My inspiration

Every time I come home I am reminded of the amazing women who came before me. I know I have talked about my maternal grandmother before, Granny, and she seems to be poping up a lot lately. Every time my extended family gets together she always comes up. Not only was she the Matriarch of our family but I strongly believe that she has influenced each and every one of us more than we would like to let on. I have been thinking about her a lot lately as I sit and watch TV and knit. I know she would have preferred me to crochet...but sorry Gran knitting just took better than crocheting! When my cousins, Mother, Father and brother and I went out for drinks the other week Granny came up once again but this time we also talked about my Grandfather. My grandfather rarely comes up in casual conversation unless it is related to his drinking problem which eventually killed him in June of 1972. And although we were once again talking about his drinking problems I learned more about him and my Grandmother than I had known before. Granny apparently always said that he was a different man after he came back from the war; he was in the Pacific during World War II. But nonetheless, they had 4 more children. I also learned that in the end he was pretty much forced into early retirement because his drinking was starting to interfere with his work. He was in the medical profession soooooo being drunk on the job really didn't go over well. The day before he died my grandmother found this poem on the bed. (Granny wrote on the side "Found on bed morning of June 7, 1972")

To my dearest:
      Remember me when I am gone away, gone far
                away into the silent land;
      When you can no more hold me by the hand,
                nor I, half turn to go, yet turning stay.
      Remember me when no more, day by day, you
                 tell me of our future that you planned:
      Only remember me; you understand it will be
                  too late for counsel then or prayer
      Yet if you should forget me for a while and
                  afterwards remember, do not grieve:
       For if the darkness and corruption leave a vestige
                  of the thoughts that once I had,
       Better by far you should forget and smile than
                  that you should remember and be sad.
                                         All my love, always, Forbes


For a while we thought that my grandfather had written this poem. But it turns out it was written by a woman, Christina Rossetti at the end of the 19th century. But what I love about this is that we have the original poem he left and you can see the handwriting change. He knew he was dying. And the last line "All my love, always, Forbes" is so sloppy compared to the rest of the poem. You can almost feel how hard it was to write that. He was saying goodbye forever. And thats something I couldn't even imagine doing.

But throughout everything Gran always said that she couldn't wait to see Forbes, my grandfather, again. If anything that just tells you how much she was able to forgive, and move on. Granny lived through a lot. She lived through the depression, and as a result would save EVERYTHING! FYI tin foil should not only be used once everyone. It can be used over and over and over again...even when it starts to turn colors. She had an alcoholic husband, and raised 5 children and supported many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, neighbors and friends.  She found her father dead after he killed himself- Something we never talk about and I have always wondered why. I have also wondered how this effected my grandmother. She was alive for women getting the vote, she went to college when it wasn't fashionable for women to do so, and she held a job for most of her life. Overall I would say she was a pretty amazing person. She saw everything but always had a smile on her face, and a tray full of candy for you when you came to visit.

My paternal grandmother, Grammy, we didn't get to know as well as Granny. She died of dementia when I was only 4 years old I believe. The only real memory I have of her is her holding me but not knowing to let go and I was terrified. Mom like to tell the story that after Grammy's funeral I came up to her and said that we needed to go buy a balloon for Grammy. When Mom asked why I said, "So she can play with it in heaven." What I wanted to do was get a balloon and let go of it for her. I mean we all know the balloons have GPS and can get to their intended recipients! Grammy was an amazing woman herself. Her husband died when my father was 11 and my aunt was 9. This was in 1959 and it wasn't normal to have a working single mother. But she did it anyway. She worked at a shoe store and my Dad was thrown in to the position as the "man of the house". This is probably why he is so stubborn today. I wish I could have gotten to know Grammy more because we are apparently very similar. She used to make my aunt a new dress every week. And I am currently working on a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding next week. She was also a pack rat and so am I! I keep anything with the littlest sentimentality attached. But for the most part she remains a mystery to me. I know my father and aunt have always called her "Mother" never "Mom". Just little things like that. I hope I can find out more! Time to start asking questions.

My last great woman family member that I know about was my great-grandmother, my mother's father's mother. She was also a single parent but at the beginning of the 20th century. Her husband left, I'm not sure if they divorced or just separated. But I know that it was never discussed and my Grandmother didn't know that her husband's father wasn't dead until someone came and told them that he had just died. I believe that's how the story goes at least....correct me on any of this if you are reading and I got it wrong by the way. She raised her boys without a husband and it just amazes me that she was able to do that at the beginning of the 20th century! Did she work? How did she get money? Did they live with family somewhere? Did the boys work to bring home money for the family? This has always been something I have wondered about.

