I have a bad knee and a full time job, I refuse to let go of my diminishing youth, only eluding me as I desperately seek it. My friends planned an explosive week of firsts and lasts, of burritos and beer gardens and rooftop lounges and museum excursions, of typical New York and typical college bonanzas; I resolved not only to be present at each of these events, but to actively partake in all revelry, so as not to miss out on the senior week I was supposed to have last year.

It's Day 4 of Senior Week. I'm bundled up on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars with a mug that reads "Crazy Cat Lady" and body chills. My knee throbs and lazy rolls of fat from the weekend's debauchery are peeking out from beneath my shirt. Inner beauty doesn't exist. And the youth is dead. Mission Senior Week: Epic Fail.

While I am incapacitated today, Friday was a night warranting superlative commendation. FCLC pretended to be real college, and so everyone bought their favorite games to the table--the dining table that had been pushed to the center of the room. One of my friends set up a confessional, which was intended for us to randomly go in and indulge in our favorite college memories, but ended up being a channel for Patrick, Bianca, and I to cry about our long lost youth and beauty and functioning body parts. I took my nighttime dose of fish oil while Patrick was talking about weekly reports for his boss.

After the authentic college party (which included dressing up as ninjas, because that's a universal collegiate obligation, and collectively straightening my hair, because that's a group activity), we moved on to HighBar, a rooftop lounge infused with delicious cosmopolitan zephyrs (that froze us half to death) and swanky cosmopolitan drinks (that no one could afford). After dancing and stealing candy from the bathroom, we decided to leave that pricey lounge filled only with wealthy heteros and free Starburst, and headed to a place where we'd feel more at home: Industry, a gay club 7 blocks away from Fordham.

On the way to the club, I saw Asif Mandvi, of the Daily Show. I walked up to him and introduced myself and said something apparently hilarious (it wasn't funny). I then joined my friends and went to Industry, where I was doted upon and courted, and almost forgot that this was the one place where no matter how straight my hair was or how diligently I did Butt Blasts at the YMCA, boys wouldn't ever look directly at me, but always to my left, where my attractive (male) friends stood. Then we (girls) all realized that we once again voluntarily and proactively put ourselves in that no-win situation that haunted us throughout our college careers. So we stopped dancing, stopped off for late night munchies (I got bananas because old people need potassium), and went to sleep--well, we tried.

It took every ounce of energy I had left (about 2.5) to cancel plans for tonight (Greenhouse lounge with my ladyfriends). Hopefully tonight I'll recover and then spend the rest of the week pretending I'm as young and cool and hip as my friends.

Or maybe I'll take a few more days to rest. I can't handle all the parties and celebrations and late nights. Kids these days, I just don't know how they do it.

ode to mothers everywhere

Sometimes I wonder why my mother puts up with me. I'm irrational, stubborn, and picky. I seem to actively pursue dysfunctional endeavors, hate being touched, and only like cantaloupe 27 days out of the year. Still, she loves me. For some strange reason, which I can only attribute to her unsound mental state, she unconditionally embraces all of my idiosyncrasies and flaws and "eras" (Foreign-Service-Officer era, Bohemian-carpe-diem-let-hair-loose era, nothing-but-bananas era). And she makes me omelets (when I'm not crusading against eggs).



She's not perfect, at least not in the conventional sense. She doesn't sew (the intention is there), she doesn't like to give her children compliments (that's Oprah's job), and she always decides to (attempt to) be creative during the most sensitive, formative moments in our lives. For the competitive, fifth grade Bake Fair, my mother decided to discover and promote Jell-O. We didn't have any molds in the house, nor did we bother to get any, and she instead rummaged around the kitchen for arbitrary vessels and tea cups and serving spoons in which to freeze the Jell-O, mixed with sliced fruit. We didn't do a good job estimating the fruit to Jell-O ratio, so some of the cups looked like nothing but amorphous gelatinous banana, and others seemed to have infinitesimal flecks of strawberry as mere afterthought.



