Mamu and Daddy’s Departure…

P’s family is getting ready to leave. They originally planned to depart on September 26^th, but Mamu really wanted to get home to start organizing the house for Dashain, and they moved their tickets up to Sunday night (Sept 18^th).

They have been with us for twelve weeks.

Wow, I had to recount because I couldn’t believe it when I first counted. That time went super fast.

I was nervous before they came. I hadn’t had bad experiences with them before, but the idea of having my new in-laws live with me full time for such a long time felt daunting, or at least a bit overwhelming. But all went really well. I actually feel a lot closer to them than I did before, particularly Mamu, whom I get a big kick out of and really enjoy.

The last time P’s family visited us it was for five weeks back in 2008. P, myself, P’s brother, P’s cousin MK and P’s cousin’s boyfriend MS dropped them (Mamu, Daddy and MK’s mother J Phupu) off at the airport. We sat together for a while, and eventually it was time for them to go through the security gates. Mamu and J Phupu were crying, but Mamu was an absolute wreck. She was sobbing and was almost too upset to coherently find her way through the security line, and Daddy had to lead her along. When they reached KTM P’s dad called to inform us of their safe arrival, and said Mamu and J Phupu cried most of the plane ride home.

After such a dramatic departure last time, you might wonder if Mamu will equal, if not surpass, her level of anguish after staying with us for twelve weeks.

But I don’t think so. Perhaps Mamu will shed a tear or two, but I don’t think there will be too many frowns or too much sadness this time around.

Because…

We will be following them to Kathmandu next Friday.

Surprise!

Ten “Mamu-isms”

P and I were talking the other night and I said that Mamu had told me that P had “been ‘crying’ a lot lately.”

“That’s Mamu-speak for ‘complain’” I added.

“Are you some sort of ‘Mamu expert’ now?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think I speak enough ‘Mamu’ to get by.”

When one first meets Mamu she comes across as very shy and quiet. She will sit in a chair and smile (she smiles more with her eyes than her lips) and nod, but won’t say much. Either that or she will busy herself in the kitchen, out of sight, preparing snacks and drinks for guests.

But once she feels comfortable with you, she can really open up. She is one of those people who are pretty funny and memorable, not intentionally, but just by the noises she makes and the things that she says.

Mamu and I have been speaking largely in English during her visit. Short sentences with simple words, often repeated, slowly spoken, with an occasional Nepali word mixed in. If only more people would speak Nepali to me in a similar way (instead of rambling or fast sentences), I might be more successful.

It’s not just the words she uses, Mamu often accompanies her expressions, stories and questions with sound effects. Even when speaking Nepali. This adds to her funniness.

For example, there are several trains that go by our apartment in the evening and the first week or two she stayed with us the sound of the passing train would often wake her up and disturb her in the night. In the morning after I’d asked, “Mamu, how did you sleep?” she would answer,

“Ehhh, tam tam tam, grrng, what to do?” (‘what to do?’ is often accompanied by a hand gesture where she straightens her thumb and index finger and curls her other fingers and rolls her hand palm down to palm up)

Or, mistrustful of dogs, at the beginning of her stay she would warn us about our dog Sampson, “wild animals, arrr arrr grrr, poison teeth, never trust” (also accompanied by hand gestures of claws scratching or fangs biting).

With P’s parents’ departure date nearing, I thought it would be fun to list some of her most often used sayings:

Numbers 1 and 2 almost go without mention—

“What to do?” and “Not our habit”

“What to do” is pretty self-explanatory. “Not our habit” means “I’m not used to this” and is used as an explanation or excuse as to why she doesn’t like something (usually food). It’s become useful because now I can also pull out the, “not our habit” in defense of my rice intake.

3) “I eat everything” (sometimes, “My Mudder [mother] say, ‘I eat everything’”), her way of saying “I’m flexible, I won’t be picky” even though it’s not true in the slightest. It can be quite tough to feed Mamu at a restaurant on the road. On her “not our habit list” I have–all salads, most uncooked or not fully cooked vegetables, marinara sauce, cheese sauces, cinnamon, celery (even if fully cooked), food made with eggs (like cakes, breads), pizza, coffee, things with “a Chinese smell,” most cold foods and ice cubes.

We took her to a Vietnamese restaurant over the weekend and she was shocked that the waitress served us cold food, never mind that summer rolls are always cold. She touched each roll with a shocked expression, “chiso, chiso, all are chiso?”

“I told you they wouldn’t like them” P said.

“But Mamu… they are so good! :(” –C

4) “What you eat?” As soon as I walk in the door from work everyday I encounter Mamu in the kitchen, ready to feed me a snack. When I wake up in the morning Mamu asks, “What you eat?” (on a weekend morning she will add, “Maple?” which is what she and Daddy have started calling waffles because of the maple syrup I like to put on them), she asks me, “what you eat?” when inquiring about my lunch at work, and will ask “what you eat?” to see what my thoughts are for the dinner menu. Last night I heard she and Daddy on the phone with P’s brother, and the first question they each asked when they put the phone to their ear was, “Ke khane?” which is the same question in Nepali. Not eating in Nepali culture is akin to blasphemy. I worry someday my kids will be as large as an apartment block.

5) “Sufficient?” I try to use small simple words when talking with Mamu, but sometimes she busts out with more complicated words (like last night she asked, “Duplicate?” and I thought, “woah, where did that come from?”) But “sufficient” is one that she uses a lot and she usually uses it to mean “enough?” as in “did I give you enough rice?” or “do we have enough potatoes?” (as she puts two heaping spoons of rice on my plate and asks, “sufficient?” or picks up a five pound bag of potatoes at the grocery store and asks, “sufficient?”)

6) “Ehhhh,” Mamu uses this enough as well that I had to make it an expression. It’s a way she shows disappointment, like when I respond, “oh Mamu, too much rice for me” and scrape some of the two heaping spoons of rice back into the rice cooker, she will in turn respond by scrunch her face and saying, “ehhhhh.” She says “ehhh” to loud trains, “ehhhh” to people coming over without being invited, and “ehhhh” to other general frustrations– like Daddy wanting to stay in the US until the last minute before Dashain, and she wanting to go home early to clean the house and prepare food for the festival—“ehhh, Daddy does not know. He play cards for Dashain, I cook. A lot of work.”

