Just for Funsies

Salaam,

I saw this on FB, and rather than write this up there (since my mother does not have FB), I will have fun and see how many of these I can answer here. I'll send it separately to my mother and then she can grade me.

Later on, I may write about how much fun I had this weekend with my wedding reception. I got to spend the weekend with all of my mothers--my two mothers-in-law (mother and step-mother) and my own mama. This one goes out to my mama.

ADULT Daughters... How well do you know your MOM? Copy, paste, and fill-in the blanks. Then tag them to give you a grade.

1. She is sitting in front of the TV, what is she watching? - Either a recorded telenovela or her favorite couples vlogs on YouTube :D

2. Usually, what dressing does she use? 
Either the one that comes with the Wendy's salad or the one she made herself with honey

3. Name something she hates?
Driving in the airport. Also, the phrase "pushing the envelope."

4. What does she like to drink?
Water or smoothies!

5. Favorite music?
Classic soul 

6. What is her nickname for you?
Nicknames? NneNne, NneNne Foofenne, Chich, Chichmeister, Lucinda, Lucy...

7. What is something she collects?
:D Adult coloring books!

8. What would she eat every day if she could?
"Crispy crunchies"

9. What is her favorite color?
Blue

10. What would she NEVER wear?
A dress or dress shoes without stockings 😂😂

11. What is her favorite sports team?
Aaaahahahahaha!

12. What is something that you do that she wishes you didn't?

Again, wear a dress or dress shoes without stockings. :D 😂

13. You bake her a cake. What kind of cake do you make?
Good question...chocolate, but I'd probably sooner bake a batch of cookies

14. Favorite animal?
Owl! :D

15. What could she spend all day doing?
Talking, laughing and reminiscing with family.

16. Who is her favorite child?
I'm her favorite daughter. ;)

My Life in NVC

As salaam alaikum,

Before my husband and I married, we initiated a book club--a book club of two. We haven't resumed for a while because we both got busy. Malcolm X is next on our list.

One of the books we read last year was Nonviolent Communication by the late Marshall Rosenberg. I had learned about nonviolent communication, or NVC, from my residency program during our behavioral science block. We were taught the communication paradigm as not only a way to communicate to patients, but a way to communicate with partners, family and friends.

Violent communication, on the other hand, is communication with oneself or others that is laden with judgment and evaluation. It may seem harsh to call this communication violent, but once you call it what it is, you realize the impact it may have on you.

For example, once I was busily cooking a meal for my mother and multitasking in the kitchen. I am very happy to cook for my mother, but I also want things to be just so. So when my mother suddenly said, "Are you burning your food?" I startled and ran to the pan on the flame. The food was fine.

"Why did you say that? Did you think it was burning?" I asked her.

"No, I just asked," she said, shrugging it off.

If she didn't think it was burning, why did she say that? I think she just wanted me to check on my food and didn't realize that what she said was a little bit hurtful, like she assumed I would be burning my food.

I mean, accidents happen. I burn food all of the time while doing too much in the kitchen. But if she didn't think I was burning my food, there was no reason to make that judgment. Especially as I had been carefully and lovingly making meals for her and the family all week.

Anyway...

The premise of  is simple, but it's challenging to execute. There are four elements to NVC: (1) make an observation, (2) state one's feelings (3) express ones needs and (4) make a request. Observation, feelings, needs, request. Each element of this formula has it's own chapter in the book which helps students of NVC use it without injecting the violent language of judgment into the formula.

For example, one makes observations free of evaluation and requests that are specific and life-enriching.

So in the example given above with my mother, if I used NVC, I may have told her, "When you asked me if I was burning my food, I felt hurt and discouraged. I want to be trusted as an accomplished and careful cook in your kitchen. Can you instead ask or suggest that I check on the food when you are afraid I may be distracted? Thank you."

The observation was her asking me if I burned my food, my feelings were of hurt and discouragement. My need was to feel trusted (and respected). And my request was for her to instead ask if I check the food if she thinks I may be distracted.

This was hard for me to write. One could write this, which would not be NVC: "Mom, when you think I'm burning my food, I feel like you expect me to burn the food, like you're judging my skills. I need you to trust me. Don't say things like that to me."

Check it. There is an observation, an attempt at statement of feelings, an expression of needs and a request, but they are laden with judgments and otherwise not quite fitting with NVC.

The observation is not a pure observation, but an evaluation. My mother asked if I was burning my food--she told me she didn't believe I was burning the food, and even if she hadn't, I know what she said and not what she believed. The statement of feelings...is actually not a statement of feelings. Feeling like she expects me to burn the food is not a feeling, and telling her she's judging me is, again, an evaluation of her. To say that I felt judged, ignored, scrutinized or any such verb is relating it to the other person. The NVC statement of feelings should be independent of the other person. That's why my original example included hurt and discouraged.

Finally, the request should be in positive terms and should be specific. "Don't say things like that to me," is a negative request and it is not at all specific.

When our communications are judgmental or evaluative, people are likely to get defensive. The second example I gave would probably not have gone over well. ...and honestly, the first one wouldn't have gone off without a hitch, either. I didn't feel strongly enough about my feelings after my mother asked me if my food was burning to launch into NVC, but just giving an example of how it works.

My husband would sometimes roll his eyes in the early days after we read this book when I would launch into NVC after an argument. Sometimes, he just wants to argue because it feels cathartic to him.

I, on the other hand, do not find arguments cathartic. On the contrary, I find it distressing to have a raise-your-voice argument. Him having grown up with parents who eventually divorced and maybe argued like that, he thinks it's normal. I do not want to deny him catharsis, but I will counter such arguments with NVC every time.

One way to do that within the paradigm is to try to identify, in reverse, one's feelings and needs.

So if he were to say, "I'm the only one doing work around here," I would go backward and try to figure out what observation he made to jump to this conclusion.

"Are you reacting to the floor not being swept?" or, "Are you reacting to the dishes in the sink?" I would continue this without making evaluations until either I or he arrive at the specific observation.

Then I would say, "So, the fact that I haven't swept the floor in two weeks makes you feel angry, yeah?"

And if I misidentified the feeling, perhaps he would tell me. Then, I'd try to identify his need, if he hadn't told me.

"You need to feel as if I care about the house you're working hard to maintain for us, yeah? Do you want me to sweep at least once a week?"

And that would seriously be the root of such vague declarations. We don't argue over each other's household tasks anymore because now I understand that it wasn't so much about him wanting me, as his wife, to do "womanly" housework as much as he wanted to see me do my own tasks (a chore list we agreed upon) as a sign that I cared about the house as much as he did.

I also understand that his main pet peeve is dust. Dirty floor and dusty counter tops to much are just pitfalls of being an active cook in my kitchen. I've watched him cook and pick up every individual rice grain he drops with the pads of his fingers and curse if he gets a drop of sauce on the counter.

When I cook, on the other hand, the kitchen tends towards entropy until the final touches are made and the creation is simmering on the stove.

Don't get me wrong--I don't think in NVC most of the time or talk that way to my husband on a daily basis. But when a communication is important or I sense a miscommunication coming on, going back to that paradigm is helpful for sorting out what we're actually reacting to, what our true feelings are in response, what we actually need and a life-enriching way to request it.

I'm especially interested in the paradigm's take on depression. I'll talk about that later.

Muslim Woman, Non-Muslim Man

Salaam,

I peak out from my blogging (here) hiatus to comment on the spate of articles that have surfaced at HuffPost Canada, giving Muslim women the permission to marry non-Muslim men. Minority juristic voices as well as a representative from Universalist Muslims, a progressive Muslim organization in Canada, produced articles in the last week encouraging Muslim women who do not have Muslim male suitors to consider dating men "of the Book."

I read this and I wonder what I would have thought about this when I was last single, before I met who is now my husband, this time 5 years ago. Would I be heartened? Would I be frustrated? Would I leave with a lot of questions? Would it have changed anything about how I did things?

Let me take a moment to be quite transparent.

Part of the reason I wrote so little during the last five years was not just about me being a busy resident. A lot of it was that I was actively in a relationship with a secular man, it was different from anything I thought I would experience, and I didn't have a space on this blog to share those experiences. Unfortunately for me, this blog had always been aspirational. It was a great place for me to express all the Muslimah I aspired to be while not dwelling on my shortcomings. I don't think I had more than the normal amount of shortcomings, but this place had fostered for a long time a Muslim community when I didn't have my own. It was a place to lay my thoughts down. It was not a place for me to ponder about the day-to-day realities of a relationship with a secular man.

Yes, he was a secular Muslim man, but that was an accident. I'll explain.

When I matched in Seattle for my residency, I knew I didn't want to spend another several years as I did in Boston. A couple of regrettable relationships later, I didn't want to enter residency in isolation, without working on my future. Marriage and family were the things I always aspired to more than my career, but, as I wrote about at the beginning of my relationship with my now-husband, my want for family felt at odds with my faith.

There was a very real possibility that I could be indefinitely single as an earnest, practicing Muslim sister who only looked for the practicing Muslim men. And in that moment of writing that piece--I decided that if I had to sacrifice part of what made me an earnest, practicing sister in order to marry, as ass-backwards as that sounded...then so be it! I would.

So I cast my net wide, signing up to Muslim dating sites and the standards--Match and OkCupid, and I wanted to see who would bite. Muslim dating sites yielded a man, 16 years my senior, divorced with children, as the only Muslim man in the Puget Sound region interested in me. Match and OkCupid yielded more. I was sure to pepper my profile with hints about my religion and my level of practice. I ended up with two men. One who was also Nigerian who seemed to be more fascination with my existence as an Igbo Muslim than anything else...and my future husband.