Except for the frying pan, my mother didn't have anything in which to display this fair contender, so she took out a large, deep pot, in which to steam rice. The flavors were all different, but we couldn't layer the various types as a trifle because we had used a variety of molds, so she simply placed the shapes next to each other. When she was finished, she proudly presented to me her own recipe. I peered down into the bottom of the vessel, covered with wiggling orange, green, and red shapes resembling broken tea cups and serving spoons, laden with sweet, decomposing fruit. I looked back up at her eager face. I thanked her, and from that day on stopped believing in God, because if He existed, she would not have been allowed to play with Jell-O mixes and over-ripe fruit, and inadvertently, my social life.



I didn't win in any of the categories, not even for best futile efforts. One of my friend's mother had made this gorgeous chocolate pudding with violets and dark chocolate shavings, while another friend brought in a tower of cookies, modeled after the New York skyline. My pot-o-gelatin was barely considered.



While my mother tends to ruin my life, she is one of the few who saves it. Whenever I have gotten mad at my mother, I end up angrier at myself, and often retreat in a sort of self-loathing seclusion as I lose equilibrium. Then my mother makes a joke, I make a joke, we laugh at our (my) childishness, and move on. Balance restored. The world goes round again.



Thus, after the Bake Fair, while I was emotionally ravaged by the day's events, I couldn't manage to completely shun the dish. My friends thought it looked weird and unappetizing, and all fleeting notions of embarrassment and social suicide were immediately replaced by a fierce pride and honor. "I love this," I remember saying, as I took several bites of the dish. "It's unique." The tastes of the various flavors of Jell-O and the fruit converged into an explosion of acridity, but I remained firm. I finished half of the dessert myself.



When I came home, I told my mother about the failed dish. She was deeply apologetic and wrung her hands in a sort of despair, and acknowledgement that she'd never be the mother who bakes award winning desserts for school fairs. I hugged her around the middle. "It was good, Mumma. See? Half of it is gone." She hugged me back. "Next time, I'll try to put less fruit. That weighed it down, I think."


I don't know why I put up with her, either.

The Fountain of Youth: Representative Ryan of Wisconsin?

I overslept this morning. My mother shouted my name from the kitchen, informing me my bus was set to leave in four minutes. I took a cursory glance at my phone and literally leaped out of bed, onto the plug of my rarely used hair iron, and half sprinted, half limped to the bathroom. I prioritized parts of my body that needed soaping, threw on neon blue tights (government shut downs render obsolete business casual), accidentally squirted triple doses of antihistamine drops into my eyes, and stopped only to text Patrick something about my weight or my latest food fantasy or something of paramount significance. I was ready in 20 minutes, and even packed some snacks for the day and took my fish oil.


The last time I had to eject myself from bed with Olympian force was the first day of my International Law class, which started at 8:30 in the morning and never ended (until 11:15). I had rushed through perfunctory hygienic obligations before showing up to class 20 minutes late with my shirt inside out.


Today I slept in till 7:46, which is approximately 1:46 College Standard Time.



The last couple of days have been the most riveting in a long time. With the potential government shutdown, I can focus on nothing else but CSPAN, Politico, the New York Times, especially with its spellbinding political updates (the White House apparently is not for the shutdown; who knew?). Though I work in a political office, enmeshed in the current social and economic issues facing our nation, I have not been this charged since the 2008 elections. Then, I would sit in front of the TV all day, partly to take in all of Anderson Cooper’s unparalleled splendor, partly to stay current on the trajectories of each campaign; during my Sacred Texts class I would compare healthcare and marriage platforms of each candidate whilst listening to passages of the Gospel of Thomas, which my professor would read aloud. Once President Obama won the election, I was in a state of euphoric delirium for several months, hung over with pride, rejuvenation, and $3 Trader Joe’s wine. I was constantly charged, blood coursing through my veins, a constant reminder of my vitality.