7) “Crying” as I said earlier, this generally means “complain” or “asks for a lot” usually accompanied by an “ehhh.” Often she says, “Ehhhh, Kaka Bua [P’s grandfather] is crying crying, ‘Where is buhari [daughter-in-law]? Where is son?’” (Mamu is P’s grandfather’s main caregiver in Nepal, and he is missing them a lot while they are here with us in the US, it’s another one of the main reasons Mamu is ready to go home, and has been pushing to leave for some time now). She also says it when talking about Daddy, “In Nepal, no roti… Daddy is crying every day for rice” (Mamu likes making the two of us frozen roti from the Indian grocery store, because she also likes roti and they are cheap and quick to make here, but often in KTM in a house of rice eaters– Daddy and Kakabua– she doesn’t get the chance.)

Recently she mentioned that relatives back in Nepal have been “crying” since our wedding was in the US, they want to know when the wedding party will be for those back in Nepal.

8) “Yesterday” and “Tomorrow” in Mamu-speak these words mean the opposite. Daddy used to correct her, but she consistently makes the mistake so often, that now when she says “yesterday” we know she means tomorrow and vice-versa. She often also confuses “he” and “she” and will sometimes refer to P as “she.”

9) “Your favorite?” is Mamu’s way of asking if you like something. To me it means something you like the most—as in, “my favorite color is green” but to Mamu it means something you enjoy such as, “I like this salwaar kameez”

10) “Oh-kay” Is something Mamu says that doesn’t really mean anything. Often I’ll ask her to do something and she will say “Oh-kay” and keep doing something else. For instance, every night we sit down to eat dinner, and Mamu and Daddy eat so quickly, I’ve hardly started by the time they are done, and Mamu is quick to jump up and take the dishes to the sink and start cleaning. Every night (literally) I have to tell her, “Mamu no, please leave the dishes. I will do. You cooked, let me clean up.” She will call out from the kitchen “Oh-kay, oh-kay, oh-kay” but will continue cleaning. So I have to call again, “Mamu, come please, come sit with us, we miss you.” And she calls back “Oh-kay. Oh-kay com-ing” and still doesn’t come. I’ll get up and go to the kitchen and say, “Mamu leave that, please, come.”  “Oh-kay, oh-kay” but still nothing. So I try to pick up the extra dishes and gently nudge her aside and start cleaning myself, and she says, “Oh-kay, you eat, I finish.” So I sit back down, there is only so much one can do.

There are plenty of other interesting things Mamu says, but these are the only ones that stick out in my mind at the moment. They give you a nice flavor of what taking to Mamu is like.

Daddy’s New Collection

At the end of July P and I headed south with Mamu and Daddy so that we could attend our friends’ wedding. Along the way, as we usually do when traveling south, we stopped in Connecticut at our friends R and S’s abode, had some dinner and spent the night.

During that brief stopover S acted as a bit of inspiration to Daddy.

Over the years S has been collecting coffee mugs, generally from places that he has visited, but sometimes he will try to bring back a mug from a place that has some special significance. For instance, he sweet talked the owner of the venue where P and I got married so that he could bring home a mug with the venue name on it.

Anyway, he has quite a number of them now, and has them lined up on a shelf in his apartment. Daddy must have spotted these, and thought it was a great idea, because shortly thereafter he was on a mission–

Collect every mug he can find.

It has been little over a month now, and he has about 14. He even bought one from the apple picking orchard we went to over the weekend (how “New England” of us), although rather than “____ Apple Orchard”  he chose a mug from a hodgepodge heap in the back of the orchard shop that said “Excalibur Hotel, Las Vegas Nevada.”

I think Daddy is a little unclear whether he wants to collect mugs from every place he has been/has a connection to, or if he interested in having mugs from interesting places regardless of whether he has been there or not.

Every time he gets a new mug he cleans it out very meticulously, then polishes it, and wraps it in tissue paper. His goal is to find a small box for each, but not every place gives him a box. He discovered recently that the canned rosgolla sweets from the Indian grocery store come in a box that is the perfect size for mugs, and joked that we should eat a lot of rosgolla between now and when they depart, however I am not volunteering to eat 14 boxes worth of Bengali sweets before the end of the month.

When I tease Mamu about what they are going to do with all these new souvenirs– American coffee mugs are much too big for tea drinking back in Nepal, so I know that these new pieces are just for show– she shakes her head, “Ehhh, I don’t know. Daddy wants, what to do?”

I’m glad he found a new hobby while traveling in the US. The next time P and I travel somewhere interesting, we can bring him back a mug.

* I also have a collection, that I’ve been adding to since I was a little kid. My collection is on display on a shelf in the room where P’s parents are staying in our apartment (I’ll write about it at another time). So perhaps the “collecting something” trend was also partially inspired by me?

Sneaky Mamu

I should preface this story with the fact that my mother-in-law is a small woman in her early sixties. I’m about five foot seven, and she only stands about as tall as my neck. She has a round, tan face with spectacles, pulls her medium length hair back in a jewel clipped ponytail, and always always wears salwar kameez, tikka, pote, and two glass bangles–one on each arm.

While we were held up in the house during Hurricane Irene, Mamu told P and I a story from when she and Daddy were in Philadelphia visiting P’s brother.

Apparently there is a Trader Joe’s (or “Joe’s Trader” as Mamu kept calling it) grocery store somewhere near P’s brother’s apartment, and Mamu and Daddy would occasionally walk over during the day while U was at work and look for vegetables.

Trader Joe’s generally has a sample station where customers can go up and try a new product or taste test something in the store. I guess one day Mamu and Daddy went up one too many times, and were scolded by the person manning the station. As Mamu put it:

“Daddy ask the man, ‘Can I take one more?’ and the man say… ‘No!’… but I don’t ask, I take one extra…” then she giggled.

We also thought the story was funny… Mamu sneaking extra portions when the sample man was telling Daddy no.