Just before Ramadan and after making up super late the part of my fast I missed for menses, I prayed istikhara about these men...and probably also about a classmate I had a crush on. I was surprised when the answer was my husband. I was like, really, God? But he's not practicing. He's very worldly. After bad experiences with religion as a kid, he doesn't think he'll ever be practicing. He's sexually liberal. This is the man I'm supposed to pursue?

And I struggled with it early in our relationship. There were times when I considered jumping ship, counting my losses and getting back on the straight way and finding a good, practicing Muslim man, and not a good secular one.

This only lasted for the first couple of months, but I spent the second year of our relationship doing damage control. He could tell I was distant. But honestly, it wasn't just my trepidation because of religious hangups. I was also a first-year resident and that reality was grueling.

Four and a half years after we began our relationship, we've married, amidst in-law problems, questions of race and other upheavals. And since those early days, I no longer question if it is OK that I am with him.

I don't need him to become more practicing. As long as he stays authentic to his values and continues to respect my clinging to the rites of Islam, then that's all I need. His practice may change over time, and insha'Allah I will support him through it. There is no compulsion in religion and we don't pressure each other from either side.

So when I read all of these articles telling Muslim women that they can marry non-Muslim men, my reaction is lukewarm. I mean, I got over needing to authorities to define what makes me more or less Muslim a long time ago. And besides, I was born of a Muslim woman and Christian man. I remember I had some commenter come and to say my parents' marriage was illegitimate. Rando Muslim man, what purpose does it serve for you? Did you rise in God's esteem by telling a random Muslim sister that her parents' marriage is "illegitimate, astaghfirullah"? What would you have my parents do? Divorce after nearly 35 years of marriage so my mother can find a legitimate spouse, insha'Allah. What is life?

I have long crossed the threshold of feeling the need to get permission for what I do or do not do as a Muslim. This is and has always been between me and God. Is my submission perfect? No, but neither is anybody's. This was my path. Was this the best way? Was this actually what God intended for me? Did I misinterpret the answer to my istikhara and if I had been just a little bit more patient, my actual husband would have come along?

No, my actual husband is here, at my feet, working on a presentation. We have a home and insha'Allah we are building a life. We've done it, it's done, and so God willed it.

And in terms of answers for the single Muslim women who are waiting, as I once did, or searching, as I also once did, for their Muslim mate, I say...I don't have answers. I thought that, whenever I did find love and finally marry, that this would be the thing that defined my faith for the rest of my life. I wasn't wrong about that. But it is less definitive than I imagined. I thought that, from this, I would be able to outline for other women "the way" to do things, but I'm not. My way was highly personal and individual. But, having dated/talked to both Muslim and non-Muslim men, this is what I would say to sisters who may be considering it for the first time:

1) Don't hang around with someone intent on converting you: Nope and nope. I've experienced everything from a Nigerian dude who was intent on trying to sleep with me while saying to my friend, "Ahh, she seems open to Christianity," (and I'm thinking, show me where in the Bible is you trying to sleep with me before marriage OK?) to a pastor friend who was interested in me. In spite of my parents working out, I was generally like, dudes, what are you thinking? My dad is Christian but he's not a pastor and has never tried to convert my mom. My mother tried to convert my dad in the early days and gave up pretty quickly. After having a father who tried to convert me for a while, I decided as a young 20-something, "Nope--only one man in my life is going to try to convert me." Not only is it tiring, but in your spouse, you don't want someone who is not satisfied with you unless you believe and pray as they do, as if your beliefs are less legitimate. That is demoralizing.

2) Find out early where you both stand on sex: I was going to write "where he stands on sex," but it really is a decision for both of you. And when I say sex, I mean everything--sex in premarital relationships vs. waiting until after marriage, and not only that, how you both think of sex. Is sex an act of worship, is sex essential in a relationship, how frequent an essential part of the relationship...? Many "religious" guys of other faiths have a lower threshold for scandal with premarital sex. And, quiet as it's sometimes kept, many Muslims have a lower threshold, too--we're just more tight-lipped about it. If it is important for you, or essential for you, not to have sex prior to marriage, then be upfront about that. Will that weed out a bunch of guys? Yep, because that is no longer a norm for our society. But there are plenty of men who will understand and honor your wishes and be in it with you. ...or, conversely, if you decide, upon thinking about it, that your threshold is lower as well, then think about what that means for your relationship. We are not always the gatekeepers--maybe he's the more conservative one.

3) Talk family planning early and often: If you are planning an interfaith marriage and interfaith family, talk about your kids. Everything is going to be super theoretical until actual little people arrive, but still--talk about how important it is for your kids to follow either faiths. And once the kids arrive, keep talking about it. I am the product of never talking about it, and things got awkward for me as a young adult. Will kids get a taste of both faiths/traditions? Will they be primarily be raised one or the other?

4) Be with someone you can be your authentic self with: I think this was the biggest thing. I had dated Muslim men where I tried to up my practice to a level I was not yet at, because I thought that was what he wanted for me. That was so anxiety-provoking. I was afraid of feeling judged by these men. In my relationship and now in my marriage, I am free to be wherever I am in faith. I had space to figure out my misgivings about my practice. He did not pressure or judge me in one way or the other as I traversed my path.

Mmm...there are probably other things, but these were the big four for me. I think number four was number one for me. Could I have found this in a practicing Muslim man? God knows best. But for where I am right now, authentically--this is where I best am.

Our paths are individual. I pray that we all find the partners best suited for us without sacrificing the essence of our faith. Ameen.

My Own Sadie

As salaam alaikum,

My grandmother passed yesterday night. I think I felt it coming when I couldn't get through singing "Sadie." She was my own Sadie, though she was my grandmother. She was a woman of a different time whose purpose of life was her husband, children, grand-children and great-grandchildren. She lived to see several great-great-grandchildren, alhamdulillah. I learned from her to nurture and love fiercely. She was my model of a hard-working woman of the home and one of my first models of a Muslimah outside of my mother. Even as a little girl, I admired the woman, rising for fajr and continuing her day from there, preparing meals for my grandfather, for me (and my brother, if he was there) and herself, leaving my grandfather breakfast and packing the meals for us as we went to FIS, Flint Islamic School where she taught with my aunt. I don't remember her ever complaining about the work she did around the house, for us, or even so much as groaning. This is how she lived out her chosen destiny, purposefully.

Grandmother did not suffer fools, though, nor did she suffer unruly grandchildren. I was just telling my fiance stories of various happenings in my grandparents house, from running over plastic runners that Grandmother turned over while cleaning, just to hear in my mind her injunction, "Don't run in the house!" as I nursed my hurting feet, to falling from upstairs to downstairs and landing on my but to imagine my Grandmother chastising, "I told you not to play on the stairs!" Another favorite of hers, when a group of cousins congregated in the TV room, was, "Don't y'all close that door!" She was not the coddling grandmother other people had, but I can see it no other way. I had soft in my life. She was my strong when I needed it.

Grandmother had the scoop on all family gossip for most of her life, and now she is delighting to know all the details of things as she transitions, insha'Allah. I miss her, I love her, but I've missed her a long time, through several years of the distance dementia creates, and I am happy that her soul can now be at peace, insha'Allah.

"It Wasn't Meant to Be" Takes New Meaning

Salaam,

"It wasn't meant to be."

Intellectually, I could get with that, but emotionally, I could not. As a several-year sufferer of unrequited love for much of my young adult years, the phrase seemed cruel, a hackneyed trope offered by people who didn't have answers but were well-meaning nonetheless.

Years after getting over the love that never would be, I still couldn't really understand that. Yes, obviously it was not meant to be, because here I am and there he is, living two separate lives, probably never chancing to meet again and, because of Facebook, I know too much.

My last entry shows how I couldn't understand it.

And to be clear, part of me will still wonder. There were so many signs that I interpreted as meaning we would end up together after pointed and plaintive prayers. These signs from hearing a random string quartet practice the wedding march in my dorm to him being down the hall in my friend's dorm, hearing me as I cried. Why would God tease me with these signs if we were, in fact, never meant to be.

Because we weren't. We existed in each others' lives exactly as we should have.

Before I fell for him, I had prayed specifically that I would not do such a thing. I prayed to God not to allow me to fall for a man who was not meant for me. But I did.

Most other prayers I have prayed in my life have been answered, from small things like praying that the rain would let up so I could take pictures for a summer project in high school, to big things like medical school acceptances and residency matches. But my faith remained shaken after the man I prayed for so long would be my future husband ended up to be someone else's.

I used to wonder why, and then for a long time, I gave up. I just didn't think about it. I reasoned, there are probably people who pray for more important things, like being able to feed their child, or to save their dying spouse from the wrath of disease, or any other number of situations who are now sitting on the other side of things, wondering why their prayers weren't answered. For me, the only thing not answered for me is that some dude I had a crush on in college didn't like me back. Big deal.

But then, thinking about the turmoil my fiancé has had to go through because of his family's disapproval of me, I realize something...

...well, for one, it likely would have been several times worse with my college crush. My fiancé has a small family. My college crush had a large family that was apparently invested in him ending up with someone from their own community. And that he did, and their families get along well.

Whereas, my future in-laws will likely have little contact with me...thankfully, as the case were.

