BaharMeansSpring

Dusk came around quickly, sweeping darkness into the first floor windows of our apartment during the first grade. Nobody bothered to turn on the lights. A black and white television fizzed in between spurts of news reports from a sorely missed country overseas. The screen’s salt and pepper static interrupted a presidential speech before the general population. In the back bedroom, a circle of dolls and stuffed animals exchanged imagined pleasantries over biscuits and tea, blowing candles in celebration of a birthday party that adults pretended to believe. When we were very young, before we moved into a house and started selling lemonade in small paper cups on the concrete, my brother and I would sit up on the second hand couch and look out the windows, sending carefree waves and smiles to strangers that strolled by, through a dirty, gritty screen that separated our lives from the summer flies and the rest of the American world outside.

First grade was the year of Mrs. Fleming, the Flintstones, and the perfection of cursive handwriting on sheets with the dotted line in between. The other girls at school sparkled in new jeans and crisp white canvas shoes. I clashed in plaids and prints, and jeans that didn’t fit. Despite mild protests from her two children, my mother, who later became known to me as the queen of eggplants and third world feminism, allowed us to watch only one daily hour of T.V. Sixty minutes were split between the Flintstones and the Jetsons, between the bedrock past and fantasies of a future society. Tied to a political history, our dim lit apartment seemed to lag behind the year and time of the sun lit American world oustide, moving forward and walking by. Fortunately, the somber mood still left room for rollerskates, ribbons, and monarch butterflies.

In America, we began life in the time of revolution, oil, and Reagan’s policies. We were emotionally exhausted and the fabric of our lives felt used and worn out. Yet at the same time, our family was young and we held in our hands a bouquet of every flower picked from a field of dreams.