Where My Roots Are

"I expect to swim soon. For now I am content."

I arrived in Virginia on Thursday afternoon, full of airplane sunlight and ginger ale. I remember hating the summers here growing up, the humidity puffing up my Persian hair and wet heat sticky on my skin, but it had been a long time since I’d taken breaths as fresh as these. I was greeted by the bright green of the trees lining my backyard, like how broccoli gets after it’s steamed. My family laughed in the kitchen and my ears tingled, not used to their echo. I underestimated how good it feels to have something to come home to. I have six weeks left but the moment I hugged my parents it made me never want to leave. I am trying to bask in this novelty, the comfort of return.

by Fumi Koike

We just had a pretty heavy thunderstorm here, as I’m writing this. The clouds were dark and the rain fell in sheets against our living room windows. I joked with my parents about how excited I was to return to these east coast summer storms. They laughed, knowing it was my biggest fear growing up. I have learned to appreciate them for the way they wash the world of its stickiness: I know it will be clearer tomorrow, cooler. A chance to start over. I have returned home with brighter eyes, the weight of university work off my shoulders. Of course, I have prepared myself for the inevitable post-grad questions, which I know will exhaust me and make me want to press pause on everything. Sometimes my sisters will be too loud, or someone will cut me off on the highway, or the Starbucks barista will give me whole milk instead of oat and it will make my stomach hurt. But as Jane Hirshfield said in the On Being podcast episode I listened to on the plane: “Part of the spiritual enlargening that we must find our way to… has to do with never feeling rage without feeling, equally, tenderness.”

When I was last home in December, I tested positive for COVID-19 about three days into my visit. I cried a lot, groaned in frustration, complained and complained and complained. I had spent those first days beforehand attempting to show my parents that I carried a regenerated body, one that was entirely patient and gentle and resistant to annoyance and anger. It took one blue line for me to break open, and then I sulked on the couch for ten days. The eldest daughter in me wants to keep all my emotions private, but the writer in me knows that I can’t. I just need to get better at expressing them. On Friday morning, my entire glass shower door shattered as I was about to get in — I’m okay, thank god, but I had a few injuries that required a bit of emotional and physical support. I called my dad and he came home ten minutes later. He helped me cover my hands in bandages as I cried. Then I took a shower in my parents’ room, put on a dress, and drove to Target. Maybe a trip to Target wouldn’t be considered an act of equal tenderness to some, but it felt like one to me. I let the frustration and the festering manifest into something nostalgic and lovely. I floated down the aisles. I paid too much for too little. A girl complimented my dress at the Starbucks as I waited for an oat milk matcha.

Here is Linda Gregg’s “The Letter”:

I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
good care of myself. The weather is perfect.
I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea.
I expect to swim soon. For now I am content.
I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am
doing my best. It reminds me of when I was
sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside
and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something
in me that others receive more naturally.
Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life.
Even my failures in poetry please me.
Time is very different here. It is very good
to be away from public ambition.
I sweep and wash, cook and shop.
Sometimes I go into town in the evening
and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.

I expect a lot from this visit home, in that I don’t expect much. I want to get a lot of sun, I want to hug all my friends, I want to read on the couch in the mornings. I want to laugh with my family and cry with my friends and vice versa. I want to reflect on it all before bed, surrounded by the curated mementos of my adolescence. I am trying to find quiet moments to myself to let these feelings marinate. This morning I read while I had my favorite Persian breakfast — barbari bread, feta, and cardamom tea. Yesterday I drove with the windows down. I feel so much more at ease on my home turf, knowing I have people to wrap my bandages and call me joon, an extra trusted layer underneath me if I fall. But also, perhaps I am sparkling, like leaves in the sun after a night of rain. I hope I can return to London healed and sunkissed.

Further Reading

“Physical Therapy” by Franny Choi But / if even your bones cry / January, dip your sharpest / knife in a jar of raw honey.

“May” by Mary Oliver this sense of well-being, the flourishing / of the physical body—rides / near the hub of the miracle that everything / is a part of

“I allow myself” by Dorothea Grossman I only read my horoscope / by the quiet glow of the marmalade.

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What I Enjoyed This Week

Recent Reads

• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. I can’t even tell you how much I loved this book. It is a heartfelt, tender, slightly ridiculous character study focusing on the butterfly effect of compassion. Backman dissects the human condition in a way that is in itself so very human. I laughed out loud several times (it’s been a while since a book has done that) and I also cried when I finished it (it’s been a while since a book has done that). It’s kind, it’s tragic, and it’s full of love and friendship. It restored my faith in humanity, a little bit. It’s become my favorite book I’ve read so far this year, and probably one of my all-time favorites. Here’s a bit from the last page:

  Perhaps we hurried past each other in a crowd today, and neither of us noticed, and the fibers of your coat brushed against mine for a single moment and then we were gone. I don’t know who you are.

  But when you get home this evening, when this day is over and the night takes us, allow yourself a deep breath. Because we made it through this day as well.

  There’ll be another one along tomorrow.

Other Wonderful Things

• I watched C’mon C’mon (d. Mike Mills) on the plane home and enjoyed it so much. I had to tuck my head into the window so I could cry after finishing it. The root of it is about relationships — between sister and brother, mother and son, uncle and nephew, children to each other and the world. It’s a heartfelt and poignant view of generational understanding and parenting. One of my favorite recent films.

• Harry Styles’ new album Harry’s House. Brilliant. Funky and charismatic, smooth and whimsical. It’s the perfect early summer album for passive listening, and I was so pleasantly surprised. My favorite tracks are “Late Night Talking”, “Satellite”, and “Keep Driving”, with an Honorable Mention for “Matilda”.

• This song and this song. Playlist

Thank you for reading as always.

<3

Tara