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Early Friday Morning Ruminations

The week is almost over, which means that our guy will be home soon.  

This morning was another nice and early morning for us, since my girl had called me from her room at 4:30 am to say "Mommy I wanna sleep witch you".  

Los Altos looked lovely on this over cast morning.  So I packed up the UrbanToddler into her stroller, some time soon after light came up, with a tall cup of warm milk, and we went for a long walk.  


As we were walking and enjoying the crisp autumn air, reflections were floating in and out of my head.  

On how Mr. Urban and I have both lived longer in North America than in our birth country of Iran.  How we both have a deep love and appreciation for our Persian culture, food and language, while our adopted North American culture is second nature to us.  How we think and dream in English, but love telling jokes and reciting poetry in Farsi.  How we find reading novels, blogs, and business documents in English comforting, but we also find that we can sing along to a Persian song we haven't even heard before. 


Savoring the Persian Empire at NY's  Metropolitan Museum


How I can truly say that I love being Persian as much as I love being a North American (and I say North American because I grew up in Canada and I now live in America, and I feel I belong to both places, and both places belong to me...). 

I reflected on when we had our little girl, how there was an unspoken understanding between Mr. Urban and I that she will be a first generation American among us.  That although we'd love to share her Persian heritage, language and culture with her, we want her to grow up feeling one hundred percent at home on the little piece of earth we are standing on right now.  How we want her feeling patriotic towards the place she was born in and she will grow up in, yet proud of her background, and the country that her parents carry around in their hearts every day.  How we hope to instill an appreciation for Persian poetry, hospitality, food, language and history.  To feel enriched by it and not weighed down by it.    How do you think she ended up with an English name like UrbanToddler? 
 
And yet, how often do we see our girl do things that we attribute to her Persian-ness...  

But then when I think of our Persian-ness, isn't that just our human-ness?  I dunno... its too early in the morning.
 
Like when I was roasting chicken breasts the other day and my neighbor commented on the smell of lovely Persian food coming from the house...   I told him its just chicken with salt and pepper, he laughed and winked, like he knew something I didn't... 


Each time we are walking through the streets of Los Altos, I am amazed at how much they are reminiscent of streets of Tehran. 


And then we got to our beloved coffee & chocolate milk shop... and so I stepped out of my busy, sleep deprived head.


Here's to a fun Halloween weekend, where ever you are!

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