I would love to be part of a family that loved me as I feel I deserve to be loved as an excellent future-partner to their beloved son, but it looks like I'm not going to...just as I was prepared was a distinct possibility with my college crush.

I said I was ready for anything back then, now I get to eat my words. It is hard. It's harder to see your fiancé essentially disowned from his family.

But more than realizing that, rationally, it was not meant to be, I also recognize that...sometimes, even if certain traits line up, there is mutual attraction, interest, fascination...whatever...it wasn't meant to be.

Yes, so many other prayers in my life have been answered, and easily. Of course this prayer would be the hardest. Yes, I have a friend who claims she prayed to find a husband and then met her husband the next day, but a lot happened before he became her husband that did not seal that prayer as answered for her. She made it sound easy, but it wasn't.

It's easy when a prayer only involves you, or your personal protection, or something like that. It's easy when a prayer is about a career path, or a housing option, or safety on road or in the air while one travels. It's not easy when a prayer involves a whole other human being who is just as complex as you are, with their own desires, needs and prayers.

The man that you see who you decide must be the future husband of your prayer and desire may have congruent desires but perhaps incongruent needs, for example. People are not ready to order. I have yet to hear anyone say that someone came and was perfectly equipped to be their future spouse when they met them.

So as much as I may have loved my college crush, I could not pray him into being for me. As much as I felt I could "deal with everything going through [his] head," I was never in his head. We existed together in the same realm for just a little bit. His path was other, and I had to steer away. It wasn't meant to be.

Relationship prayers are the hardest to pray and the hardest with which to wait for the answer. The answer is sometimes quite unexpected. Whenever our desires and prayers are directed at a thing that necessarily involves another complete human being, so many things have to line up to make it work. And while certainly nothing is impossible with God, it will take a little bit more time than...driving under a bridge to see the rain stop instantly to allow you to do your high school summer project.

So for me, it wasn't meant to be takes on new meaning. It's no longer hackneyed and frustrating. It's a simple truth. It's not a term of resignation; it reminds me of my submission. Submission to the Truth.  For all I prayed, God knew that my college crush was not actually who I thought he was or what I wanted, and if he was, he knew that I was not what he needed. It was never a prayer unanswered. It was a prayer answered, but I didn't leave space or understanding of that being possibly the answer.

And with the tincture of time and experience and the prospect of assuming a family name of a family that will have nothing to do with me, I see...I come to understand. Love can conquer much but you have to decide if it's worth it.

In terms of the signs I got after pointed prayers...I still don't understand those. Maybe it's like the movie Mr. Nobody, and I could have lived a life where I ended up with my college crush if I took precise actions earlier on, actions I was not ready to take at 19. Maybe that piece has some meaning that I'll uncover later in my life. This little epiphany about the whole situation only took 11 years, after all.

A Career Woman

As salaam alaikum,

This past Sunday, I was busily cleaning my apartment in anticipation of meeting up with my SO after his trip to SF. My place usually lies in shambles because of the time I spend out of it either hanging out on the East Side or fulfilling my many residency responsibilities. When I planned his Sunday return to Seattle, I proposed he meet me at my place before returning to his place to attend a panel on life after residency by recent graduates with perhaps Ethiopian food thereafter. He happily agreed, even before I mentioned that my place would likely be clean when he came.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," he said flatly.

His dead-pan delivery of jokes usually takes me off guard, and I took mild offense before he told me he was just kidding. Even so, I spent much of my Sunday scrubbing and sweeping and vacuuming.

I was putting the finishing touches on my place when my phone rang. I expected it to be him, because it was almost time for us to leave to go to the recent grad panel. I looked up and it was instead one of my co-residents. I was simultaneously excited and crestfallen. One of my OB patients was due, or as wont to say, "one of my ladies" was due, so I thought it was her presenting to triage in labor. That kind of thing throws monkey wrenches into plans.

Instead, I hear that it is my patient who was supposed to be scheduled for c-section in the coming days. She was contracting painfully every 3 minutes.

I think, great, a c-section at least takes place over a finite amount of time, so I can go in and come out 1.5 hours to two hours later. I told my SO this as we adjusted our evening plans. He would go to a movie while I participated in the section.

Long story short, from anesthesia push back, to slowing contractions to a complicated section, I was not out of the hospital until 6.5 hours after that initial call. By this time, my SO drove back to his place, never having seen my sparkling clean apartment, both of us having missed the grad panel and neither of us having Ethiopian food.

In fact, I didn't eat dinner that night because I had nothing prepared and all food places that I would have bothered with were closed.

It was a gratifying section in which baby was fat and healthy and the surgeon commended me for the command I had over closing the incision. What was not gratifying was talking to my SO to find that he was upset with me after my Sunday was thwarted.

I explained to him that I probably didn't have to be there, but my co-resident sold it as if the delivery were imminent and I got there to find that it was pushed back an hour and a half, then another 2.5 hours, and so on. I couldn't easily say to my patient that I wouldn't return after I had essentially promised her in her last three visits that I would be present for the procedure and round on her in the hospital.

The next day, after I apologized again (even though it really wasn't my fault!) and my SO told me that he was going to ask me a question the next day and he wanted me to think it over. I asked him if it were an ultimatum. He told me it wasn't. I really had no idea what he was thinking, what he was really angry about, and what I had done wrong.

I knew he was going to ask it over dinner. So yesterday, after our quesadillas arrived at this Mexican restaurant near his place, he asked me, "How much of a career woman do you see yourself as? I think I know the answer, but I just want to hear it from you."

Really? That was it? All of that build for that question.

So I answered, "Well, you know, babe, I could totally see me taking some time off of my work schedule to spend time at home with children."

"I know you say that, but then things like Sunday happen."

Things like Sunday? What was special about Sunday? I've delivered nearly 30 continuity patients, some of whom have come in times that it interrupts my plans with my SO. He's understood before. Similarly, I've been called in back up at random times.

"I was fine until you said you didn't have to go in," he told me.

Ahh. And therein lies the problem. I said too much.

For him, I didn't have to go in, but I went in, anyway, prioritizing something I didn't have to do over our plans. Even though I explained to him that I didn't have to go in (I never do for continuities), but I promised this patient that I would come to her c-section when it was scheduled for a future date. I didn't have to but I felt obligated. And, more than that, I wanted to be there for a patient I had bonded with throughout her pregnancy.

"I just want to know if, after we're married, I'm eventually going to be seeing you only 1 or 2 times a week."

Really? This is what came of me scrubbing into one c-section, the exact circumstances of which I described to him? Him thinking that suddenly I'm going to become a workaholic who never comes home?

And he thinks there is some definable dichotomy between being a "career woman" and...not, whatever either of those mean.

So I told him, "First of all, babe, career woman is a really antiquated term."

"Really?"

"Yes, but I know what you mean."

So I broke it down for him.

Because, the truth of the matter is, if I could have married and started a family years ago, even as much as 10 years ago, I would have, if the opportunity came along. So it didn't. So I continued with my education. I asked him, if there were such a thing as a dichotomy between me being a working woman and being more domestic, I shouldn't have gone into medicine at all. I should have instead worked small-time or more acceptably domestic jobs until a potential husband came along. But that's not how I roll. So I continued my education and training, all the while knowing that whenever I did marry and have children, I would adapt it into whatever stage and position of life I was in.

Furthermore, I told him, it is hard to say what I will be like when I have children. Life doesn't stop because I plan to have children in the future. It is a fluid position that changes. So while right now I'd love to be involved in many of my continuity patient's deliveries, I recognize that, at some point, family time will take priority.

But that was such a hilarious question to me. If we got married tomorrow and he wanted to start a family right away, I would be game. But in the meantime, life goes on, I have a robust work life with many professional and patient-doctor relationships to maintain as well. I cannot put my life on pause for a course of life that has never been my decision alone to make. 

2014 Retrospective

As salaam alaikum,

As predicted, residency (and life) swallowed me in a way that did not allow me to post (or even write) that often, but that is soon going to be history! I am now a third year resident, and in six months time, I'll be graduating and taking a 3 month break before I start working for real. What I do in those three months are dependent on how much money I save up moonlighting in the next year, but that's another story.

Anyway, for me, the year is hardly over, as my SO is flying down tomorrow to meet my parents, which will get a little notch in my year-in-review, but I figure I may be pretty busy the end of this year so I'd better get in my retrospective now while I'm ahead.

So, this was my 2014, roughly, and maybe not exactly chronologically, but in order of things that stand out to me.

Grandfather: The last time I saw my grandfather fully lucid in this realm was around Christmas of 2013. There was a big ice storm in Flint and surrounding northern communities and it resulted in a prolonged black out. My grandparents were staying at my Uncle Maurice's place because the power was out in their house. My grandfather talked about how much he appreciated what we did for him, an old man, and he started crying. Early this year, he likely had another stroke and went into a fast decline that almost ended in his death in March of this year but ultimately ended in his death early in the morning, July 16, peacefully in his sleep. I love that man with all of my heart and I eagerly but patiently await the day when I hear the rest of his stories in Jannah, iA.

Auntie and Uncle: I met my Nigerian Aunt and Uncle for the first time this year. My uncle, who my father had not seen in over 30 years, and his wife traveled to the United States for the first time and stayed with my family. I cried when I saw the brothers together, reunited. They stayed for four months and I visited with them two weeks out of those four months. I would love to travel with my father to Nigeria one day and visit with the rest of the family. I could say much more about this visit, but that will have to be for another venue.

