Dog Days

For Iranians, forget about cleanliness being next to godliness; it's everything—God and the universe times infinity. Basic sterilization norms frame the daily routine: take off your shoes at the front door, never shake hands with the left (because that’s the hand you use…well, never mind), forbid ‘outside clothes’ on the bed, keep your pillowcase covered at all times—so as to rest your head on the cleanest surface possible—and never, ever allow animals in the house as they will burn all sterilization to the ground.

My parents knew two things: germs=bad and manners=good. They plunged me and my sister into the giant above-ground swimming pool of Iranian cultural expectations and social graces until our fingers got pruney. And we didn’t just listen, we fucking obeyed. I experienced the purgatorial trap that second generation kids encounter: I was never enough of one thing. Not Persian enough or American enough. With no sense of self, I suppose self-respect would’ve been a magical tool. But while enforcing house rules, like standing up when an adult enters a room, my parents forgot to teach me how to stand up for myself.

My lack of confidence left a hole inside which I filled with all the wrong things—during adolescence it was school, in my teens it was food, and in my 20s it became men and booze. And when those wrong things ended? Enter: suicidal thoughts. It came crashing down one night, after someone who I thought was the one broke my heart and I had to meet that post-dumped version of “me”. Since the first boy at age 15 (who I didn’t even like that much) till now, the routine goes that my world crashes when someone breaks up with me.

I let my friends drag me to a party that night becaus
e I knew it was better not to be alone. While outside with a glass of wine, cigarette, and misanthropic ennui, a white puffy creature helped itself to my lap and licked its paws. I looked down at this weird dog-creature and my self-pity slowly began to evaporate-- and in its place: a puffball with black buttons for eyes was making me feel something positive. I won’t call it hope because that’s bullshit. It was new (because literally this was the first time a dog ever sat on my lap) and it was real (because it was the first time any living thing had touched my body for weeks). I didn’t know what was happening but I can attest that the empty feeling was gone.

Is this what animals can do? Was I so inundated with sterilization propaganda that I’d been robbed of this connection (and perhaps so many other amazing things) for years? What else were my parents wrong about (spoiler alert: almost everything). That night I learned the error of my parents’ ways and got my own brain and set of standards. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but that’s no god I want to believe in.

A few weeks after the party, I invited a scrappy Yorkshire Terrier into my life. I named her Eleanor Roosevelt to remember the words “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. How did I suddenly have the nerve to start sticking up for myself? Wanting better? Being worth it? Never had I understood the joys of motherhood until Ellen came into my life. I know this is not the same thing as a human baby. But considering my complete lack of interest in human babies because they’re gross, this is as good as it gets. And it’s pretty great. Women attest that motherhood made them stronger and more compassionate. That’s been my journey with this furrball.

I only thought about myself before, like what I’m saying, who I’m fucking, what I’m eating. Now I put a lot of this energy to...no, wait. I’m not going to write about how getting a dog made me into a goddamn saint. I’m still self-centered, but I’ve opened up parts of my heart sliver by sliver. The past has shown that I didn’t let people in because I didn’t know how to cope when they would leave. It’s cliche but it’s real. Ellen is the first--the very first-- unconditional love I’ve encountered. Things like vulnerability and the blanketed term “care” make sense now and my heart skips a little when she prances into a room. I completely let my guard down because I never had one up with her in the first place. Human rules don’t apply with animals. I couldn’t play games, shut her out, ignore her but secretly vie for her attention; I was just me. I loved without thinking about what I could get and I let her love me which is a first. I am valuable. She values me. Not only because I give her food but sometimes, yes, that’s why.

That’s how she gave me the option to get out of my own way. And wherever that empty hole was inside of me that kept me so meek as a child? She filled it. So, Eleanor and I sign off from my bed—in my pajamas, and definitely after I’ve had my bath. Some things don’t change. And that’s ok, too.

Letterman's Jacket

An object that anchors a memory, an idea, an obsession. That’s what this is about; an evocative object—turning and burning in my brain.

Part 1

Like many second generation kids, my adolescence was marked by unease towards my family’s foreignness; my immigrant, Iranian parents were the exact opposite of the American girl I so badly wanted to be. The differences in their speech, behavior, and overall mannerisms positioned them as the other and plopped me right next to them. I grew up embarrassed by my parents’ thick accents and my dad’s blackened fingernails from the oil changes he did at work.

