Skip to main content

The Laid Back Canadians Are Comin'!

My parents arrived for a visit with the Urbans last night. 

They have been cramped for time lately, what with them being busy, hobbyist, social butterfly type people.  But finally all the stars aligned and they announced that they would come for a quick visit.  And in true Persian fashion, they decided to drive over from Vancouver as road trips are So Much Fun. 

Yes, as you guessed, my parents are not Type A's like us Urbans. 

While they enjoyed the scenery in Washington and Oregon and Northern California in their relaxed, tip-toeing fashion, chit chatting and enjoying farm fresh peaches they picked up along the way, we I counted the hours and the miles...  

When they called me from a French restaurant in Eugene, Oregon on their "Pit Stop", to let me know of the delicious Muscle dish and Pomme Frites they had just enjoyed, I had to resort to deep diaphragmic yoga breathing to stop myself from rushing them back into the car and on the the road.  Oh, and by the way, does a Pit Stop at a French Restaurant really qualify as a PIT STOP?   No Way Jose!

The only antacid to my horrible anxiety is constantly reminding myself of how much my parents ENJOY life and how their disregard for schedules and time tables will hopefully pay dividends in the end, in a long and healthy life.  For them that is :)

The Urban Bruschetta: Heirloom tomatoes, Basil, Lime Juice, Olive Oil, Feta on Herbed Focaccia

And once they arrived, the fun finally begins.  The Hugs.  The Kisses.  The Food.  The Cold Beers.  The late night Wine Bottles.  The Loud Laughter and the Louder Debates.

And above all my girl is literally over the moon.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FORTY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS AND FORTY DAYS

My life and the life of every Iranian I know,  is bookended by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It doesn't matter that I was barely old enough to remember this historic event or that I spent the decades that followed it, far far away from Iran, the Revolution of 1979 is a heavy, tacky, cruel bookend that defines who we used to be, who we are and the recurring nightmares and dreams we’ve had for 43 years.  I can pinpoint with certainty the exact month after which a general feeling of displacement settled like sticky dust all over me, my family, my classroom, my teachers, our closest friends, our home, our city… In the years and decades that followed, I never experienced another event that brought such a magnitude of change to the nucleus of life.   Not in Iran, and definitely not after a whole life lived outside of Iran.  Perhaps only recently, the experience of the Trump years and the Covid-19 pandemic, the significant fear, change and frustration that both events brought to our col

On Donald Trump, Crunchy Bananas and our Children... A "How To" on keeping up Spirits and Sanity

The other morning at breakfast, my four year old looked, yet again somberly, at the breakfast before her.  Despite having enthusiastically selected a hodgepodge of liberally salted hard boiled egg whites on the side of toasted hamburger buns, strawberries and vanilla yogurt and a cup of milk, she still could not bring herself to enjoy her breakfast.  Her face was wrinkled, as was mine with exasperation from yet another failed attempt at assembling a palatable breakfast for my picky eater. This one, she is quite the philosopher.  And before I could ask her why she wasn't eating, she said: "Two Things!"  Holding up two tiny fingers.  "The smells of these foods I picked, don't go with each other! And I wish Donald Trump would magically become Hillary Clinton, and the word (world) would be GREAT again".     Despite our best efforts to protect our children from the anxiety of these times, they are alert and picking up on the mood (and the lingo) in the wor

Safa

I have always loved words.  The way some people love shiny new objects.  As soon as I heard a new word, a word that captured my imagination, my energy, my hundreds of unnamed inner thoughts and feelings, I would latch on to it with fearceness, joy and curiosity.  I have also always been intrigued by how regular old words can be used in an unexpected context and evoke bursts of unexpected feelings in the listener, such as laughter, anticipation or tears.  I would search for those words coming out of the mouths of everyone around me, and mentally catalog them like a dutiful librarian, and await the opportunity to say the words with my own mouth out loud to an audience, or better yet use it in an essay where the teacher could grade it, get a kick out of it, or read it to the whole class.      As a child I always loved the Persian word Safa .   For one thing the word sounds so simple, yet sophisticated and beautiful, and for another, each of my memories of hearing this word is stored in th