Sayulita, Nayarit: I still feel like we totally pulled a coup in our residency by taking this trip. For our second-year retreat, instead of the usual long weekend in Leavenworth, we took five days in Mexico with our favorite faculty member in March. It was a coup because those five days did not count towards our paid time off, it was "conference/educational time." So we were paid for five days in which we did maybe 4 hours a day of therapeutic small groups (which were excellent!) and spent the rest of the time as beach bums, wandering around this semi-hidden jewel resort town. I actually got sunburned on this trip. Yes, black people can sunburn. Skin peeled from every exposed surface over the next couple of weeks and I felt like I was molting. So those times I wore sunscreen in the Dominican Republic were not in vain. The 12 of us and our faculty member spent 5 glorious days sharing a house on the hill that overlooked the beach. It was definitely a second bonding point for my classmates and I fell in love with them again.

Jamaica: I had never been to Jamaica, and at first felt conflicting going there to attend a wedding in July, not only of people I had never met before (my SO was best man, and I was his date), but also as the only black person in the party. Yes, I felt conflicted going to a majority black country with a group of white people. This was only the second international trip (Sayulita was the first) that I've made that was not part of a service project. And then to go to a resort where I felt like I may be inherently exploiting the people who work there? It was challenging until I got there and realized that over half of the patrons at this particular resort were black, many of them Jamaican, having conferences or spending a relaxing weekend at the resort. There were also a lot of African Americans there. And I realize that supporting tourism in a country like Jamaica is probably more productive than any of the service projects I carried out in other countries the past, though I still found it polemic. At some point, I finally just let myself relax. I was welcomed by my SO's friend and his wife warmly into their wedding party and was pulled in to do some Serbian dances during the reception (courtesy of the groom's family). Minus the sand flies biting the left side of my body, it was a good time. This is another place I have to go back to. I love going to countries with majority black people!

Stevie Wonder: I attended Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" concert as he toured the country. He actually made a stop in Seattle on December 3. So many performers and performances skip Seattle (like Motown, the Musical), but he came by. I was chief on Family Medicine Service at the time, and though I tried to switch my call days, I ended up on call on the day that our service went from tame to crazy. After that day, we would continue to admit patients and eventually cap out our service. My call days usually saw me staying at least until 8:30pm most days, and this day was no exception...exactly why I wanted to switch my call day so I could make the concert! In the end, I'm glad I didn't switch my call day because Friday (the day I was going to trade out) ended up to be a busier day. The concert started at 8pm, I got out of the hospital at 8:30pm and made it to the concert by 9pm. The people next to me lamented that I had missed "so much," though I got there as he did "Pastime Paradise," and knew that he had much of the album left, though I had missed "Sir Duke." I had heard from my cousins, who went to the concert in Detroit, that it went on for three hours. And Stevie did not disappoint. Our concert went on for four hours, which means I got to jam with Stevie for a full three hours after sliding in an hour late, until midnight! And, after four hours of sleep, I got in to work the next day, saw a full set of patients during my half day in clinic, and realized that age really is just a number. I thought that my days of staying up that late and then being fully functional the next day (without coffee) were behind me. At 29, I surprised myself with the stamina of a 19 year old while working full time. And Stevie, of course, was awesome. He sang each song from the album exactly as it was in the album. And his daughter Aisha Morris was one of his backup singers! And I could go on, but it definitely made my life to see my favorite artist in concert.

Nephew: My best friend from medical school had a baby boy in September, and I got to visit him in November when he was 6 weeks old. I've never witnessed someone I'm that close to have a baby, during those very new periods, someone that I knew before she met her husband when we were both very much single young women. And now seeing her as a mother, watching the transformation she and her husband have made...all I can say is, it's real. It's the only thing that gave my baby fever a pause. Not because of the job they were doing...no, they were doing excellently. It's just that I see that the struggle is real, there is no magical transformation. I was watching them as they were learning and adapting with a newborn. That is how life is, and that is how my life will be when, one day, iA, I have one of my own. Hopefully a girl. I already have some names picked out. Okay, so baby fever was on pause, did not completely go away.

Babies, babies, babies: This was the year of the babies. I think I delivered more than 20 babies this year, most of them being my own patients'. I just delivered one a few days ago, my patient's gorgeous baby girl. I have three more of my own patients due and then my residency adviser cut me off from deliveries. It's just as well. I've more than exceeded the number of continuities I need for graduation. My poor SO is tired of me talking about labor and delivery, and babies. He states that he could probably deliver a baby at this point from my descriptions of it.

Licensed Physician: I took (and passed) Step 3 earlier this year, officially completing USMLE and becoming a licensed physician. Seriously, exam taking in medicine feels like the "Song that Doesn't End." I started medical school and heard about the boards, and then learned about what would be the hardest exam I'd take in my life, disconcertingly named "Step 1." Disconcerting because if there is a step 1, there is probably a step 2, and maybe it goes on. Each year, I learned a little bit more about the exams I was going to be in for. Depending on one's specialty and if they go on to fellowship, there are a whole list of exams besides the USMLE steps that one had to pass to become not only licensed, but also board-certified. As I've chosen family medicine, I have an every-10-year board exam that I will have to pass and certain amount of Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits that I have to keep up with to maintain board certification. The family medicine boards through the ABFM is the last exam I'll take in residency, and the last exam I'll take in life (unless I lose my mind and go for more education or more board certification). But, in February of this year, I took and passed step 3, making me a licensed physician, able to practice independently (thus, moonlighting).

That Full Circle Moment: A couple of weeks ago in clinic, I had one of my first full-circle moments in family medicine. I went into the clinic counseling a pregnant woman on some cramping that she was having. She planned to do her prenatal care elsewhere, so it was going to be a simple visit. As I entered the room and began talking to her, I noticed there were tears in her eyes. She then told me that I was the doctor that told her that her grandfather was dying. Back in my intern year, when I was completing a night float rotation, I led a family meeting at 1am for a family whose beloved grandfather, who I had admitted hours earlier, was passing. It was the defining moment of my residency. I laid myself bare for that family as they looked to me to prognosticate what I couldn't with numbers. People were rolling on the floor, crying. I myself felt completely spent and cried after that interaction. I had never put so much of myself into a patient interaction in residency, and that was a great transition point for me. I actually didn't remember that woman in the sea of family members that were there, but she remembered me. Together, in the exam room, after I reassured her that there was no threat to her pregnancy at present, we remembered her grandfather. I shared with her that my grandfather had also passed that year, so I understood what it felt like to lose someone who had lived a long, complete life but who was still very beloved. We shared that moment and that continuity in a 15 minute visit. And so at the beginning of residency I saw the end of one life I was there at the beginning of another in the same family.

Saturday Thanksgiving: The last three Thanksgivings, I have been working. The first year, I was on the Family Medicine Service and served on a skeleton team that included my seniors and the chief and rounded on all of the patients of the day. My second year, I was on maternal child and covered the team's OB service. This past year, I was again on FMS, this time as chief, and I covered for my interns so they could all have the day off and me and one of the second years covered service for them. My first year, I wanted to prepare a turkey, so I made a full Thanksgiving meal on the day that I had off--Saturday. Since then, I've made Saturday Thanksgiving a small tradition for my residency class. This past year included one of the newest additions to our residency family, one of my co-resident's baby girls.

Death of a Cousin: In January, one of my second cousins lost his life senselessly. He was an anesthesia tec in his hometown in Ohio and he was paged in to work to help with a transplant. His car was in the shop so he couldn't drive there so he walked to catch a bus early in the morning and was robbed and shot dead, in cold blood, his body left in front of the bus stop where it was found shortly thereafter. This Christmas, my cousin, his father, a pastor, is celebrating his life and mourning his only son, the father of his two grandchildren.

A lot more happened this year on the smaller scale that is more tedious to recount. Overall, it was a good year, a year of challenge, growth and transition. And here I find myself.

And here I am.

A Reason to Go

Salaam,

I need to sleep because I need to be up in about 6 hours. But I did want to reflect on this.

I now have a reason to go. Not only to die, but to aim for heaven.

I want to see my grandfather again, and I know that he's there.

And while I want to live a long life, and see my own children and grandchildren, and maybe even great grandchildren like he did, I have no reason to want to be here indefinitely.

He's there, with his father and mother, because as he was dying he called to them. He's there, with my grandmother's parents, and my grandmother will join them. When I hear nostalgic music or remember my childhood, I remember when everything was good and that was when he was in it, when he was a constant, a given, before I knew death, or life, really.

I was listening to Luther Vandross' "A House is Not a Home" and reflected on how many people were alive for the majority of my life so far who have now passed, most of them not at all close to me, and then there was Grandfather.

I think the feeling that he is not gone, that he just exists in another realm, in another space...gives the pull of heaven a little bit more urgency.

I pray that I can be everything he dreamed of for me and more.

And insha'Allah I'll meet up with Grandfather again, someday.

And I won't just feel his essence when I'm quiet or when I listen to New Jack Swing from the early 90s or gut-bucket blues from the 1930s and 40s.

Unassuming

As salaam alaikum,


One of the last things about my grandfather that he lost in the months leading up to his death was his personality. Or, I'm unsure if it was his personality per se or more his unassuming nature. I'm not sure the two are the same. They could be. I'm not sure how much of this is an artifact of my grandfather's upbringing, in a small, Southern Baptist family in the South, how much has to do with growing up during Jim Crow and having to choose deference to white people or face certain death, and how much was just his gentle nature. But my grandfather, in the time I knew him, was very unassuming.