Blood doesn’t necessarily course through my veins anymore (it seems to have clotted at the site of the failed blood work), but I do feel alive. I feel youthful. Two nights ago I stayed up watching CSPAN till my laptop died; I exchanged trite jokes with my friends that referenced “Boehners” and “ridin Biden,” as well as ideas about fiscal policy and the 2012 election. The only difference was location. I was not with my friends in the quiet lounge, peering at them over my massive laptop, plastered with sticky social statements (literally—stickers). I was still wearing a hoodie, still drew my knees up against my chest, and still ate out of habit and not hunger, but I was sitting alone in my room. My friends were on the other side of the internet. I finally conceded to Zuckerberg’s brilliance; I could transport myself into the 17th floor quiet lounge via Facebook.



The next morning I confessed to my boss that I was a bit delirious from a late night, and I professed a superficial love for Representative Ryan. She agreed and I wangled the permission to follow the news all day, as the self-proclaimed resident expert and senior counsel on the government shut down.


Between cursing the New York Times for paying reporters to issue “news alerts” about the necessity of compromise and eating birthday cupcakes for a colleague (I took it upon myself to eat several, to fuel my new CSPAN obligations), I assisted a constituent in getting surgery to remove a malignant tumor. By 5:00, I was shaking from caffeine, sugar, and happiness for the patient. And by 6:30, I crashed in my French class.


Last night, I meant to do my homework for my creative writing class, since I had foregone my French homework for my conservative fetish the previous night. As I started writing my story, I was immediately distracted (or I opened a new tab myself) by Kristoff’s Op-Ed piece on Congressional pay during the shutdown. I again took it upon myself to disseminate the information, and essentially ravage people’s newsfeeds.



I still haven’t done my writing homework. It’s a difficult assignment. I need more than a couple of hours to accomplish the task.



But the New York Times just reported what agencies would be furloughed and impacted if our broken bi-party system doesn’t reconcile.


And it’s my job to read the news—I just want to be sure the Bengal tigers are still fed.

The Grotesques

I must finally confess: I am a heroin addict. It’s consumed me. My arm is scarred with the trauma of this dependency, of this obsession, and I can think of nothing else.

No, totally kidding. Apparently my arm just can’t handle blood being drawn during yearly routine physicals.

As I gain maturity and lose wisdom, I have come to understand that everyone has a little heroin in their lives. Everyone has a downfall, albeit sweet, delicious, refreshing, and we become completely consumed by these disgraces or defeats. My mother has peanuts and Robitussin. Katherine Millay had her weakly received poetry and her older sister’s shadow. Napoleon had his own power trip and Sarah Palin doesn’t yet realize she has one. But she does. We all do. My heroin is the pain from dysfunction. We constantly battle the immediate sensation of thrill and pleasure, partly derived from a fleeting awareness of our self-erosion. And as we oscillate between this corrosive joy and objective detachment, we become our own follies. We are these grotesques, embodying in every aspect of our lives the trauma to which we have been subjected, or worse, to which we have subjected ourselves, over and over again.

The clean shaven blonde who buys his breakfast at Pret A Manger and the puffy eyed MTA worker who idles by the ticket machine and the voluptuous Spanish mother of two who buys her children $1-books on the street—all of them carry with them an addiction, the burden of their own follies. We walk lifelessly amid scores of other people consumed by this fixation, engrossed in their own powerlessness, as they are continually terrorized and claimed and ravaged by themselves.


At least we can all say we’re heroin chic.

PTSD (post tropical stress disorder)

In the Dominican Republic, we measured time by hunger and by the position of the sun. Therefore, it was always time to eat, and it was always either "too hot" or "most likely after 5." The clocks in the room were 30 minutes too fast (as per our careless estimations), and the man who crooned with his acoustic guitar below us would play with equal fortitude at 6 in the morning and 6 in the evening. Time didn't stop, but it was playing hide and seek.