Then today we stopped at our local Trader Joe’s on the way back from the Indian grocery store so I could pick up some olive oil. We walked around the store and Mamu spotted the sample station. She walked up to check out what was being offered, and was sad to see they were giving samples of chicken burgers with an Italian/balsamic dressing. “We are banned today,” she said, meaning we vegetarians couldn’t take the sample. So Daddy and P each took a sample and we started walking down another aisle.

Daddy must have said something to her, or else Mamu has a rebellious streak, but a little while later she quietly took my arm an whispered. “Come, Come…You, me… we take sample and give to P and Daddy. We are banned but the man does not know we give away.”

So Mamu and I casually walked up to the sample station. I asked, “So what do we have? Chicken burgers? Nice…” and we each took a sample, then we walked down the aisle and around the corner to P and Daddy. Mamu had a conspiratorial grin on her face.

“Mamu! You are a sneaky rebel!” I said.

“Me? No.” She answered, dare I say, with a twinkle in her eye.

“Not Our Habit” Pasta Dinner

Maybe I’m a little sensitive after coming off of four days of international student orientation where “American food” was a major criticism—in discussions with the students on what they thought the biggest challenges would be in transitioning to life in Massachusetts “American food” was targeted again and again… “American food is so tasteless.”… “It has no flavor”… “American food is basically pizza and hamburgers”—

But do any of you sometimes feel like standing up and yelling, “Hey! There’s nothing wrong with my food!”

I get it—there is a big difference between different types of cuisine, and when you are used to one type of cuisine over another it can be hard to transition, but I feel like I try a lot when it comes to food (minus meat), and it is disappointing to me when others don’t seem to make the same effort.

I’ve heard the arguments before—parents are older and set in their ways, you can’t expect them to change, you probably wouldn’t do/try new things when you are their age. I guess I’d answer that I hope I’d still be ready to try new things even if I am my parents’ age. I get where people are coming from with the argument, but I can’t help but feel a bit defensive.

And the worst answer to the argument of American food versus South Asian is “Well, you have to admit South Asian food does taste better. It’s easy to transition to a different type of food when the taste is simply better than what you grew up with.” That argument is just unfair.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t something I’m going to sit and cry about, but after a while it can get frustrating. Sure, I’m not a gourmet cook making fancy dishes, but there are certain “feel good” foods that, when criticized, leave me licking my wounds. Like fresh cut veggies, or a flavorful cheese, or a crisp garden salad on a hot summer day. Or apple pie, or a fresh veggie pasta dish, or homemade pizza, or waffles and maple syrup—how can you dislike fluffy homemade straight-out-of-the-iron waffles and Vermont maple syrup??

“Not our habit” Mamu solemnly answers.

“The maple is too sweet.” Daddy adds.

I hear that a lot. American food is too sweet. Cereal, maple syrup, apple pie. But somehow American chocolates and Indian/Nepali mithai/laddu are not too sweet. I don’t get it.

Or I hear–American food doesn’t have enough flavor/isn’t spicy enough. I remember once I found my uncle’s recipe for guacamole and said to my Dad, “He barely puts anything in it. Where’s all the garlic, and chili, and lemon?”

“When you put all that extra junk in you lose the original flavor of the food.” My dad responded.

I never thought about it from that perspective before. I sometimes think about what he said when I bite into a fresh sweet corn on the cob, unadulterated by butter or salt, so I can taste the original flavor of the kernels. Do I use garlic when cooking like it’s my job? Sure, but there are certain things that are nice to leave simple and natural.

So anyway…

Yesterday after work, P and I took his parents (they’re back from P’s brother’s place! Did you miss Mamu and Daddy stories?) to the Indian grocery store to replenish the kitchen. Our neighbor D had made meat momos over the weekend and there was spiced meat leftover, so P/Daddy/D decided to have momo for dinner, which left the two veggies—Mamu and I—on our own. We grabbed pani puri fixings, but when we were in the car Mamu said she wanted to have pasta. “You will make, okay?”

I felt that the pressure was on, and the deck was already stacked against me since I know they don’t like “American pasta” that much (or really at all).  The only pasta they like is waiwai or elbow macaroni fried with veggies and curry type spice. Once in Nepal P’s mom asked me to make her “American pasta” but that particular night P’s dad had taken us on a side trip and we got home really late. Mamu was upset that we all missed the proper dinner time, but rather than put the pasta dinner off for another time, she still insisted I make it. So already late, and pressured to cook fast, and using the single kerosene burner in P’s kitchen reminiscent of a camp stove in the US, I tried my best to whip up a descent pasta dish. It was “okay,” not great, but at least I tried. No one really ate it but me, and to be polite, P’s dad, and Mamu still insisted that P’s dad also have rice since “only rice make you full.”

When we got home I broke out the cutting board and veggies and started slicing. Mamu came in to help, and I ushered her out of the kitchen (“Mamu, tonight is your turn to rest.”) least she decide ahead of time that she didn’t like my cooking technique (she doesn’t like raw mushrooms. Even if mushrooms are going to be fried, she insists they are still “raw” if they haven’t been boiled first), or if she discovered the “Italian seasoning” I used… and ultimately decide not to try the pasta.

I’ve already heard a lot about how much my Nepali family dislikes marinara sauce. They tell me it has a “smell” they don’t like, and even P doesn’t like to eat it. Again, I don’t get it—they eat tomatoes all the time, and that is the basic marinara ingredient. P thinks it is the oregano, but I don’t think it has that strong of a taste (or smell). But anyway… I knew ahead of time that a “traditional” marinara sauce was out of the question, and an Alfredo sauce would be too “cheesy.” So I decided to make a sauce that was kind of “achar” like in its original preparation.

I sliced up and roasted several tomatoes, then fried some red onion and garlic. I blended the onion, garlic and tomatoes with some salt, black pepper, chili pepper, and a bit of water into a paste and set it aside. Then I sautéed green peppers and mushrooms in olive oil until they were super well cooked (as per Mamu’s preferences although without a “pre-boil”), and added green onions, green peas and dried oregano and “Italian seasoning” (“Uh oh” P said, “You probably just screwed everything up with that oregano. They probably won’t like it now.”)

When the veggies, pasta, and “achar/sauce” were ready I quickly fried it all together before serving.

As I was dishing up the food Mamu said, “It has nice smell.” Which I took as a good sign, although she also said, “I take little” at first.