"Oh, don't worry about me, baby." "You don't have to do that." "When you're not busy, could you..." "I'm sorry to bother you, but..."

So while my grandmother, in her heyday, would absolutely dominate all conversation in the room, my grandfather was often silent. Even after his death, my grandmother confided in my mother that she worries that he won't speak up for himself on Judgement Day.

When I learned of grandfather's death, I immediately cried but instantaneously felt a nur that could only come from God, and I was blessed to feel his presence. I knew he was not far, and that he was not suffering, and that he was with God, and it was fine. And it's been fine. And though I missed him at the family gathering after the funeral, the chair that he would occupy inside the house during such gatherings empty, I felt his presence in all of us, his offspring.

And one of the things I either got from him or learned from him is how to be unassuming.

Because I am unassuming in my daily comings and goings. I sometimes don't advocate for myself. I think more than that, I purposefully don't try to stand out in certain situations. Sometimes I feel that I do the spiritual equivalent of shrinking myself as small into a corner as I can. And I don't know how much of this was left-over, learned Muslimah jeito from college, but I try not to be too loud (though I have a naturally resonant voice), too boisterous. I try not to take up too much space, consume too much energy around me.

As a result, I feel as if sometimes, people don't really know me, or that the traits they do know me for are artifacts of the unassuming nature.

Then I worry if I'm not really nice, understanding and a good listener.

I've thought about this more as I've begun to speak up more for myself, let my opinions be known, speak before getting a chance to pour over the intent of my words so much. Sometimes, I don't feel myself when I do this, although it is certainly necessary when assuming an authoritative role, like senior resident, recruitment chief, or later, attending.

I've been thinking about this as I've contemplated my career and the various leadership roles I'd like to take, and as I see that if I don't advocate for myself, few people will. People are ready to assume mediocrity, perhaps in part because my unassuming nature. People are ready to dismiss me or consider me someone not worth knowing.

I'm not bland. I'm not boring. I'm just different. And if I spoke of my interests with as much fervor and pride as some of my friends do, as if all of our base interests are universal or at the least theirs are the ones worth sharing, then I'd be in no way dismissed, ever.

But there's something to be said about humility.

I think there's a balance. One can advocate for themselves and influence their own environment while still being humble and kind. I just have to make sure that when I'm unassuming, it's not to my own detriment while being of little benefit to those around me I'm trying not to offend.

Black Achievement

As salaam alaikum,

I was reminded of this while watching a "Key and Peele" episode in which they compared black college movies with white college movies. White college movies were all about the party and college was a given. Black college movies were all about college as the destination, as if once insurmountable.

I have two cousins doing their studies in my hometown. One is in her first three weeks of graduate school, the other has started as an undergraduate. Both of them had small meltdowns on Facebook over the course of this week, threatening (though purely out of frustration) to drop out of their respective programs.

These are two highly motivated, very intelligent young women who earned their acceptance into their respective programs but who I feel did not have a realistic idea of what they were getting into upon matriculation.

Which is fine. I certainly did not know what I was getting into when I started medical school.

But I recognize something that one of my friends pointed out about black students. I recognize that she made sweeping generalizations and that there is no data, but I found her observations interesting. My friend was a tutor at one of the Harvard residence halls and had students of various ethnicities. She was supposed to be a resource, or at least a gateway to resources for the students. She noticed students of other races and ethnicities either had their own external resources for money and mentorship or they sought her out. Black students, who were the least likely to have outside money or mentors, also did not seek help. Another of my friends, also a tutor, acknowledged the same thing. The two of them believed that this was because, for the black students, college was the destination. They did not plan for the during or the after.

For a lot of black students, college is the destination. Education is the goal, not career.

Though few of these students would admit to matriculating into a school for the sake of college, few of them actually have the tools or insight to apply their education to their career aspiration. And few have the first idea of how to get those tools.

Facebook doesn't help. Facebook for both of my cousins became a place to boast their achievements and make sweeping statements about their broad aspirations, the audience being adoring family and friends who really do admire the ambition but have little to offer. Facebook also became the place of the meltdown, where those same people offer platitudes but no solid mentorship.

I'm not saying that this phenomenon is unique to black students. I'm sure a lot of college students of many backgrounds find themselves in the same place. I'm also not saying it's true of all black college students. But there are some things that ring true for me in my own educational and career trajectory, although, alhamdulillah, I've done well.

But college cannot be the destination. Sometimes, our families, as in black families, only know how to laud college. How's school and how's your grades? That's good, baby.

And that is good, but what are you studying? What classes are you taking for that? Have you been able to shadow or get an internship over the summer for that? How are you using your summers? Who are your mentors? If you don't have any, can you get some? Is there anyone whose career path you'd like to emulate? How does your resume look?

College is not the destination. Sometimes, your first career is not the destination. We should continue to congratulate high-achieving young people, but empty praise is not going to help them when school or training ultimately hits bumps or becomes frustrating.

The destination is not the 4.0. While grades and even grade point can be important depending on what career you are in, the goal is sustainable learning and application.

The destination is not the degree. It's not even the doors opened once you have the degree or the job you ultimately get with your qualifications.

The destination is not walking across the stage, loved ones looking on, pictures cross-posted on Facebook and Instagram, the degree on display in your home.

There are no destinations, just steps along a journey.

And as long as our students continue to set premature destinations and form their study habits, aspirations and life paradigms around these premature endpoints, then yes, there will be frustration, and yes, there will be wasted time, and yes, things will feel insurmountable that don't have to.

So I'm going to try to be there for my cousins and let them know that.

The First Death

Salaam,

My beloved grandfather died on Wednesday. We buried him today. I saw his body beforehand, and I smiled. It held him for so long, but it was so clear, looking at the frame, that this was just a shell, and not at all the man I've loved all 29 years of my life.

I am so happy that he died in his sleep and that he died at home, surrounded by family members. I am so happy that 9 of his 10 children, 30 of his 40 grandchildren and several of his 70 great-grandchildren were able to make it to the funeral, as well as most of his daughter-in-laws, his son-in-law (my father) and several community members.

He left behind my grandmother. They knew each other as children, for 82 years, and were married for 68 years, had 10 children, 40 grandchildren, over 70 great grand children and 3 great-great grandchildren. He converted from Christianity to eventually Islam with his family of 10 and was a founding leader of the Flint, MI Muslim community. He raised three of his grandchildren. Their home was a home for any and all of us when we needed it. I lived with my grandparents for about three months during the summer of 1995 and the winter of 1996 when my mother had medical problems.

My first memories of my grandfather were of the horsey rides on his knee, the string of lollipops he seemed to have an endless supply of, and his sugary coffee. My final memories of him, before his most recent decline, was of climbing up on a step ladder much less stable than he ought have, putting corn cobs in the feeder for the squirrels.

He had a unique way of telling stories, of mimicking people's voices, of making sounds, of playing with babies and making them laugh that is not duplicated on earth right now. He, along with my grandmother, loved children infinitely. They raised children from 1947 to 1998.

And between WWII, the auto plant and the conversion, there's so many stories that I do not know about Grandfather.



At first when he died, when I heard about it, it felt like a part of me died. It felt like a part of my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, it felt like a part of us all died. Like a part of my heart went away. Then, in a matter of minutes, I had a sense of peace and fullness because, even though we can't know know, I was reassured that my grandfather was in Jannah. And more than all of the Qur'an reading I've been doing this month by ajiza, I felt the mercy of God, right then.

It was one of the strongest moments of my faith, and it makes all of the tears that I shed either happy tears or tears of saudade. My grandfather was a staple in my life, like my sustenance, and life will never be the same without him here. And life is not as precious without him here. But I will strive each day towards God, may I be all that Grandfather desired of us, his legacy, his progeny, and even more than he could have imagined.

I love you, Grandfather, and that you are in Jannah makes it even more of a goal for me.

Angry

Salaam,

One day, I got angry. One of my younger cousins posted a picture of her boyfriend on Facebook.

That wasn't why I got angry. It was a cute picture and the guy reminded me of her dad, my first cousin. We often are attracted to men with certain traits like our fathers. That was not my concern.

My concern were all of these likes from family members who do not know this man from Adam. Some of the same baseless likes that my cousin got when she talked about how much she loved the man who, unbeknownst to much of the family, was beating her bloody.

Oh, because that's "black love."

I'm not hating on the entity, "black love." It's never something I specifically aspired to myself, pero bueno...

I was angry because I knew I couldn't post a similar picture of my SO without flack, hate, and promises of being disowned.

Because this isn't black love. This is interracial.

I hate the term swirling, so this is the last time you'll see me write it.

One of my cousins, in person, already asked me, "Why do you post all those pictures on your Facebook with all of those white people?"

I answered, "They are my co-workers." That satisfied him for a moment, but implicit in that question was probably...how about that one guy you seem to be standing close to in a lot of your pictures?

Taking pictures with all of those white people, indeed.

I could hear it now. "What's wrong with a black man?" "Oh, why are you with a *****." I don't even want to imagine the permutations.

And then, I probably scrolled down to another picture of someone with their loving in-laws, and I thought about how my SO was impressed that his mother behaved herself around me, though she's always worried about what people in the Old Country will think of her son being with a black woman.

And I just got angry. Angry then quickly tired.