And lastly but surely not least my Mother has been the best support system I ever could have asked for. We have thrown her so many curve balls over the years but she always sticks by us kids. Mom was at every band competition, every band fund raiser, sports fundraiser, concert, game etc. She also at one point was holding 4 jobs, K-Mart, the Bank, Keys Stadium, and Treasurer for the Band Boosters (trust me she wasn't getting payed for it but it took up a TON of time and commitment). My whole life Mom has taught me how to be supportive, how to twirl my hair, how to be a multi-tasker, how to give good massages, how to make perfectly alined  poster boards, how to spell, how to respect everyone, how to drive, how to be a good person, and how to be an amazing mother. Thank you for putting up with my nonsense. And I can't wait to become better friends with you as I get older.

One day I hope that I can make my list of top women in my family. I hope that I will break boundaries, break glass ceilings, break expectations, and set new limits. I'm almost ready to get started. And I know that I have huge shoes to fill considering the women who have come before me. But I am excited.

The Problems with Ignorance

I am loving my summer down at St. Mary's. I am learning so much and gaining tons of experience with artifact conservation, and identification; as well as archaeological practices. I work with an amazing group of people and surprisingly enough the numbers of men and women are almost equal, 8 men 7 women. In a field that historically has been dominated by men it's good to see that women are starting to show up out in the field.

The real reason why I'm writing this though is because I'm irritated and want to talk about an issue that is often pushed aside in the US. Since 2000 we have been engaged in 2 wars. And as a result the only thing that we typically hear about Israel and Palestine are when missiles are fired. When the flotilla incident happened I was happy to see that the world started taking notice of the injustices that are constantly inflicted on the Palestinian people.

As human beings we all are entitled to clean water, food, shelter, medical care, the right to live, and the right to feel safe. I think that we can all agree on this. However, these are the things that are being denied to Palestinians. In Gaza after the Gaza war in 2008 many of the water treatment facilities were destroyed. Israel does not let in cement, for fear that cement will be used to make bombs. And therefore, the treatment plants cannot be rebuilt. Furthermore, Israel has control over the pipelines which move water into Gaza and they have the ability to greatly limit the amount of water enters Gaza. I was trying to find this fact sheet I saw once but I couldn't find it....it gave the break down of what the UN says every human being is entitled to (ie 30 liters of clean water a day) and then next to that it gave the amount of that good which each individual in Gaza receives every day. It was shocking the contrast between the two numbers.

Now Israel is saying that they are letting goods into Gaza. However, in a conversation I had with a friend of mine the other day who lives in Gaza I asked what goods they were actually receiving. (I've learned to not trust news services and if I really want to know what's going on I need to go directly to someone on the ground.) She told me that the goods they are receiving are things that you don't need to live day to day.  For example, ketchup, sewing needles, and makeup. She also said that electricity is getting more spotty every day and if anything since the Flotilla incident things have gotten worse not better as Israel is claiming.

I just hope that one day people will be able to put aside all of the atrocities that each side have inflicted on the other. I do not think that blowing yourself up or planting bombs is the best way for peace. I also do not think that building walls, which have been deemed illegal by the UN, or denying people basic needs is a way for peace.

What will solve this problem is each side recognizing that in the end we are all humans and this humanity is what binds us together. We in the US also need to realize that every news source will not tell the Palestine's side of the story because each year the US gives millions of dollars to Israel so the TV stations would be reprimanded for speaking out against Israel (Israel receives the most assistance over any other country from the US....which doesn't make much sense because they are very well off...what about those third world countries where people don't have running water?) This means that we have the hard job. Seek out atypical news sources. Talk to people who have been to the Middle East. GO to Israel AND Palestine. Ignorance is Fear. If we abolish Ignorance then Fear will also disappear.

Hands

I am in an Arab Women's Autobiographies class and I just finished reading Tete, Mother, and Me by Jean Said Makdisi. In the book Makdisi recounts the lives of her grandmother, mother and herself. While reading this book I was often on the brink of tears because her stories often reminded me of times with my Mother and Grandmother. The book was absolutely wonderful and I would highly recommend it. 

What follows is a short story about my Grandmother. It's pretty sappy so if you don't like sappy I don't advise that you continue reading.

xoxo
~S

Growing up my favorite place to go was to Granny's house. I remember the long weekend days she would keep my siblings and I while our parents were at work. My favorite thing to do was to climb onto her lap, interrupting her constant crocheting, and talking with her. As we talked she would outline the features of my face with her fingertips. She was mesmerized in the shapes of my eyes, the point of my nose,  and the curve of my ear. She would do this for what seemed like forever. Almost subconsciously. Even when I would sit by her on the couch and she would read to me my favorite book The Monster at the End of This Book she would run her fingers around the creese in my lips, and the edge of my chin.

I loved my Grandmothers hands. I loved the fact that you could see her vanes and you could feel her vanes. I would pinch the skin lightly together around the vane and wonder at how her skin would stay peaked after I let go. Her wrinkled hands looked so different from mine.