She put a few spoons of pasta into her bowl and took a small bite. “Good” she said… but then, she reached for the momo achar—which had a similar base as the pasta sauce, but had ground sesame seeds, chili, and cilantro also blended in. It was a subtle way of saying, “It was good, but still not flavorful.”

I must have looked disappointed, because then Daddy, who was eating the momo, reached over and took a few spoonfuls of pasta onto his plate and ate it without the momo achar. He also commented, “It’s good. See, I’ll take more.”

When Mamu reached to get more achar to put on her pasta P and his dad said, “It’s good without achar, have more with the original sauce.” So Mamu tried again without the achar, looking up apologetically adding, “Achar has… more spice.”

I appreciate them trying, I know the food is different, but it would be nice to make a dish without feeling like I have to defend and take a stand on all of American food. And my pasta was pretty damn good if I do say so myself… I’m about to eat the left overs for lunch.

Mamu Will Never Be “as American as Apple Pie”

My Dad’s family is big into pie. His mother used to make all sorts of pies in the summer/fall, freeze them, and bring them out for the holidays—I remember Thanksgivings where there were three or four pie flavor choices like rhubarb (the family favorite–not strawberry rhubarb, she never “adulterated” her rhubarb pies with strawberries), apple, blueberry, pumpkin, etc. I think I remember my mother telling me a story once about how my dad wasn’t used to having cake on his birthday until they were together, because his family always had pie. “Who eats birthday pie?” she would say, as if it were sacrilegious.

But you know, I’d probably pick pie over cake most days.

About two years before my grandmother passed away I started bugging her for pie recipes. I really wanted the family rhubarb recipe, but I’d settle for any of her delicious pie recipes. When we moved to Massachusetts and I met AS, S-di and a few other Nepali women, they started to ask me, “C, you are American, can you teach us how to bake American desserts?” My dessert skills were somewhat limited to an array of Christmas cookies, but I tried out brownies and apple crisp, and eventually my grandmother sent me a note with two index cards that had her handwritten recipes for apple and pumpkin pies. I made several. A few months later she passed away.

Every fall I make at least two apple pies and two apple crisps. It just wouldn’t be autumn without the leaves changing color, and a warm piece of cinnamon-y apple dessert.

So over the weekend when we went to visit my dad, one of the stops on our “tour of town” was an orchard market we frequented, particularly in the summer, throughout my childhood. As kids we saved our quarters to buy “half-moon” cookies baked fresh at the orchard. I always ate the vanilla side first, and froze the chocolate half to eat later. It was also a popular place to buy other pastries, local maple syrup, fresh veggies, seedlings for vegetable or flower gardens, and funky cacti/succulents (this is also where my weird house plant obsession began). My dad and I decided to buy an apple pie to top off our Saturday night barbeque because what’s more “American” than “apple pie” and barbeque?

I worry a bit about P’s mother when we travel, because although she keeps insisting, “I eat everything,” I know she doesn’t. Being a vegetarian on the road is already tough, but she doesn’t like most raw vegetables (aside from cucumbers) including almost all salads (“Not our habit.” She tells me—which I can kind of understand, if I grew up in a place where most vegetables had to be thoroughly cooked or peeled to prevent the possibility of sickness, I probably wouldn’t be a big fan of uncooked veggies too. Although I grew up in the US, and I love raw veggies), and she doesn’t like vegetables that are cooked but still crunchy, like veggie skewers on a barbeque or quick veggie stir fries (she prefers veggies that are melt-in-your-mouth soft), not to mention sandwiches with lettuce. On our drive to New York we stopped quickly at a rest stop and I insisted everyone have a quick lunch, and bought Mamu and myself slices of veggie pizza.

When we got in the car Mamu said, “Oh oh, Pizza pugyo,” and a few other things in Nepali. P translated, “She says she is pugyo—finished—with pizza for the rest of her trip.” She had only eaten one slice since her arrival, and I thought it was pretty good, but I guess she didn’t find it pleasant.

Knowing that the veggie skewers were out for Saturday’s BBQ, I decide to try veggie burgers. Ironically, my dad hates the smell of curry, so I didn’t think he would appreciate us cooking up some taarkari in the house (although I’m sure he wouldn’t have said anything, I’m also sure he wouldn’t have liked it), but I didn’t want Mamu to starve either (she doesn’t complain but she also just picks at meals she doesn’t like, and goes without). She doesn’t want to be perceived as a bother (hence the “Don’t worry. I eat everything” comments), but I also want to be prepared. Luckily the veggie burgers were a success. Phew.

After a little bit of digestion, and the question/answer between P’s dad and mine about whether there were lions, tigers and elephants in the US (P’s dad said to me again last night, “I can’t believe there are no tigers or elephants in the US. There are so many trees and so much space. Why are they not here?”) we broke out the apple pie. P’s parents insisted on “small small” pieces, so I cut them tiny slivers. My dad, who was happy to take a piece that was at least an eighth of the pie large, insisted they take larger pieces but P’s parents said they were full and just wanted a taste. Sitting on the porch outside it had already started getting dark, so no one really noticed Mamu just pushing the pieces of her pie around the plate.

As I was slicing up the pie I explained, “Apple pies are very popular in the US. There is even an expression ‘As American as Apple Pie’ which means ‘typically American.’” (see Wikipedia).

After dinner there was still nearly three quarters of the pie left, so my dad said we could bring it home.

When we got back to Massachusetts the following evening I unpacked the pie. Mamu started saying that there was something about the pie that wasn’t good. “It has smell,” she kept saying.

“Smell?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, strong bad smell.”

P and I looked at each other perplexed. Apple pies smell so good, what was she smelling?

“Very strong. I don’t know what is.” She said.

“I have an idea.” So I went to the cupboard to look for my large stash of cinnamon that I use for pies and Christmas cookies. “Mamu smell this, is this it?”

She took one whiff and threw her head back with a scrunched up face, “Oh oh oh. Oh this smell. Not our habit.”

“Not our habit” is another Mamu-ism which means, “I’m not used to this.”

“Oh Mamu, you don’t like cinnamon? That’s so sad, it is so good. We use it a lot in dessert for American festivals.” I said.