I wish I could introduce this man to my family without drama. I wish they would welcome him like they welcomed my black cousins-in-law with open arms, call him cousin. I wish I could introduce him to my grandparents without at least one of those grandparents being pained. I wish I could include him in my family.

...that my father already doesn't like him is almost requisite, regardless of his race, hehe.

But I wish...man, I wish...

And I never aspired to black love, but I never aspired to be with a white man, either, precisely because of my family's racism and otherwise baggage that we have with our Nation of Islam roots. I figured if I were with another non-African brown person, they would be too confused to be racist. I'd still get off comments about I obviously haven't been with a black man, blah blah blah, but it'd be more tolerable. Maybe that one uncle wouldn't disown me.

But really...there are too many men in my family who will see it as somehow a personal affront if I don't end up with a black man. Like I'm making a commentary on their worth. No, I make no commentary. My relationship the living manifestation of exactly who desired to marry me. He who did not is not standing next to me right now.

So there.

So my SO won't be called cousin. We may not even have a wedding we can invite the rest of my family to. That makes me angry, but oh well. I love my family enough to recognize there's no changing them.

My Parents' Radical Marriage

Salaam,

On September 15, 1983, surrounded by my maternal grandparents and my Uncle Junior, my parents were married at city hall in Flint. My mother wore a modest, lavender dress, my grandmother's favorite color, and my father wore what I wager was one of the few suits he had at the time. My mother would later tell me that the reason why they married at city hall and that she wore a regular dress was because she knew her father was poor and she did not want to burden him with an expensive wedding, or any wedding at all, apparently.

However, it was also convenient, in the marriage of a Muslim woman to a Christian man, that their ceremony was not at all religious. There was no broom jumping, there was no palm wine. My grandfather did not give his youngest daughter away and my Uncles Donald and Temple were not there to see their youngest brother take a wife. And that's the way my parents wanted it. They often cite my brother's autism for the reason they keep to themselves but I have a feeling they've always been low-key.

And characteristic of the rest of their marriage, my mother's family ignored her requests for little fanfare and threw them a surprise reception after they married. My parents, who sounded very much like hipsters of their time, were gracious and excepted the reception as my father accepted his new family.

My father would travel back to Nigeria the next month and return in April of 1984, just in time to conceive me. He would not travel back to Nigeria in my lifetime.



Pictures from this day are in the front of my favorite photo album in my parents' house. It was my favorite as a child because it was the one where I saw the realization of my birth. It began with pictures of my parents marriage, the reception, my parents in their first apartment and soon transitioned to my mother, several weeks pregnant, her baby shower, and then my newborn pictures. As a child, I loved looking at baby pictures of myself. I was a really cute baby. But I always looked at the album in chronological order, including the three or four pictures in city hall of my parents, exchanging vows, my father accidentally placing the ring on the incorrect finger and my mother laughing, and the kiss with my grandparents clasping their hands and smiling in the background.



Already, their marriage was not typical. It was not in a religious sanctuary, a term my mother would use to describe one of the reasons she and my father chose each other. They didn't need a religious sanctuary to practice their respective faiths, she maintained. She remains un-mosqued as she has been my entire life, praying five times a day alone in the house's prayer room. My father is several years returned to church after never having set foot during all the time I lived at home and through my college years.

It was not surrounded by family and closest friends. It was surrounded by just enough of my mother's family to serve as witnesses--and my Uncle Junior, who, as my senior uncle on my mother's side, has attended nearly every major event in my life, from my birth to my graduation from college.

It was not traditional. My father, who was not raised in Nigerian traditions and couldn't explain them to me if I asked, did not dress in traditional Nigerian clothes on his big day and would not dress that way in the United States for another 30 years. My mother did not wear white. There were no bridesmaids or groomsmen. My mother had no engagement ring when she donned her wedding band. And that was it. Married.

But it was also radical. The Muslim daughter of Muslim parents married a Christian man, with the open approval of her parents, though she never asked for it. A Christian man who grew up sitting at his father's feet during sermons married a Muslim woman in spite of all of the things he believed about the Muslims of the north that were responsible for killing his people before the war. He also didn't seek the approval of his family.

When my mother tells it, she never balked at what my grandparents would think of her marrying a Christian man. She did not ask their permission to travel to Nigeria to visit my father in 1981. She told them, then she went. A woman previously sheltered by the strictest parents I've ever heard of in the name of the Nation of Islam traveled outside of the country for the first time to Nigeria, by herself. She has never asked them what they thought of the whole thing and it hasn't mattered.

My father doesn't tell stories about these things, but I imagine he didn't ask or tell very much. Not only did my mother not meet his family when she traveled to Nigeria (tell me more about that month long trip, Ma), but his family just found out that she is Muslim...two years ago? Over the phone? This tells me that my father did not consult his elder brothers, as my grandparents on that side had already passed.

That the children of two families who were essentially religious entities in their community could pull of an accepted interfaith marriage was pretty remarkable. That neither of these adults were hindered by what their family thought was fantastic. Their marriage exemplifies everything a love marriage can be for a Muslim woman, for an immigrant man.

And unlike various in each set of their co-religionists, they do not wonder if their marriage is valid. And they do not doubt that it is recognized by God.



Besides this very radical aspect of my parents' marriage, the interfaith without asking permission part, it is also otherwise unconventional. It was my mother who proposed to my father. And I believe it went a little something like this:

"Hey! Why don't we get married?"

And three years later, after spending most of that time with the Atlantic between them, they did just that. Prior to their marriage, their courtship face-to-face was 10 months total - 9 months in the United States, 1 month in Nigeria. They succeeded in having the longest long distance courtship I've personally known of.

They were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend they hadn't talked to in years. My mother was instantly taken at how my father was so friendly and outgoing that he talked to the DJ at the party as if he'd known him for years, yet he just met him. I don't know what my father was thinking, but I know that he's always adored my mother, and probably felt some semblance of that then.

They were set up but they had met before. My mother was a secretary at University of Michigan, Flint in the offices of Afro-American and Chicano Studies, where my father's cousin, head of the department, worked. My father would visit his cousin and bow his head toward my mother as he entered the office.

And somehow, this was totally unrelated to them being set up.

I don't know if my father dated previously, but I assume he did. I know my mother did. Her first foray into dating non-black men was another Nigerian who happened to be Chinua Achebe's cousin. The date ended, and Mr. Achebe seemed enthusiastic but I guess that was the last date.

(And to think, I may have been an Achebe...more than happy to be who I am!)

And of course, as goes without saying, their union was intercultural.


 
For all the ways my parents' marriage was radical, unconventional, special, it was also largely ordinary. It's an ordinary story of two people who loved each other and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. It's all about love, as Maurice White sings.

"Bound to fall in love one day. Surely, and you need it!"

They liked each other, then they loved each other, they married, they formed a family.

I don't know what it was about my dad, but he saw my mother transform from being a professional-minded woman who never aspired to have children to a mother who adored and nurtured us without interruption from the days we were born while still developing professionally. And I don't know what it is about my mother, but she anchored my father to a land in which he never intended to stay.

And the rest is history.

Nigerian Parent Invencible

Salaam,

Today, I was reading the wikipedia entry for Chiwetel Ejiofor (an actor I've admired since Dirty Pretty Things) and read about the tragic death of his father in a car accident in Nigeria, while he survived, and my heart sank.

It was the same way I was saddened to hear about a Nigerian woman, single mother in Michigan who was hit by a car as she crossed the street on her way to work and was killed.

If I ever have puff puff again, I'll probably cry over it as I remember how my mother, father and brother ate puff puff prepared by her at the last Nigerian wedding they attended.

I realize I'm really shaken by these deaths more than baseline because they bring my father's mortality into focus. My father is such a strong personality and a strong force in my life, I cannot imagine him suddenly and violently leaving, as in the likes of a car accident. In fact, God forbid! I pray when I do lose my father, it's not in such a way.

You cannot prepare for life and you can't for death but I'm just coming to terms with my grandparents dying. Sometimes I call my parents to make sure they're okay. I'm not ready for them to leave, but who ever is?

I've known a lot of Nigerians in my life...my father, aunties and uncles in that way that unrelated adults are aunties and uncles, and I see them as invincible, illogically so. I don't know if it's the inherent faith and God-fearing nature of so many of them, their ubiquity in my life for so long with little tragedy. It seems like they'd be here forever until they age and move on of natural causes.

There's something so alive, so vital about my father's presence in my life. Something about him that made me more apt to assume he was perfect for so long, even when I knew he was wrong. He's so steadfast in his faith and in his work as I suppose are many a first generation immigrant, like the auntie who made puff puff at the wedding, as I imagine Ejiofor's father may have been, a physician killed as he drove from a wedding in Nigeria.

And my heart sinks because they're not invincible, and I've always known it, but he feels so alive to me even when he's no where near me because of that presence his persona creates, and I'm not ready for it to be violently stripped from this realm. Not yet.



My father has commuted every day, one hour to work and one hour home, since the day after I was born, for 29 years now. I pray for his safe journey to work and safe return home, every day, for the rest of his life.

The Other Side of the Storm

Salaam,

I'm waking up on the other side of the storm. I just completed 5 weeks of inpatient medicine where I was a senior on service. It was great - I learned a ton, I taught a ton, and I have so much more to learn. I passed Step 3, I'm completely done with the USMLE and I'm one step closer to being a sho' nuff doctor. I'm coasting through the rest of second year with all outpatient rotations after being fairly front-loaded.

And my life around me is a bit of a mess.

