On Friday afternoons my mother used to ask us to call for Madar Joon, Baba’s mother. My siblings and I took turns yelling her name from the third floor, looking down the stairs below, hoping she would hear us so we wouldn’t have to knock on her door. She eventually came up and we sat, the six of us, around a large table cloth on the ground, and ate my mother’s meal.
That was our Friday routine, all of us eating together. And that is all that I remember about us, before we all fell apart, before Madar Joon died, before Baba left for the States, before my eldest brother left for Europe, before Baba decided to send for us from the States. This is all I remember. And though everything that happened after was much better for all of us, I still miss that piece. I miss those Fridays when it was simple. When we were simple. I don’t know what any of us wanted then, but I was happy then. Perhaps I was too content in childhood bliss to know what the rest of my family wanted.
But that is what my memory holds: a family eating together in unison, under the same roof. I can never let go of what was then, and for that, it will always be a struggle for me to mentally move on, and free myself of the pain of loss that to this day brings me to uncontrollable tears, followed by loud sobs that come from deep within me.
Memory is a strong thing, and I have too much of it. The pain is only inevitable.
During the first year of immigration, I had dreams about Madar sometimes. She was the only part of my dream that spoke Farsi. Up until we moved to Cedar Lane, everyone who saw my room, said it was a museum, almost disturbing because there were family photos on every side. Too many faces to look at. I was trying to recreate my family for myself because I was alone and wanted things to be the same.
Eventually, when I realized they would never be the same, when I started having more important dreams like going to college and leaving Virginia, when we moved to a house, our very own, I tore the pictures down from the wall. But the emptiness that came with taking them down, the nostalgia of those days, the people that I never saw again, remain still.