The four of us were half-expecting (half-hoping for) a cliché week filled with fountains (kegs) of wine (Presidente light), boys (the heterosexual kind) emitting arbitrary, indistinct loud noises, and lots of unabated (threatening) sun. All of our dreams came true (and I'm 7 shades too dark for my own caste).

On our first night, we had found a group of equally excited (aesthetically pleasing) spring breakers taking full advantage of the open bar. We decided to engage them in discussion and before we had ordered more banana mama's, there was a charged and aggressive argument about the welfare state and "crackhead Medicaid recipients." We soon decided we were tired from the long plane journey, and retired to our rooms. When we awoke the next day we were completely refreshed, and after blaming away the world's problems on Republican college students, we reneged cliché spring break and decided to simply indulge in the timeless, drunken stupor created in the convergence of blue ocean, burning sand, languid stillness.

And we indulged in unlimited sushi.

As Americans, we felt completely at home. At the VIP pool, which had exclusive shot and cocktail recipes, teasing garden burgers that rendered our appetites insatiable, and beds with canopys randomly planted on white sand, there were two flags proudly waving in the coquettish Dominican zephyrs: the American flag and the Canadian flag. There was no display of national pride, nor was there a thought to include any of the other countries from which visitors hailed (all over western Europe, Australia, and parts of South Asia). While we would have otherwise cared enough to ask why these two countries were arbitrarily given VIP designation (no, really, Canada?), we were in a constant state of soporific overheating and overeating, and cared only to giggle and take a picture or two before falling sleep on a plate of French fries.

In the evenings, after we ravaged the buffet three or four times (we used bread as chasers), we would sit by the poolside bar with all the other youth, though before making new friends (our move to renege cliché spring break soon conceded to curious new shipments of people), we would sit wide-legged, our hands on our stomachs, in our ever so attractive means of digesting our fourth dinners.

We met several groups of people over the next couple of days, and always ended a night of dancing (at the resort's own night club, Vibe), of rum & cokes (we were just trying to encourage the local industries), of excited chatter (about libertarianism or post-graduation) with games of flip cup at Blue Lagoon, which served burgers and fries and pitchers of Presidente (for the sake of the game). Sometimes, people would get a little competitive. Sometimes, there was flip cup drama between the various tables, which had been hauled together as makeshift flip cup fields. And most times, there was just endless, inocuous rounds of the game, bringing together kids from all colleges, all countries, all levels of membership (VIPs and the common Cheap Carribbean folk, alike) in a monolith of unassuming, joyful youth.

We may or may not have stolen a golf cart one night. We were feeling adventurous (though I decided to leave a cart full of fun and straight kids to go "walk off my bread").

The feeling of adventure lasted over the next few days. One day, the four of us headed on a river safari, where we traveled miles through rural villages and savage wildlife, stopping for freshly ground coffee and ripe pineapple, before stopping at the base of the forest. The guides joked about the severity of the excursion, for "only the strongest survive," as we put on our helmets and life vests. And our used, rental white tennis shoes, which we told were water shoes. They made squish sounds as we hiked on to the falls.

For the entire hike I thought I was going to die. Every time we were to climb up against a waterfall, against the hard current, amid rocks and icy water, I thought it was my last climb ever. I would close my eyes, and for half a second my life would pass before me, my mother's face, my jewelry alcove, my favorite burrito place. And then immediately I was kicked in the face by someone doggy paddling in front of me, and strong, sopping wet Dominican men without life vests or a helmet would easily pull me up (I don't know why I ever bothered with bicep curls).

Once we reached the top of the cliff, we would slide or jump down. Again, every time it was my turn to descend, I thought I would be the one exception who hits her head or breaks her elbow. I would close my eyes again, and try to pray to the Gods with whom I share a casual relationship (it would be complicated on Facebook), but as soon as I barely dipped into a meditative state, I was pushed into the water, and had the thrill of my life, all thoughts of my mother, God, and burritos drowned into the water surrounding me.