“Not our habit.” She repeated.

“The apple dish is also so sweet.” P’s dad explained. “Like the maple syrup, it is too sweet and strong for us.” Later I heard that the small jar of maple syrup I brought to Kathmandu in 2005 as a “gift from America” was eventually thrown away because no one in the house could eat it.

Oh well. At least we are having them try new things. Last night after dinner P and I each had a large slice of pie. If someone has to eat it, I don’t mind volunteering.

A Weekend With My Dad

This weekend we took P’s parents to my home town, about a five hour drive from our New England abode. My dad, who spends most of his time in Vermont these days, was back at the old house for the week, and was able to host us on Saturday night.

There were a few reasons I wanted to take them to my home town. First I wanted to show P’s parents where I grew up. We currently live in a city, and P grew up in a city, but I’m a country girl at heart. I grew up in a wooded area, climbing trees and going on adventures in the woods with my dog. We spent a lot of time outside, riding our bikes, swimming, picking wild blackberries and raspberries and eating them off the bush, planting vegetable gardens (and eating cherry tomatoes and small cucumbers off the vine as well!) If was a pretty fun childhood.

I also wanted to bring them to visit my dad because I wanted my dad to have the opportunity to bond with P’s parents a little.

My parents are divorced, something that P told his parents early on (and for a little while reinforced P’s mom’s view that—“See Americans will divorce you!”). They have met my mom a few times (in 2005 my mom came to P’s graduation and met his dad, in 2008 they stayed at her house in Virginia for a weekend, and my mom stayed with us a few days before the wedding) and they like her a lot. She is very entertaining (bordering on showy sometimes), but she is a great person to have when there is awkward silence, because she fills the silence with idle chatter (or embarrassing stories, which was the case during the wedding weekend). She is very extroverted, and animated, and easy to get to know because she lays it all out there for everyone right away.

One reason that my parents are divorced is because they are very different people. My dad is opposite to her in nearly every way—where she is loud and boisterous; he is quiet and reserved; where she likes to hustle and bustle, be close to the action and the city; my dad is happy to sit on his own, do things at his own pace, and live in the wilderness apart from others; where she is carefree, extroverted, and easy to know; my dad is difficult to know, introverted, and relatively serious (unless you get to know him well, then his dry sense of humor comes out).

P’s parents know very few divorced people (practically none). My theory is that they probably assume that in a divorce situation one partner was essentially “good” and one was essentially “bad.” Now my parents’ divorce is very complicated (much too complicated to begin sorting out in a blog post) and there are good and bad things on both sides, but the basic assumption that one person was totally wrong and “bad” and the other was totally right and “good” doesn’t fit this situation in the slightest. However that was the schema that made the most sense to P’s parents. Although they never outright said anything, since they met my mother first, and she is so bubbly and entertaining, right away they assumed my mother was the “good one” (I could tell by the way they would ask about her, but never my dad). I tried to explain to them in 2008 that the divorce was complicated, and they were only seeing one side (my mom’s side), but I think it was difficult for them to understand.

P’s parents first met my dad in 2008 when they stayed with my mother in Virginia. He drove down from New York to attend a program for my younger sister, and my mother insisted that he attend the “P and C family meeting” at her house, on her territory. Although everyone essentially behaved themselves (no arguments, etc), it was a bit of an unfair advantage for my mom, and I’m sure my dad was uncomfortable and more awkward and happy to escape to his hotel room once the meeting concluded.

I remember we were all sitting on my mom’s back porch. My mom was filing in the silence with stories (I remember one such story where she was telling about meeting P’s cousin MK for the first time, and how MK kept having to take smoke breaks—now the family kind of knows that MK smokes, but it’s one of those “she does it in secret” and they “pretend not to know” type of deals. I was standing inside the kitchen looking through the sliding screen door motioning with my hands for her to stop the story, and she said, “Oh look, C is trying to get me to stop, ha ha, anyway—so then…”)

My dad sat there mostly in silence. I remember P’s dad looking at him, hopeful for some “father to father” chit chat, but P’s dad didn’t know what to say (I think P’s family was relying on my parents to guide conversation since P’s parents were shy of their English), and I don’t think my dad felt that comfortable speaking. Eventually I said, “Hey dad, why don’t you talk with P’s dad.” And my dad turned and said, “So, how about the weather?” and that was pretty much it for conversation.

This awkward situation probably didn’t help their vision about my dad. He looked serious, quiet, and tough looking. Prior to their 2008 visit, when they would call and talk to me, P’s dad always asked about my mother and sisters and told me to say hello to them, but never mentioned my dad. After the 2008 visit he rarely, if ever asked about my dad (but at least slightly more than before).

Likewise, at the rehearsal dinner, between my parents, my mother dominated conversation again. She is just better at it, more comfortable, she doesn’t mind if P’s parents don’t really understand what she is saying, it’s easier for her to chat then sit through silence.

At the wedding my mother was dancing up a storm—dancing with everyone, including P’s dad. My dad mostly stood with his relatives on the porch, drinking beers and catching up on stuff. It’s the age old introvert/extrovert dichotomy.

I felt my dad needed his time and space to adequately share his personality with the P family. A short weekend trip to his home seemed like a good idea.

I’m glad we did it, because I think being in my dad’s space and on my dad’s time helped a lot. My dad had the opportunity to share his hunting stories without being talked over (my mom would surely find an extended conversation about hunting boring and dull). I think P’s dad really liked the one about my dad being on a bear hunt, and having a giant grizzly bear itching it’s butt on a tree no more than eight feet away from my dad’s hunting perch. My dad decided not to shoot it (P’s dad: “You had a gun ready, pointing at the bear?”) because his friend had killed a bear the night before and they were going to split the meat, so my dad just watched this giant animal walk around, so close he could practically touch it. Or the story about crawling two miles through the grassy plains of Montana stalking elk. Or about hiking out of the northern Canadian woods in waist high snow dragging a sled with 100 pounds of freshly killed caribou meat (my dad had pictures of the caribou hunt to help visualize his story).

