"Fasting, eh?" laughed the cake.

So it's Ramadan and I'm home and I'm healthy. I thought fasting this year would be incredibly hard since it's so hot and humid here but it's turning out to be okay. It's not the lack of food that ever concerns me. I can go for hours without food but it's the lack of water that can be rough. Yet in this time of reflection and meditation I can't help but feel like I'm cheating. Being home automatically means I am spoiled when it comes to eating. It makes my life on my own look like an entire year of fasting and one month of indulgence. But as I rationalized to my older sister while my one-year old nephew was throwing his peas on the floor, I do need to keep my body nourished. So I only feel like I'm eating more but it's all for the sake of maintaining my health...and the fact that we have two June birthdays, two July birthdays and two July wedding anniversaries so you MUST have cake and celebrate.

Anas's rainbow birthday cake

Taufiq's birthday cake (homemade Snickers cake...so much sugar and butter)

I am so happy I am able to be home during this time of year because being on my own, I tend to become so tied up in myself. Who am I? What am I doing with my life? But being home makes me a bigger part of something. I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, and I can stretch those roots that have felt like they were lying dormant for so long. I had a sad moment a few weeks back. I came home excited to see my family and friends but one of my main goals this summer was to form a bond with my nephew. When I found out my sister was pregnant, I was walking on Newbury Street in Boston with my younger sister (sorry, Kyla, she couldn't contain it but I kept my mouth shut). When those words came out of my younger sister's mouth, I start to scream with joy and it was all I could think about. It gave me so much to think about when I went home that night. I haven't always had the strongest relationship with my family but something inside me changed. Our family was changing and I wanted to be present and accounted for during that change. I wanted to be a part of my nephew's life so that when he gets older, Kyla and Taufiq have someone they can rely on and Anas can turn to me for advice. Not only that but it made me begin to think about my future and the influence I'll have on my kids and what my potential future husband should be like. I like how my sisters and I turned out. While we're nowhere near perfect, I think we've turned out really well and I hope my future kids have the same views on life. You need to step outside your bubble because the world is a big place and stop trying to impress others but rather impress yourself, have as many adventures as possible but the best bed and the best food is always in the place where people love you the most. I'd like to stress the food part of that sentence because my father and I will cook the same thing and his comes out way better than mine.

Anyway, getting back to my original point, I had a moment of realization that even though I get to spend all this time playing with Anas and teaching him to give high fives (and low ones), he won't remember any of this time we had together. We will still have plenty of Skype dates but I won't be able to hold him and play with him. It really made me sad. I mean he's just getting used to me and doesn't cry when I pick him up.

Sous chef Anas helping in the kitchen

On the note of happiness and self-contentment, I'd like to mention a friend's film project he and his friend are trying to get off the ground. It's called "Pursuing Happiness" and I'm sorry for not being so tech-savvy because I don't know how to embed this video but even if you can't or, let's be honest, don't feel like donating, it's worth a watch.

A peek into the hazard zone that is my childhood bedroom.

Things found while cleaning my room:

• wooden shoe rack covered in band photos and magazine cutouts
• various academic and sports awards
• tons of costume jewelry (and by costume jewelry, just imagine tornado blowing through a 90s Claire's store on its way to my room)
• Key Club stuff (volunteer organization in high school)
• works of classical literature (some of which has yet to be read. I'll get to it)
• clothes I haven't worn since I was 11 yet still fit (or fit even better...I was big snacker)
• lombok pearl tasbih beads (mine?)
• pictures of orangutans 
• the hazmat suit a friend stole from his internship and gave to me
• my midterm paper on the Riot Grrrl movement from American music history class.

I like what all this says about who I am. 

How's the weather, Irving?

Whenever I discuss the weather with someone, I feel like I should be an old man in a fishing boat complaining about kids these days and my trick hip acting up but I think being from the east coast of the U.S. it's a big thing for us because we do have such wacky weather. It's really unpredictable sometimes and can really mess up plans for a day out. Some of my Czech friends make fun of me for commenting on the weather so often but I guess it's kind of part of culture here. As I jokingly said to Jenda, "We all complain about the weather and that's what unites us among all our differences: religions, class, race, sexual orientation, etc. There are no politics involved in the weather."

The weather here at home really makes me miss the predictability of Czech weather. And the lack of humidity. Sure the humidity can make my hair feel like I have an afro of crunchy spaghetti but for someone with a history of asthma, it goes beyond physical appearance. The humidity (no matter what time of year) makes it difficult to breathe and causes me to get a string of migraine headaches. Having a migraine makes it a little difficult to enjoy your vacation, especially when there is a very vocal 11-month old around.

All that aside, I am enjoying my time at home. I get to play with Anas for hours, relax, catch up on reading, do some well-deserved internet surfing, etc. I'm heading up to Boston for the 4th of July. I'll get to visit some friends I haven't seen for a while and hang out in quite possibly my favorite city in the U.S.

Kitschy kitchens and Elvis collector's plates.

I never realized how strange American culture is. Foreign friends have pointed out to me time and time again that I’m so strange, weird, a “hippy hipster lady”, crazy, etc. I never really understood why. I think compared to many Americans I’m quite calm. Yes, I have my own idiosyncrasies but I am far from the most eccentric person in America. Very far. I think I’ve begun to realize why people think this. I was out for a walk at the theater festival with my friend Jenda and I spotted some abandoned tea cups on the ground next to the trash. I thought they were quite pretty and considered picking them up, washing them and taking them home. Of course, Jenda yelled at me, saying they were dirty and anyway they were very kitsch (he also yelled at me for taking a picture of the bird skeleton we came across). Jenda doesn’t understand my fascination with kitsch. I told him, “You say kitsch, hipsters call it vintage.” While I was only joking I realized that it’s actually quite true. I think maybe that because America doesn’t have this long history full of ancient battles and old kings and we don’t have any castles that are thousands of years old, we are making our own history through kitschy items. We have this fascination with uncovering some semi-lost past and making it trendy and cool and exciting. I was pondering this as I was trying to sleep last night and came to some realization but of course I didn't write it down and it doesn't really make sense to me anymore. It was something like this: our obsession with a somewhat meaningless past is like stuffing a twenty-dollar bill in your pocket, forgetting about, and they fishing it out of your jean pocket after washing it and storing it in your closet for two months. It’s a pleasant surprise but we obsess over it and tell the story to our friends over and over. Yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that. Half-asleep logic is weird. 

But we do cling to the things from our recent past in search of some identity that we don’t really have as Americans. Or at least I feel I don't really have as an American. America used to be known as The Great Melting Pot and then morphed into a politically correct salad. I think that’s great for those who maintain their original identities and cultural practices but what about the following generations of those individuals? They don’t fall into the same category as their parents and are forced to form this new identity that is patched together from so many different scraps. It’s kind of a Frankenstein’s monster sort of deal. I guess that means we’re all freaks of nature.