I'm sure I have some rotting food in my fridge that I'll soon be obligated to touch to throw out, my bathroom is the nastiest I've ever let a bathroom get (I have a low tolerance for bathroom mess), I have one load of laundry left to do, a bunch of clean laundry to hang and a whole new bunch of laundry piling up in my hamper. I have weeks of eating hospital food catching up with me and I'm off my wellness game. I have evaluations to complete, procedures to log, continuities to track, all sorts of things. I basically have my work cut out for me right now.

But...I'm going to take it one step at a time. Tonight, laundry will go unwashed, the tub will keep it's ring, the rotting food that is now frozen in time in my freezer will freeze another day. After clinic, I will go to the gym, I will come back and do a hot oil treatment, shower and shampoo, and then chill the rest of the evening.

Early spring cleaning? I'll save that for Friday after the gym.

I admittedly let myself go during this last block in favor of being a present, active, senior. I had a bunch of awesome interns that made my job easy. And I think I did the right thing. In order to be as fully committed to service as possible as a resident, you have to siphon some energy from other parts of your life sometimes. The part that I didn't want to sacrifice were relationships. So I kept relationships up and running, maintained the bare minimum personal hygiene, and pushed forward on service.

Last night leaving was relatively cathartic. But residency goes on.

Now what? I have a full day of clinic, then I begin our behavioral health block. I look forward to hanging out with my second year class and sorting out the untidiness in my life and faith right now.


On a slightly unrelated note, I only have nightmares when I sleep on my back. Last night, I had a disturbing dream that the world around me was being destroyed by huge bombs. Already, several people had died and the world was left in a state of anarchy and uncertainty. I was back at home, and it was only my mother and I at home at the time. I don't know where my father and brother were. I was sitting at the table, eating a breakfast of mixed fruit (which was dream fruit so it didn't look like real fruit) that I think was good. My mother and I were having a good morning, shrouded in the fact that we were living each moment like we could get killed the next. It was so scary, but I was a full physician at this time and I had to drive out to work. The problem was, I didn't know which route to take. There was a freeway exchange in my dreams (way back...I'm reaching back, now, because I hadn't had a dream about that exit in a while) that I usually avoided taking when leaving Ann Arbor but that I'd have to take because my other route had recently been destroyed.

And although we knew that we could get killed at any moment, our moments were filled with constant prayer and we had faith in God that we would be seen through. And with all of this on my mind, I ate the fruit plate before me and chatted with my mother about the state of the world as the sun shone more brightly than it usually does in Michigan and as the deceptively tranquil day was before us with blue skies.

I woke up, fearing for my life, sleeping on my back with my head to the side, looking at my open closet. Not sure why I only have nightmares when sleeping on my back.

The Ideal

Salaam,

The other day, I was sitting with my SO and we were reflecting on our relationship (1.5 years now), and I can't remember how it came up, but I think I mentioned that I'd grown since the time I'd known him, and that I'm still growing, and I realize the things that I used to want in a relationship I don't actually want and things that I didn't think I wanted I really appreciate having.

He asked me who my ideal SO would be.

And I couldn't answer him. I know he's conscious of the differences in our spirituality and probably wonders if one day I'll wake up and decide I'd rather be with a more-practicing man and leave him on his way, especially when I get to talking about religion (even if I'm bemoaning certain elements). I feel like the answer I gave him would have only upset him.

Because, really, I've never thought long enough to formulate an ideal. My ideal man was always someone who would fit well with me. Someone who would make sense in my life, my practice, with my belief, and that was it. It takes actually being in a relationship to realize how selfish that view is and realize that it's never that simple with another, complex, whole human being at your side that you're relating to.

And just because I've waited and was prayerful and feel like I'm a really good person, doesn't mean I'm going to be the perfect SO. In fact, I spent so many years by myself, I still find myself being self-centered and forcing myself to put myself aside for a little bit to really hear my SO's point of view, his hangups, his problems.

Not that I'm usually a selfish person. Of course I know how to be a good friend and I do this for friends all the time. It's just...I guess I always imagined a relationship while being alone and relatively self-sufficient, so spending time with someone in the flesh who is filling that role after imagining it alone for a while makes it hard to get outside of myself and those imaginings and relate to the person on the other side of the dream.

So I feel like whatever I imagined as the ideal man or the ideal relationship before was fairly one-sided, as if there were a human man out there whose sole purpose in life was to be my eventual husband or something. And of course I never expected someone to be like that, but when one creates an imaginary man in their brains, he doesn't tend to have aspirations unique to your own.

What would be a better soul mate then one who also believed in care for the underserved, here and abroad? Maybe...

The fact is, the possible "ideal" combinations with me as a person are endless, but they are, regardless, combinations that I do not find often in nature. And implicit in my SO's question is his wondering if I'm settling or not, if I can do better or not.

And I guess I could imagine a lot of different types of men. Of late, I think it would be cool to travel to Brazil, specifically to Salvador, and meet some guy at the faculdade who was really into Nigeria, specifically Igbo culture, and therefore be fascinated with me, my family's history, my religion, and things go from there...

But I don't think about those things anymore. I don't construct ideals anymore because I have something real that is good, that works, that is better than I could have imagined in the package that it came in. I have before me a real man who has lived 6 years before me, has lived 33 years independent of me, has dreams and goals that do not involve me, and yet is now intimately interwoven in my life and it just seems silly to prefer to be with an imaginary man of my own making.

Whether or not I could "do better" is I guess up for debate, but I don't think I can fabricate an ideal. Not right now, not while things are so real.

The Business of Being Born

Salaam,

I'm following along with my cousin's induction at a distance. She was excited to go into the hospital yesterday, but I knew all too well what a nightmare inductions from 0 dilation can be. I've been following along, step by step, and now, more than 24 hours into her induction, she is finally getting into a more active labor pattern (wouldn't call her being in active labor yet!).

When she and her mother began to get discouraged when she was 1cm after 12 hours of misoprostol, I assured her that I had managed some women who were inducing over the course of 4 days (I didn't include that some of these women were so tired by the end that they opted for c-section).

To which her mother, my cousin, said, "They were in labor for 4 days?"

To which I answered, "Yes and no." Putting misoprostol in the cervix is not the start of labor. The start of labor is regular, painful contractions and cervical change. So some of those women were not even in latent labor for more than 24 hours after the first cervical maturing agents were given.

My poor cousin, who did a lot of talk on Facebook and elsewhere about her moment, how no one was going to ruin it or force her to take medications...asked for an epidural after the first hour of contractions at 2cm dilated.

Can't say I didn't see that coming...but anyway.

When my time comes in the next 5 years insha'Allah, I will not turn my nose up at an epidural, I'll say that right now! It'll be nice to try natural, but I'm for safe delivery of babies first, and I'm not sure I'd tolerate a foley balloon, either.

Anyway, all of this bustle around the third great-great-grandbaby of my grandparents (my cousin's first granddaughter, my newest first cousin twice removed, hehe) has gotten me excited about my own childbearing prospects.

So I'm just going to say it, categorically, once and for all.

I love babies. I love babies, always have, always have wanted more than I'll perhaps be able to handle, and always looked forward to the day of being a mommy. And ever since the first time that I witnessed childbirth, I've wanted to experience that as well. Yes, the moment that make most women cringe as they watch the head pop out of the introitus, sometimes destroying the perineum in its wake and gushing forth with blood and poop made me say...I want to do that!

I'm continuously bitten by the bug of seeing women around me pregnant and birthing babies. From one of my attendings, one of the former residents of my program, who had glamor shots after she had a successful vaginal delivery of her 6 pound beauty, to my co-resident who recently went to c-section to deliver her surprisingly plump 12-pounder. From the plans of one of my attendings to conceive in the next year to the current 21 week pregnancy of one of my classmate's wives. Not to mention the oodles and oodles of babies my med school classmates have been having.

I can wait my turn!

That is not a typo, haha. I certainly can wait my turn, but it doesn't make me any less excited! I don't feel any less privileged to take part in the birthing process for all of the families that I've delivered, even as that number builds up. Every time I get to deliver a baby is still exciting, though in different ways than it was initially as I build up experience. But I've seen enough people on the other side of things to know that starting a family is no joke in a way I cannot appreciate until I'm there.

So I'll just keep training for now, work on getting married first, and then will make an actual five-year plan...

In the meantime, my cousin just dilated to 5. I have to go to work in an hour in which I will be managing our maternal child service in the afternoon. So I'll be surrounded by all things baby soon enough. For now, this morning, I have to focus on my medicine patients.

But, rest assured, I've been excited about having my own children for years now. I think about having my own children seriously every day, from what they'll look like (with my current SO as the combination) to what I'll name...the girls. Boys names are tough for me.

And having experienced, through friends and patients, the joys and traumas of the conception process, from miscarriages in the second trimester, fetal demises in the third trimester, preterm deliveries, complications, and infertility...I'm ready for parenthood in any form, whether they are my own children or whether I am adopting. Insha'Allah, I'm ready...

...to wait!

When being Black is Tragic

Salaam,

My cousins family buried him last week. He was my second cousin and leaves behind a wife and two small children. I think my cousin, his father, said it best on his Facebook today when he posted, "I asked God why and He said, because I am God!!!"

It reminded me, of course, of Qur'an, 2:30, when God introduced the concept of human beings to the angels:

2:30 (Asad) AND LO! Thy Sustainer said unto the angels: "Behold, I am about to establish upon earth one who shall inherit it." They said: "Wilt Thou place on it such as will spread corruption thereon and shed blood -whereas it is we who extol Thy limitless glory, and praise Thee, and hallow Thy name?" [God] answered: "Verily, I know that which you do not know."