My dad made a “Central New York” dinner—grilled deer meat (and veggie burgers for me and Mamu), fresh local corn on the cob, salt potatoes and melted butter, and apple pie made with local apples. We sat on the screened in back porch listening to the crickets, while my dad talked about things he was familiar with or that he enjoys—like how to make maple syrup (while we ate homemade blueberry pancakes in the morning) and which trees in our backyard were maples, what New York is famous for, what vegetables are locally grown, how he built our house himself, etc (again, conversations my mother would have found totally dull, but P’s dad seemed interested to hear).

My favorite questions that P’s dad asked that night were, “Do you have lions and tigers in America?”

Dad: “No. But we have mountain lions, which are big cats out in the Western US [He went inside and came back with a hunting advertisement with a mountain lion on it to show P’s dad what it looks like and how big they can be.] We don’t have them around here.”

P’s Dad: “Do you have elephants?”

Dad: “Nope.”

P’s Dad: “Monkeys?”

Dad: “No monkeys either.”

(I liked these questions because these animals are “normal” for P’s family, but exotic for mine. For P’s family it’s kind of strange that we don’t have monkeys running around, where as my dad probably thought the question was from left field.)

They talked about the animals we do have—skunks, beaver, opossum, fox, porcupine, etc—and which were also found in Nepal.

I think P’s dad liked being in the countryside. He desperately wanted to see animals (my dad told him there were generally some turkeys and sometimes deer around. We showed him a salt lick that my dad uses to attract deer to his backyard). On the screened in back porch P’s dad said it was like being on a jungle safari in Chitwan National Park—looking down into the woods to find the rhinos from a high perch. He told me in the morning that he got up in the night to watch the “jungle” from the porch to see if he could spot any animals but sadly didn’t see anything.

I think it was a successful trip. I think they realize that I don’t have one “good parent” and one “bad parent” but two very different parents, with different interests, energy levels, and personalities.

I feel confident that once they go back to Nepal and we chat on the phone again, they will now ask about and say hello to my mom and my dad.

My dad and I taking P's family around the sights in town-- including the city harbor on the shores of Lake Ontario

P's mom and dad pose outside my childhood home

What to Do?

“What to do?” is Mamu’s unofficial catchphrase. I think it’s really cute. She uses it as a catch all statement, an exasperation, a declaration, and a filler. “Sigh, what to do?”

My favorite “What to do?” was from their 2008 visit. We took Mamu to one of the local temples (not where we got married, but a South Indian temple east of us), and she was bringing me around to the different altars telling me the names of each god. We got to one god and Mamu didn’t recognize the name so she asked one of the pandits who the god was. He said, “Shiva’s third son.”

“But Shiva have two son.” She said.

“No, Shiva has three sons.” The pandit insisted.

“No, two only.” She insisted back. The pandit shrugged his shoulders and walked away. She turned to me and said, “In Kathmandu Shiva have two son. In America Shiva have three son. What to do?”

Anyway… “What to do?” seems to be the question P and I have on our minds as of late. Now that the wedding is over, the extra relatives are gone, and wedding related tasks are finished, we don’t know “what to do?” with his parents. I’m worried that they are bored out of their minds.

P has been largely working from home, but hasn’t been getting a lot of research done, so he will have to start going back to his office soon. I leave for work every morning at 7:45 and don’t come back until 4:30. We have computers and internet, so P generally tries to find Nepali and Hindi serials online for his parents to watch, but we don’t have a proper tv for them to flip through the channels, and Mamu doesn’t understand enough English to follow American serials very closely (too much English tends to make her fall asleep).

Mamu spends some time each day cooking, and P’s parents have gladly volunteered for the job of taking our dog out for walks around the park in the morning and afternoon, but most of the day they are at home, and especially in the recent heat wave, I think they spend much of the day sleeping.

“P, what can we do with them? Do they have any hobbies? Can we get them active in a local community group? Should we teach them to use the bus system so they can go around the city? I feel bad that there is so little for them to preoccupy their time during the day. What do they generally do at home?”

“At home the day is usually spent just making it through the day—doing stuff that requires electricity during the brief time it is available, stocking up on water during the brief time that it is available, taking care of my grandfather, cleaning, washing clothes by hand, cooking, it all takes extra time, and then the day is over. Otherwise they socialize with neighbors, drink tea on the roof. That’s about it.”

During two of the heat wave days this week P dropped them off at a local mall so they could enjoy air conditioning and poke around stores while he was at work, but there are only so many days one can do this before even shopping becomes boring.

We try to take them out of town on the weekends– day trips or overnight trips to visit new places or people, but that is only two days out of seven.

About a month ago Gori Wife Life had a post asking for suggestions on how to keep her father-in-law busy during his recent visit. She had the idea of getting him involved in the activities surrounding a local mosque. That sounded like a great idea, but unfortunately the local temples are at least a 20 minute drive east or west and not easy for them to get to, plus I’m not sure how much community activity currently surrounds either.

But I’m happy to solicit for suggestions. Any help for “What to do?”

The Black Wedding Cloud Strikes Again

What the hell? I thought bad things happened in threes, not fours, and I certainly hope not fives and sixes :(

Its 1:15 in the morning, and the reason I am up is because we just got back from picking up P’s brother U from the bus terminal, but instead of taking us 1 1/2- two hours round trip, it took us almost 3 and a half–because our front driver’s side tire pretty much exploded on the way in to Boston, on the worse stretch of road possible, and the whole fiasco took us about an hour to solve. Let me rewind.

First things first. I don’t mind dealing with sticky situations, particularly when I am on my own. I deal with it and its over. The worst thing is dealing with a problem when you have an audience, especially an audience you want to make a good impression on. It makes the whole issue more stressful and feel 100 times more terrible (then it might actually be).

The week before P’s parents arrived I was trying to be as proactive as possible, not only with wedding prep (thank god I did that! I still have a few small things, but most is done, and I’m so relieved), but also with other things– like getting the car inspected for the year, getting an oil change, paying the car insurance, etc.

I was dreading getting the car inspected, because I was a little worried about the tires. With all the wedding expenses, the last thing I wanted to do was shell out for new tires, but if I had to do it I would. So I got my oil changed and asked my regular oil change guy to do a quick once over to make sure everything looked okay before I paid someone to do an inspection. The mechanic said it looked fine, that one or two of the car tires would probably need to be changed 6 months down the road, but we were good for now. P and I had recently noticed a whir whir noise from one of the tires and I asked the guy about it. He said that my alignment was probably off a bit, the tires were wearing down a bit differently, but it could be fixed later.

