Lightness of Being…

My most exciting memories of Kenya were the summer holidays. When all my uncles, aunts and cousins come streaming down from all over the world to spend their vacations with us. Our house would be rocking, gifts flowing and feasting in abundance.

The women in our household communicated their love for guests through food. They slaughtered goats, rolled chapatis, we served seafood, and made rice, lots of rice. To serve a guest biriyani is to honor them. The more side dishes we had sprawling on the sufra, the more the love that was demonstrated. The women sweated out their love in the kitchen, the men went in and out bringing in groceries and treats (like soda) reserved only for these esteemed members of our family.

As children we looked forward to the influx of people, for more reasons than just food (although the delicacies were much appreciated). The house was thrown into chaos and routines were thrown out the window. The cousins’ reunion was marked by staying up all night long, waking up at the crack of dawn excited for a full day packed with outings and beaches. Many times we would rent a small cottage on the south west coast of Mombasa and squeeze at least 40 plus people in there, which really didn’t matter since most of us stayed in the pool/ocean for most of the day/night.

As children we learned to offer the best we had to others, and share willingly and lovingly in the expansiveness of it all.

These memories of lots of people squeezed into small spaces is something I thought I lost forever when we came to the States. I wouldn’t lie that I initially celebrated the prospect of privacy and independence. Although I was wracked with loneliness and homesickness for the first year, I gradually came to appreciate the long walks, stretches of silence, and taste of solitude for the first time in my life. I even came to like the lack of (many) people in my life, I was fine with my family and my small circle of acquaintances and friends.

I didn’t realize the gradual crusting over of my heart. The way the devastating heartbreak of leaving my loved ones had slowly smoldered into ashy tombs within. I didn’t realize that growing indifference and selfishness had also taken root, until I got married and intimacy created the fault lines within my heart, that would eventually bust open the dam I had forgotten existed.

For our honeymoon we went to Umrah (lesser pilgrimage to Makkah/Madina) and then went back into the folds of all that was familiar yet distant. We spent time in Mombasa, Nairobi, Voi, and Zanzibar. We visited our childhood alleyways and traced the nostalgia of ocean waves and stuffy sleepless tropical nights.

I didn’t realize how much I missed the texture of unbounded generosity, the abundance of being loved wholly without any pretexts or pretensions. I didn’t realize how much I missed people, even the stifling embrace of nosiness and never ending streams of questions.

When we returned to the states, the ache intensified. I moved closer to my family and slowly over the years our family in this part of the world expanded through marriages, immigrations and children.

This holiday season I glanced up one day and my home is rocking again. My uncles, cousins, their children are all flowing in and out. It feels like being in the twilight zone to look outside and wave to Keith (my white neighbor), from our crammed kitchen with teen boys scavenging for food, Sufyan squealing with delight and my mother shouting from upstairs.

I pause to soak it all in. To see the holidays from the vantage point of (of one of the) women. I am cooking, cleaning, preparing; giggling with my aunt, and yelling at the teenagers to keep it down. Then I frown at them for staying up all night, and somehow can’t manage to keep a straight face.

Sufyan is relishing the attention, the love pouring in from all directions. The excitement and delight of many hands playing with him; of toppled routines and extended bedtimes. I am reliving the beauty of those days, through wiser eyes appreciating and giving gratitude for the incredible blessings that pour in with guests.

As I make my way downstairs in the early hours of dawn, I step lightly careful not to wake the sleepers in the living room, on the couches, in the basement, in the guest room, and I bite back the tears of memories gushing the expanse of the Indian Ocean.

We are anticipating even more guests from for Eid into the New Year. Sufyan and Yusuf are incredibly blessed to be able to taste the beauty in the messiness of over-large, noisy, extended families.

I marvel at the cyclical nature of life. And even as I revel in the blanketing love of my family, I still make sure to leave every once in a while for a long solitary walk; or wake up in those small pre-dawn hours to cherish the pauses in between the rhythmic beat of my heart.

Eid Mubarak to you and yours. May your holidays be filled with laughter, love and beautiful memories (amin.)