With scratches and bruises and popped shoulders, we embarked on a new adventure a couple of days after. We awoke at the crack of dawn to go ziplining. We again wore helmets and harnesses and sneakers, and our safety was joked about. Our guide taught us how to break in the zipline, and as I overcompensated (to save my life) I ended up pulling a muscle. We traversed the jungle like apes. As we slid across these hard ropes, we issued shrieks and hollers, falling back into our primal roots, needing nothing but the biting air and the lush green below.

The rest of the time was prolonged R&R, peppered with desperate attempts to stretch our stomachs to full capacity before returning to America, where it was unseemly to eat large plates of coleslaw between meals. We attended the VIP Welcome party (a farewell for us), with unlimited top shelf drinks, unlimited food (somehow this was different from the buffet), unlimited music and dancing. We started dancing with a group of 20 spring breakers from Maryland, but soon decided instead to dance with recently released cougars, who ended up having more fun that we could ever have.

On our last night, we treated ourselves to a fancy dinner at one of the VIP restaurants. The food was incredibly delicious, and uniquely displayed (the caesar salad was a head of lettuce with a 7-inch crouton). This time, the unlimited imbibements truly were wine and not Presidente. For a full two hours, we pretended to be classy and sophisticated. And as soon as we finished dinner, we played a 50-person game of flip cup on the ping pong tables.

The following day, I felt sick. I wasn't sure if my body was finally violently reacting to what I had put it through the past week, or if it had become dependent on explosive, volatile fun and was simply going through withdrawal. Regardless, we found ourselves sprawled lifelessly at the gate, awaiting our plane home. As if our physical pain was not enough, God/Allah/the jungle spirits/the Man on the Moon found it funny to send us off with music--the man who crooned at 5 in the morning was apparently homeward bound as well. For me, exclusively, (once a VIP, always a VIP) he played Eric Clapton and the Beatles. I almost vomited into his guitar case. My stomach had the capacity only to hold rice and beans, not self-proclaimed balding musicians.

Once home, I tried to reconnect myself. I turned on my blackberry, my phone. Each exploded with text messages, emails, Facebook notifications, and then froze and needed to be rebooted. I knew the time for the first time in one week. And I immediately felt late for something.

It's been two weeks since we've returned, and all we've felt is cold, sore (the pulled muscle was no joke), and incredibly rushed. Our bodies have not stopped protesting our vacation endeavors, but have not yet willed to acclimate to a reality of the gym, of commuting, of sobriety.

And we're still not used to limiting our food intake to three meals daily.

(place)

The lawn was yellowing and sharp, and the little girl winced when she sat down. The house was small, but to the girl it seemed like a palace, much larger than the old apartment, which had recently become cramped with the new crib, the new boxes of Similac, and the new person hoarding her mother's attention. All the other houses were built exactly the same, with three front steps and a large square window to the bottom right. The only distinguishing feature was color. The girl's house was yellow; the people across the street had chosen red.

The sky seemed so blue above this house. She lay down in the dry grass, grimacing slightly, and stared at the moving clouds. Everything was slow here. She watched a butterfly float above her small body, and reached out for it before it fluttered away, so she was left with her arm outstretched, grabbing a fistful of air. She glanced back at the house--the storm door was still closed but the front door was open, so she could hear her parents loudly argue about placement of the microwave.

She stood up and wandered down the street to the end of the block, which merged into the mouth of an inky forest. She stood on her toes and peered intently into the recesses of the dark woods, made sure there were no monsters, and then walked in. The branches were wild and resentful, and her arms suffered scratches as she forged through the trail, twigs snapping beneath her feet. After some time, she lost sight of the makeshift dirt trail, and when she looked behind her she could no longer see the sunlight from her street.