Okay, that sounded fine to me.

So the next day I took the car to the inspection place, paid the inspection fee, and hoped that this guy also felt the tires were fine. The car passed with no issues what-so-ever. I even asked him about the tires specifically and he said, “In a few months, but for now you are fine.” (He even said something like, “The tires fail at 2 or 3, your’s are at 7 or 8.”) Phew, just the answer I was hoping for.

So tonight, P’s brother was slated to get in to the Boston bus terminal at 10:30 from Philly. P’s leg has felt stiff all day, so I was happy to volunteer to go alone and pick him, but P’s parents hadn’t seen U in a few years, and they were eager to see him, and P had hinted that Mamu was nervous to stay in the apartment alone, so against my urgings the entire crew piled into the car for the hour and a half/two hour round trip.

Things were going fine. We even caught a good percentage of the local fireworks show while filling gas at the station before getting on Interstate 90 east towards Boston. There was more traffic than usual for that time of night, probably holiday traffic, but we were cruising along. P’s parents eventually zonked out in back, and we could hear their gentle snoring from the front.

Right as we passed the first toll booth upon entering the greater Boston area, right where the highway starts to narrow and the shoulder disappears, there was a loud pop (which woke up P’s parents and started them asking questions) and then everything got bumpy and loud. I was in the fast lane, and had to move to the right hand side of the road, but didn’t know what to do. The tire seemed to have completely collapsed, so I didn’t think it would make it even a few feet down the road (trust me, I tried, frantically) and I wasn’t sure where the road would gain a shoulder again.

Not sure what to do we put our hazard lights on, and I tried to call roadside assistance. I quickly popped out of the car and assessed the wheel before jumping back in. While I was distracted by the phone, I think P was busy watching all the cars zipping by and realizing how dangerous our position was on the road. He jumped out of the car, and had his parents jump out, and they climbed over the guard rail  and up the embankment to give them and the car some space in case someone came whipping through and smashed the car. He kept calling for me to get out.

I was trying to get through to roadside assistance, meanwhile feeling completely mortified. I didn’t want P’s parents to think I was an incompetent driver, or had done something wrong. I knew I didn’t hit anything. A few minutes later a Peter Pan bus pulled up behind us, and I half thought that U had spotted us on the road and asked the bus to pull over and let him out, but the bus driver was actually pulling over to tell us to get out of the vehicle, “One tractor trailer comes through and doesn’t see you, and you are all dead. Get up the hill, I’ll call the police for you.”

So now we are all standing on the hill. I’m watching the sky (it was raining about 15 minutes before), and finally getting through to roadside assistance, when a police car pulled over and started yelling at us (what is with police and yelling at me this week?) I was trying to juggle the roadside lady on the phone and talk to the police, but instead of explaining anything he just kept yelling through his window, “Get in your car, get in your car right now and drive. You want to get us all killed?”

“But sir, our tire is flat.” I stammered, I was worried I’d start crying again, like with the other police officer.

“I don’t care if your tire is flat. Your car will drive clear to California on a flat tire, now get in your car and drive.This is incredibly dangerous. Never stop on an active road way. “

So we hustled P’s parents into the car and jumped in. I’m now super flustered, the police officer, with his lights on, is still yelling at us but now through his loud speaker, “drive forward, just drive.” And the tire is so broken the entire car is shimmying, shaking and rattling as I ease her down the slow lane. I’m still flustered, and mortified, and the police is still yelling at us through the loud speaker to “keep moving,” while P’s worried parents are asking us questions, “What’s going on? Isn’t that a police officer? Why is he yelling?” Somewhere along the line the roadside assistance operator asked me if she could put my call on hold–”What does that mean? Are you going to call back?” I asked. “No.” she said–and I dropped my phone somewhere in the car.

After what seemed like an excruciatingly long time, the cop advised us that the shoulder had widened enough for us to pull over. I promptly jumped out of the car and walked back to him. He said gruffly, “Never ever stop on the road. Your life is worth more than a tire rim.”

I said, “I agree, but I didn’t know it would keep driving.” (I was blinking back moist eyes again).

“The car will always drive… on a flat, on a rim, on a damaged rim… always keep going. I called a tow truck, you’ll be fine here.” And he sped off, offering little in the way of comfort or additional help/advice.

P had us walk back up the embankment. I again looked at the sky hoping it wouldn’t rain. The ground was a little wet, and I went to the trunk to get out the towel we usually have in the back seat for our dog to sit on so that Mamu, Daddy and P could sit down, but no one wanted to.

“The police officer just drove away?” P’s dad asked, bewildered. “He could have stayed with the lights, to keep us safe, no?”

“I think he was in a bad mood.” I offered, “He didn’t seem very nice.”

We sat waiting for ten minutes, and I said to P, “This is ridiculous, I know how to change a tire, lets just do it and get on our way.” But P was worried about the busy highway. No doubt he had visions of a car whacking me while I was on hands and knees changing a tire, killing me or injuring me a week before our wedding. It seems our luck is going that way.

I convinced him that if we could get the car on part of the embankment, and off the road, I could change the tire, and so we arranged the car. I whipped out the spare, and went to work trying to jack the car. Like I said, I’ve done this before– but not with P’s parents squatting nearby watching my every move. They were just trying to be helpful, but it was making me more stressed out, making me worry about failing in front of them.

And lo and behold, just as the car seemed nearly jacked up, the dirt embankment buckled and the car shifted forward, wedging the jack sideways. I had to unscrew it and readjust all over again. I found what was a solid spot, and started again, sitting in the dirt on the side of Interstate 90, twisting the jack slowly by hand. Just as the car almost seemed high enough to work, the soil buckled and the car lurched again.

DAMN IT.

I reasoned with P– we had to move the car so at least one of the tires was on the pavement. “Fine,” P agreed, but I think he was also loosing faith, and had started calling roadside assistance back. I started all over again, with P’s dad crouching near me.

