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May 23, 2005
smoking is bad for you
I hope I have not tried your patience with my rants the last two days, and the dialogue that was held amongst Shrink Lady, Maryam, and me. We got real deep, took a few scabs away, and will wait for healing and new skins. It is my story and my life, however we all have stories like this, or have heard about them. I hope we shed some lights on the subject of relationships in the family units, and the damages that are sometimes left, of course with no ill intentions from any parties, for in our hearts we all do our best to do right by our loved ones, and we are all products of the environments we are nurtured in.
I thank Shrink Lady, and Maryam for their participations and thoughts.
To some extent writing about such subjects are always taxing on me, but my intention from the begining has been not to have any stones unturned, and not to refuse any questions, just a free flow of ideas.
Although when one threads to these kind of tertories, one is always full of doubts, there is never any intension to hurt any one, but a sort of cleansing of the soul. I was very happy, and had thought that my LiL sis would allow us a different view of the subject and I am greatful to her for her contributions on this. Remember its not the matter of being right or wrong, just observation, from different views of the lives we live, and how our past come to hunt us untill we look it in the eye, and somehow find a way to deal with it. People approach this in different ways, and to a large extent a much more private venues are seeked, but I wellcomed the questions when they came since I am very happy of my stand in life, and feel blessed and greatfull for everything that has brought me to this point.
Saturday night we were all together at Akram's house,and as we usually do, Fafar and I, went outside of the house for a cigarette. It seems, either Kiana saw us, or someone told her where we were going, and before we know it, all the kids were outside looking for us. Kiana found us red handed with cigarettes in our hands, she looked me with pain and hurt in her beautiful eyes, and rushed back to the house. It's funny when we were kids we had to hide from our parents for a smoke, and now we have to hide from our kids. When we went back in Miraneh told me that Kiana had locked herself in the bathroom and was crying. I went to her, she let me in, and sat there in front of me sobbing. "Why did you do that daddy ?", she asked, " why did you smoke, everytime we are at parties you go out with Fafar and probably smoke, right?". I felt guilty and small, I assured her that it was a one time thing and promissed not to do it again. She accepted my promise and forgave me. Whe I came out I had to go through the gunlett of Amin, Steven, Tara, and Leila all pointing their fingers at me , telling me how bad smoking was. It was sobering and funny.
Sunday morning I was talkiing to my mother, and told her about what had hapened with Kiana, she laughed and told me she is lucky that she
had only seen you smoking not anything else. when I asked her why she was saying that she told me a little tale, that how at age seven, she had seen her father for the first time with his second wife in his car. you see before that one of her classmates had told her that " your father has two wives", and she had not believed it, and when she asked her aunt about it, her aunt although knew that was the truth, had denied it. Upon seeing her father with his new wife, she had ran about ten blocks back home while crying, with her maid running after her the whole way. Once home she had gone to her mother and sobbed some more. Of course My Grandmother had heard and knew all about it, but they had tried to keep it away from the kids. I asked my mother, if she ever told her dad then?, she said NO, we were so scared of him that we would not have dared. she also gave me another piece of her memories, once she had graduted from the primary school, she had gone to her father and told him, that she wanted to continue her schooling and go to high school. And he had only taken a look at her, without saying a word, showing his displeasure, and how dare she asks such a question. She told me at that moment she felt that she never deserved to go to high school, that was her worth, just knowing enough to read and write. That was the reason that my mother was so adament in bringing up my sister as independent and as tough as she could, and pushed her to go as far as she could. I thought to myself, we have come a long way, yes we have.
Posted by Idinraha at May 23, 2005 10:22 AM
Comments
Yeah, it was kind of a downer reading that stuff last night, but that's OK. Thank goodness the weekend is over!
Anyway, I'm glad that you have promised your little girl not to smoke again. You know it's bad for you.
Posted by: cycho ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.idinraha.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 23, 2005 02:18 PM
Your mother did what a good mother would do and that was to make sure that her daughter never experienced the same hurt she had as a child. What parents have to realize is that no matter how much they try to make their children strong, they can still get hurt. The best that can be done is giving them all the skills possible, letting them go and just hoping that the best was done.
As for smoking - you did well moving towards not smoking in front of your daughter. Giving up smoking is hard; although I am not much of a smoker having had strep, a sinus infection and bronchitus all in the last five months, the Marlboro Lights on my shelf has never looked so unappealing.
Posted by: ShrinkLady at May 25, 2005 11:16 PM