The relational construction of identity-- American and Iranian, sometimes too little of one and other times not enough of the other-- produced a sense of shame as I constantly compared myself to the person I was not--unconsciously cataloging differences, which I defined as deficiencies.  Truthfully, I am no longer oblivious of the linguistic and cultural gift that my parents gave me through their enforcement of a “Farsi-only” household--but growing up, it was a nightmare. The cultural purgatory of Iran at home and America “out there” created a fragmented reality and a disconnect between me and the other kids; it seemed to me that they had perfect lives with white parents and orange cats and golden dogs. I had brown stinky kebab wrapped in tin foil between two pieces of tandoori bread packed by my doting father in the morning before fixing some rich guy's transmission. My frequent desire to be white had manifested from feelings of alienation and not belonging--feelings which followed me into adulthood. This self-loathing is the stuff of second generation kids.
I remember when I touched the fabric in the shop, I was transported to a different identity; the gorgeous, tall, and wanted All-American beauty queen. Yes, in the store, the jacket delivered a sense of whiteness and belonging; it was a beautiful emblem of the high school experience I always dreamed about. But this jacket in front of the Christmas tree depressed the hell out of me. That morning, I looked down at the gold accordioned fabric on the wrist and felt no urge to rub it the way I did in the store, because this jacket was not part of my fantasy. This was just a really expensive jacket my immigrant mother bought me with no connection to Johnny or my insane would-be popularity as his girlfriend. And the one time I wore it to school, people asked me why I was wearing a letterman’s jacket with no letter...as a freshman...who didn’t play sports. My response: school spirit. They bought it, but NEVER AGAIN I told myself.
The look on my mom’s face when I screamed “NO!” after she suggested I wear it again compounded misery upon misery.

I grew up watching Molly Ringwald struggle with crushes, body image, and popularity in the John Hughes cinematic classics...but when I was 14 I didn't handle it as gracefully as she did. The idea of high school--more than attending the school itself scared me. The pre-freshman doom and gloom encircled my head like a committee of vultures forever reminding me that I wasn’t ready, this wasn’t my time for high school--I didn’t know how to “teen” the way it was in the movies or magazines.

The fear manifested to full out terror at the uniform storm where i had to buy PE clothes for the ever-dreaded first day of school. But my excitement for what I saw next eclipsed the dread; there it was, hanging before me: a letterman’s jacket. Before that, I’d only seen them on TV donned by Johnny Football Hero or on loan to his beautiful girlfriend. There in the store, I could touch the coarse felt of the torso, smell the leather sleeve, rub the wrist ends between my thumb and index finger. I was enraptured by this symbol of all I wanted to be: Johnny Football Hero’s girlfriend. She was wanted and beautiful, and I...wasn’t. Because, you see, in this fantasy, I was white--the unPersian.

Part 2

Truthfully, high school was not the way John Hughes made it look--everyone was much shorter in real life and the cafeteria didn’t have a buffet. Also, I went to school in California which is way different than the snow-bound winters of Illinois. My high school looked like a bunch of cabanas strewn together in front of a forest. One thing that was accurate, however, was the prominent role of popularity and social status, of which I had none. I was a funny looking freshman and mercilessly bullied. Thus, my frizzy-haired and gap-toothed self was eager to enjoy three weeks off at Christmas. Like most Iranian families in the States, the holidays are celebrated with a tree and gifts because parents know that their children expect it. And when Christmas morning finally arrived, opening the big present under the tree was fueled couldn't have been more tragic....yep, the jacket. My mother went back to the uniform store once she had seen me admiring it 

Until that moment, I was accustomed to her ignorance to very American things like an Easter egg hunt or a debate on the 2nd amendment. But her obliviousness that this jacket has more meaning--that it wasn't something you just purchased-- depressed the hell out of me. Worse, her self-congratulatory state was heart-breaking. And it kept getting worse: my name stitched in cursive, and below it-- the word “Swimming. I tried to find humor and instead of horror thinking of that the moment when the clerk asked my mother what I had “lettered in.” I'll bet it was met with silence, because she doesn't have any fucking idea what it means “to letter”. 

To my mother, this thing had no context—she didn’t know why it was blue and gold or its self-aggrandizing purpose. The entire metonymic association of this jacket with lettering in a sport is nonexistent, let alone my fixation on it being a symbol of high school popularity. Whatever exchange those poor saps had in what I can imagine as an incredibly awkward conversation--it resulted in her understanding the question as ‘what sport does your daughter do’ to which she responded with something all Californian kids do in the summertime. But if we were simply talking about what I liked doing in swimming pools, it would have been more accurate to inscribe “handstands” or “Marco Polo.” I knew nothing about swimming. I mean, I wouldn’t drown if you threw me in water, but I didn’t know strokes or laps. Also, I hate being cold, the smell of chlorine, waking up early, and team activities. All in all, I'm the worst person for the swim team. In an effort to stray from complete self-abasement, I’d be great for a Marco Polo team. 

Struggling to accept my Iranian-American identity was exhausting but vital to the development of my self-concept. I have a handle on it today because I’m 40 and a product of therapy, self-help books, and meditation. But as a kid this duality was purgatorial.That jacket represented so much of what I wanted and verified so much of what I didn’t have: that American life. Chevy, Corvette, apple pie. And with it hanging in my closet, next to all of the clothes emulating all of those girls I was so far from being, the jacket transformed from a beacon of popularity to a prophet of guilt--they were companions now: the jacket and the shame. Inseparable. In my fantasy, the jacket evoked a childhood dream of Americana life. Today, it’s just a harbinger of shame.  Did a jacket ruin my life? Don’t be ridiculous, of course it did.