I really wanted to get that damned tire off, and fixed myself. I wanted to be the hero to save our crummy situation. If I had to be humiliated as the driver when something stupid like this happens, at least let me be the one to fix it, and win some “Wow, did you know C could change a tire? How impressive!” points. But my two previous failures seemed to be making that less of a possibility.

Before I could get the car jacked a third time, this time on the pavement, a tow truck showed up (sent by the angry police officer). The guy quickly used his giant jack to hoist the car, changed the tire, and fit the spare. He showed us that in fact the inside of my tires were worn to oblivion (“But I just got my car inspected last week and it passed with no problems!” I told the guy, “Well, this shouldn’t have passed” he responded) and had literally blown open.

I felt like an idiot, P’s parents were watching, P was stressed out too, U was stuck at the train station (and supposedly “starving”– he texted us just after we left asking us to bring food, but we had already left. “It’s just another hour and a half,” I told P, “He will be fine until we get home. Then he can eat Mamu’s cooking” famous last words), and the whole thing took us an hour or more to fix.

I’m sure P and I probably felt worse about it then U, Mamu or Daddy. We were embarrassed, tired, and frustrated. The whole situation made it seem like our car is in bad shape, and we are reckless. They were quite chatty on the way home, while P and I drove in near silence. We were both listening to every noise, worried that another tire would blow. Why do these stupid things happen when you least want them to? Any other time would have been better… although as I write this, perhaps better now than next weekend on the way to one of our weddings!

As we neared the apartment a cat crossed in front of the car. “Bad luck,” U clucked in the back seat.

“One crossed in front of us on our way out too.” P said.

“Do you believe in these superstitions C?” P’s dad asked.

“No.” I said, “Do you?”

“No.”

I was really thinking, Let’s all hope for no more bad luck!

So now tomorrow morning, instead of taking P’s parents to the white and red wedding venues (before my lunch meeting for work), we have to probably buy at least two new tires and try to get the alignment fixed on our car.

Can people send some good juju vibes our way?

A Wash Bucket for Mamu

When P’s family visited in 2008 we introduced them to many things—escalators, microwaves, washing machines (the list goes on). Some things they learned to embrace—Mamu wasn’t a fan of escalators and would generally grip on to P’s dad or me (or whoever was close by) when stepping on one because she was fearful she might fall, but eventually she got the hang of it, and didn’t mind using the long escalators out of some of the deeper DC metro stops on one of our side trips—and some things they chose not to embrace, like the washing machine.

I grew up with washing machines, and I don’t come from a world where using a washing machine seems odd. Certainly on a warm summer day my family might hang sheets and other clothes out on the line to dry, but otherwise all the washing was done inside by machines.

The last time P’s family visited we offered to wash their clothes for them, but they didn’t like the idea. After a lifetime of washing their clothes by hand, the idea of a machine washing their clothes seemed strange. Perhaps they were worried that the machine would ruin their clothes, or maybe they were worried about losing control over washing their stuff. I remember waking up at 5am one morning to find P’s aunt in our bathtub crouching over a plastic bin-come-laundry bucket scrubbing clothes.

I explained this story to my mom once, and she had a bewildered look on her face. Why on earth, when blessed with the technology of a washing machine, would they choose to crouch over a plastic tub and scrub clothes? She just couldn’t wrap her head around it.

So P’s mom’s first full day in the US this visit, and her mission was to find a suitable plastic laundry bucket and some hand laundry soap so she could wash the clothes she wore on the plane. I remember in India I could find hand laundry soap at every other shop on the street. In the US we had to go to four places before we found something.

First we went to the local Indian grocery store. I know I’m not the only “gori” to go there, but often I feel like the only one in the store. One of the checkout ladies has taken an interest in me over the past two years, and gives me special attention (we have two or three free “Swad” fabric grocery bags). Sometimes when I put certain foods through the checkout she questions me, “Pani Puri? You know how to make? You know what this is?” and if I look at something too long she thinks I want it, “Bindi? You want? Looks so nice!”

So yesterday when I saw her in the store I told her, “I’m here with my mother in law today.”

“Really, where she is?”

I tried to ask about hand laundry soap, but it looked like they only had liquid soap, and no buckets. At the checkout I winked at the lady, and pointed to P’s parents standing next to me. The lady smiled and said, “Your mother in law, yes?” (Yep, I’ve got the street cred).

The next stop was a drug store, just to see… they usually have cleaning stuff, and it was on the way. I went straight up to the counter and asked, “Do you have a bucket, and soap to wash the laundry by hand, like a bar soap?” The girl, who looked like a high school student at an after school job, gave me a weird look while she twirled her bleached blond hair, “Um, like I know they used to do that like 100 years ago, but I don’t think people do that anymore. I don’t think we have that, but you can check the cleaning stuff in aisle 4. We probably have buckets in aisle 6.”

Aisle 4—no hand laundry soap. Aisle 6 was seasonal paraphernalia, like buckets to make sand castles at the beach. Next.

So we were off to Super Wal-Mart, doesn’t that store supposedly have everything? It didn’t seem to have hand laundry soap, unless I’m not looking in the right place! I did however sneak away from the family for a few minutes and find a small bucket in the cleaning aisle that would normally be used for mopping the floor. This seemed to be what Mamu was looking for, but P’s dad kept explaining to me that what she really needed was a shallow round bucket. So our search was back on.

P suggested that we try one of the Vietnamese markets closer to home. I thought that we probably wouldn’t find what we were looking for, but it was worth a try. So we drove across town again. I elected to stay in the car. P likes this particular market, but I find the smell a little too fishy for me (and of all meats, I detest the smell of fish the most). I cracked the windows and listened to NPR while I waited for them. They were inside for about fifteen minutes and then emerged through the sliding doors victorious. The Vietnamese store came through—a shallow round bucket AND hand laundry soap.

Now Mamu can do her laundry with peace of mind :)

Did I mention we also had to look for a small plastic mug/jug to use in the bathroom in place of toilet paper? I think they also found that at the Vietnamese shop. Phew!

The soap!

The laundry buckets! Top one was my find at Wal-Mart, bottom one was from Vietnamese store, clear plastic jug inside for "bathroom use"