Just like she would run her fingers over my face I traced my fingers over her hands. I compared the size of my hand to hers. I compared the shape of her ballooned knuckles to mine. Her hands amazed me. Those hands were able to create blankets, and hats with her crocheting. They were able to show so much love with so little effort. They were able to discipline and instill so much fear and respect. Hands are the body part that can connect you with the world and the body part with tells the world your story.

When my Grandmother was in the hospital to get her gull bladder out; I went to visit and crawled into the hospital bed with her. I laid next to her the entire time and she just ran her fingers through my hair. No words had to be said and I felt completely safe and completely loved.

At Granny's viewing I went up to the casket and saw how her hands were so wrong. The embalming fluid made them too flat, the wrinkles were all gone. But none the less, I stood there and traced the outline of her fingers one more time. I felt what once were vanes full of blood still make small bumps under her now smooth skin. I held her hand and was able to gain peace from those hands that had always comforted me in the past.

But this was my relationship with my grandmother's hands. What Teta, Mother, and Me made me wonder is what did her hands do before they were my grandmother's hands? What were they like as a farm girl waking up with the sun to milk the cows? Did her palms get sweaty the first time she held hands with a boy? Were her hands as comforting to the people she nursed in the hospital as they were to me when I was sick? What were her hands like as a girl, a sister, a daughter, a mother, an aunt, a lover, a friend? Did my other cousins experience the same hands that I did? Did my aunts and uncles get the same attention from her hands that I did?

There are so many questions I always wish I could ask her. But I will never have the opportunity.

Love you Gran!

We need to chat

Things work a lot differently here in Cairo. To put it eloquently...time here is not something that you see on a clock. It cannot be measured. It is in the sky. Especially with it being Ramadan right now everyone looks up at the sky to see when the sun will rise to stop eating, and when the sun will set to start their feasts. Ramadan is never a Grecian calendar month; it is a lunar month. It begins with the moon disappears and ends when it fades away again.

So yeah I know this sounds pretty and cool and all but what I am trying to get at is a minute...in no way means an American minute. Here 1 minute=15 minutes and tomorrow means 3 days from now. It was annoying at first. Then I thought it was kinda adorable. (In the cliche oh look at how relaxed their culture is compared to the GO GO GO type of lifestyle they have in the United States.) But it has become annoying again.

WARNING here comes the part where I vent so if you don't want to here me complain then stop reading!

So I got here and my door didn't close. It took them 4 days to make that happen.

Then when my door closed I couldn't open it with my ID. It took them 3 days to make that happen.

Today I forgot my phone in a classroom. I asked 6 security guards to open the door for me so I could go in and get it. NONE OF THEM HAD KEYS and the guy with keys wasn't coming back until after Iftar (8:30). But I did eventually get it back.

Okay thats my time rant. On to other subjects.

Also they suggested that the international students bring travelers checks with them....but there is no place to cash them on campus (the bank wont do it) and so I don't know what to do.

The fire alarm keeps going off EVERYDAY (a few times it went off in the middle of the night....the night before classes started it went off at 2 am). But they have people come and fix it every day with no avail.

Until two days ago the fire alarms all chirped in our rooms. Then after the alarm went off at 2 am the other day they started again. (They just stopped chirping today at 4 o'clock! YAY)

Then the school sent out two different and conflicting Ramadan schedules (we need a different schedule to accommodate Iftar). Which left both students and PROFESSORS confused about when classes even started. Today I waited for 30 min before my professor came because he had the wrong time for that class.

I went to add Intro to Political Science today because I need it to graduate and I figured why not take it here since their Poli Sci department is awesome. But the women who helped me was (pardon my language) but she was a bitch. She told me that I could not take the course because it was a 100 level course and I was a Junior and only Freshman could take them. (and she wouldn't even listen to me when I said that I needed the class and my school would accept it for credit.) Then asked me what my major was and suggested a class. I asked what it was about and she THREW the course catalogue at me and told me, "Look it up yourself! AND MAKE IT QUICK!". I just said yes to the class. But I got back to my room and e-mailed my school and they said it wouldn't count as the poli sci class that I need to take to graduate. So the wonderful women at SMCM who takes care of credit transfers wrote a letter for me to show AUC saying that I need this class. I really hope they let me in!!!!

(All I know is that I can be REALLY grateful that I don't ride a bus...or this list would be MUCH longer!!!)

I really love St. Mary's so much right now! This place is beautiful and looks amazing. But it can't function! (I mean even the professors didn't know what was going on!!!!!!) A few problems are excusable. Everyone makes mistakes. But really look at this list! How can this many things go wrong when I have only been here for ten days. I really hope things get better. I have faith that they will when classes get started. But if this continues I don't know if I can take it.

~S