Those were the words of a father, a man of God, struggling to understand why his son was taken away from him, from his mother, from his wife and his children. Those were words of a father, a man of God, who has dedicated his life to preaching a congregation in the way of God and is facing perhaps the hardest thing he ever will in his life.

He is a father who had prominence in his community to call for action and justice sooner than the families of other such slain black men were ever able to and still, the case is wide open. We still don't know.

And yet, so many other black men were killed similarly, senselessly, that week, last year, whatever. I don't know the stats, but there are many, and most of them (like all crimes, regardless of race) were intraracial crimes.

So-called "black-on-black" violence. So-called because most white people are killed by other white people, yet we don't call that white-on-white.

I get tired of the lame-o analyses, "I don't see black people marching when a black person kills another black person." Whoever says that doesn't know any black people and doesn't care to know anything about black people. We are deeply saddened, outraged and crying out for justice each time one of our own is killed. Will we be perhaps louder when there is a case like Trayvon Martin that harkens back to uglier times in the history of our nation? Yes, but that doesn't mean we are silent when our people are killing our own.

And calling these black people who have been killed "my people" and "my own" resonates with me even more now. This was my cousin who was killed. Months before, another one of my cousins killed someone. The cycle of violence, unfortunately, is full circle in my family.

In the wake of MLK's birthday and my realization about how little about the man I know, my realization that school's now been out for me for over a year and half now and anything new I learn I'm really going to have to teach myself, in the wake of my counseling patients who have lost their loved ones in similar, violent ways, I've arrived at a new state of being.

Sometimes, too many times and in too many ways, being black in this country is tragic. My cousin's case is a prime example. He was a man far removed from the streets, well-grounded in his faith, an honest man who worked for a living and lived to serve God. But he was robbed and killed in a neighborhood where he was the more likely target because he was black, by other black people who recognize that our lives are more dispensable in the public eye. Killed over a few bills and the chance to run free to rob another day. Tragic. He married his wife and was a present and loving father and now his children will grow up like so many black children in this country, without a father. Tragic.

So my new state of being? I recognize that being black in this country is often tragic and I want to do my part to help people grieve through those tragedies and to prevent those tragedies, if I can. No one else can do this but us. And when I say us, I mean my family, I mean black people. This is my purpose. This is why I'm still here. And I will work until the day I'm gone from this world at it.

Because the tragedy is greater and more far reaching than innocent lives (and not-so innocent lives) lost to crime. It's greater rates of prematurity, it's our children falling behind in school, it's the poverty of our schools, it's the achievement gap, it's the failings of affirmative action, it's lower university enrollment, it's failure to graduate, it's vacuums in mentorship. It's the prison-industrial complex, it's the war on drugs, it's red-lining and its legacy, it's post-racial assumptions. It's poverty. It's illness, it's greater mortality rates. It's poorer health for black women, our mothers, and it's the multifactorial loss of black men, our fathers.

As a black female physician who plans to do my own part to eat away at the social determinants of health, I plan to do my part, insha'Allah. Because if others are going to disregard human life, then I should be one to revere it.



Why would God place humans on earth, knowing our tendency for killing and corruption? Why are we here? No one has the answer. We are left to the mercy of the All Knowing, and we accept that mercy or we deny it.

I don't know why we're here, but I know it's not just for us to inflict pain on each other. With the potential for great evil there is an even greater potential for great good, and I pray to be one of those vehicles for good.

When Facebook is Tragic

Salaam,

A few years ago, one of my distant cousins added me on Facebook.

Come to find out, he wasn't that distant, at least by my family's standards. He was one of my mother's first cousin. His late father was a bishop and my great uncle, one of my grandmother's 13+ siblings (the plus because she had some half siblings and I never quite know where they were in the count). My memories of this uncle were attending his church at the 1996 family reunion of my grandmother's family.

It's customary for black family reunions to conclude on Sunday, with a church service. And there are so many pastors and preachers and bishops in my extended family, it made sense that it would be at one of the family patriarch's church.

I remember taking a big family picture during that family reunion. At that time, everyone but one of my mother's younger sisters who died in a car accident years before, was alive. I was 11 years old. I was surrounded in people dressed mainly in white, I think, it must have been after church and everyone was dressed in pastels after a summer service. As we were all together, taking that picture that day, I had a virtual out-of-body experience, one of the few times in my life I had one of those. It's what I think heaven must feel like. I was surrounded by generations and generations of my family, my blood, knowing that everyone there was related to me or married to one of my relatives. It was magic, the sun was shining brightly, I didn't have a mosquito bump to scratch on my body, and nothing could have been more perfect than that moment we took a huge portrait.

My cousin and his son were probably in that picture with me. That's probably the only picture we have together.

Anyway, this cousin who friended me on Facebook was a pastor himself, like his late father and his late brother. I didn't remember him specifically, but he knew we were family. I accepted his friendship and proceeded to see all of his updates on facebook. I think we have been Facebook friends for two years. He'll post Bible quotes, posted the progress on the building of his new church, posted many, many pictures of his wife, who he is obviously crazy about, and post pictures of his children. He had two children, a son and a daughter. His son was married with two children, also a son and daughter.

I saw pictures of his grandchildren accompanying him at church, saw updates of his children preaching at his church, saw their family pictures, saw when his daughter's boyfriend proposed, saw pictures of his son with his children. Theirs were just a part of the many smiling faces and family antics that graced my Facebook on a daily basis.

 Seeing how perfect my cousin's family looked, I did wonder about those studies that state that Facebook actually makes us more depressed. No one uploads unsmiling pictures or talks about their struggles that much. That is against social media etiquette, after all, to paint a depressing picture. If you have issues and need help, you seek help in real life and don't bring everyone else down. Facebook is not a venue for you to seek counseling.

So what are you left with, if that's the attitude? Happy, smiling pictures, children with grandparents, videos of cats, pregnant bellies, diplomas, that kind of thing.

It's enough to make me, without an engagement ring on my hand, without my wedding pictures, without a pregnant belly, without babies to play with or grandchildren to give my parents feel a little bit behind at best.

And then, Saturday night, as I was at my SO's house scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed for the day. My SO was out with a friend and I was supposed to go pick him up in a few minutes. In 15 minutes to be exact, so I had time. I scrolled through the newsfeed and saw my cousin's status.

His son had been robbed, shot and killed that morning, and he was asking for prayers.

Immediately, I stopped breathing. I stopped breathing, and I got the same burning, hot taste in the back of my mouth that I do when confronted with my specific phobias, those that I cannot pronounce because it will cause that feeling. But this wasn't one of my specific phobias. I don't have a phobic reaction to thinking of my family being murdered, because it usually does not happen.

My cousin was killed on Saturday, and I found out on Facebook.

I couldn't believe it. I wanted to believe that it was a ill-begotten joke. I wanted to believe that it was maybe like that South African pastor who convinced his congregation to eat grass. In a flash I thought it was maybe my cousin speaking the unspeakable to see how his congregation would come together to support him. But it went on for painful seconds too long. I saw the responses, I knew.

And I couldn't believe it.

I scrolled back through my cousins pictures to see where the entire family had just done a photo shoot weeks before during the Christmas season. And there my cousin was, with his parents and sister, with his sister alone, with his own wife and kids. And that burning continued to drip down my throat. I had to swallow it.

My cousin, who I maybe met once in real life and didn't remember, whose picture I saw at least every week, scrolling through my newsfeed, didn't exist anymore.

He was a good man, provided for his family, was an active member in his father's church, was a believer, and he was. He's not anymore.

I told my cousin that we would pray for his family and that I would pass it on. I called my parents next, since they do not have a Facebook.



I feared picking my SO up that night. I prayed heavily that I keep my focus. I didn't want to die in a car accident. I felt this way because life felt so much more precarious when such a God-fearing young man was murdered so suddenly, his life ending in medias res. I dreamed about my cousin and how his death must have been all night that night. I dreamed of him being given time to run away, him running frantically before being shot in a field.

But this was the city, and there were no fields. He was called into the hospital early to help with a transplant in the wee hours of the morning. His car was in the shop so he took the bus to get there. On his way to the bus stop, someone robbed him, shot him in the chest, and left him for dead. And he died.



Facebook is not the same for me anymore. I can't read an article about calculating your likelihood of dying this year that was posted by one of my friends. Pictures of people's families seem dark now. Like, anyone could die at any time. And life seems more precarious now, even more than it did for me before. As I spoke to my SO about the possibility of continuing to work in inner city community health centers, he cautioned me, saying that he didn't want me to not come home one day.

And usually I would have scoffed at this comment, that I would be fine. But one of our MAs did push an intruder out of her car one day as she was leaving work. And I do walk to a pretty desolate parking lot at the end of work each day. And there have been murders in my neighborhood...

So what happens when Facebook is tragic? You see that life goes on and people are unaware and woefully unable to be empathic when someone loses a family member. And it hurts. There are little bits of light, but every time I see a post from that family, it's like darkness. It's pain, it's grief beyond measure that will not be captured in pictures posted on anyone's wall because no one posts pictures of people crying, of death, of bodies, of blood, of sorrow, of mourning.

And I find myself grieving the death of family, a man I would not have known of if his father had not friended me two years ago on Facebook.