Witty, Quick, UnStoppable - The Man and His Novel. Presenting Laugh Riot "The Poison Pen" www.thepoisonpen.net

One-on-One with Mr. Laugh Riot, Greg Beesch (www.thepoisonpen.net), author of The Poison Pen, self-described man of "twisted steel and sex appeal", dis-ser of all things 'traditional publishing model', and creator of a most 'impeccable' ;) role model for boys ( and girls ) ages 15 to 115. And a holler to all you kids in the UK! Swap your Enid Blyton's and your Mallory Towers and dig into some Americana Boarding School lore instead! Buy it at Amazon.com, Booksurge.com, and Alibris.com.

Questions for the author? Email: Info@writersstudioworkshops.com

Q: Could you give us something in the way of a bio?
A: Born a Taurus. I’m 42, 5’10”, 175 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal, my eyes are blue and of such a vivid intensity that women swoon. I have curly brown hair which is a little long right now, not of Kramer-esque or manfro levels but getting into the Mike Brady of Brady Bunch fame season 3 level. I live in Arizona, I’m married to a spectacular woman and I have two daughters.

Q: Is your first book?
A: First book, yes. First piece of fiction I’ve written since I had to write an essay for a college admissions application back in high school.

Q: How would you describe it?
A: The single greatest book about teen sedition ever written, absolutely a classic among any genre that includes the descriptor ‘boarding school’, most definitely highly entertaining, of a certainty a total laugh riot, highly probably a vacation or beach reading essential, really just an infinitely enjoyable escapist faerie tale.

Q: Sedition and subversive behavior are main themes in your book, why?
A: They go part and parcel of the teen experience, especially for a boy, especially coming of age in America. Sedition and subversive behavior are key human traits when confronted by tyranny of any kind, that is, not just governmentally sponsored tyranny. The United States has a fine tradition, both before and especially after its creation, of its citizenry writing for the purpose of good old fashion mayhem.

Q: Is your book appropriate for, let’s say, a 15 or 16 year old?
A: I would say yes. It does have some profanity, but let’s face it, nothing that a 13 or 14 year old hasn’t heard at school. There is no sex, though there is a lot of teen romance, and almost no violence although the main character breaks just about every school and social rule there is, but, of course, in a very funny way.

Q: Alright, since it was your first novel, was it a difficult process writing it?
A: No, not at all, like falling off a bike when you’re bombed out of your gourd on home vinted strawberry wine. One of the funniest and easiest endeavors I’ve ever attempted and it made me a much much better typist, which is always a bonus.

Q: Let’s continue on. What qualifications do you have as a writer?
A: Qualifications? I have a B.A. in Political Science and an MBA from Arizona State University and 20 years of work experience writing some of the most sublime memos, proposals, business plans, emails, and miscellaneous missives since the invention of the written word, kid you NOT.

Q: Yes, well, most people who are writers have a degree in literature, maybe and MFA, a list of previous writing.
A: Oh, so by qualifications you mean an arbitrary set of criteria determined by as small group of lower order life forms?

Q: No, I mean-
A: I’ll put my MBA against anyone’s MFA anytime.

Q: Most people would not put an MBA as a criteria for qualification for writing a novel.
A: Of course, because analytical rigor is as foreign to the publishing industry as . . . well, an analogy of appropriate magnitude eludes me at the moment. The publishing industry mystifies the process, you know, ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’, to the detriment of book sales and reading in general in the United States.

Q: What writers have been influential?
A: P.G. Wodehouse, first and foremost. I think that despite the sheer volume of his works he is almost completely unknown in the mainstream US, which is kind of funny since he invented the character of Jeeves, the butler, and that reference is known but not Wodehouse himself.

Q: Others?
A: Old school influences would be Evelyn Waugh, Ambrose Bierce, and Mark Twain. More modern would be Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Philip Caputo off the top of my pointy head.

Q: No Bukowski?
A: Oh sure.

Q: Let’s talk about the nascent prep/boarding school genre, as you refer to it, you have mentioned Tobias Wolff’s Old School and Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. When did you read those and were they an inspiration or an influence when writing The Poison Pen of Aberdeen Prep.
A: I read Old School about the time I was finishing up The Poison Pen and really loved it, but Old School is literary, The Poison Pen is fun, the tone in The Poison Pen is definitely more Wodehouse than Wolff.

Q: When you first describe The Poison Pen to me you said, ‘If Wodehouse rewrote Prep and made sedition the theme, that would be The Poison Pen’. So Prep was an influence also?

A: Oh yeah, I read Prep about nine months after reading Old School. I was in the Newark airport and saw it at a book kiosk, I bought it and spent the entire plane ride (four hours) reading it. When I landed back in Phoenix I wanted to sit in the car in the parking garage and finish it.

Q: What about it-

A: I related to the setting, that is, boarding school. I related to the emotional travails of the main character, Lee Fiora, that is, the self consciousness, the doubt, you know, all the teen turmoil, but as much as I loved the character I hated the plot, well, really the last 30 pages. I mean, I was depressed when I finished it, I wanted more for her, I wanted some triumph

Q: You decided to self-publish, why?

A: Going about the process of getting the book publish, that is, researching agents and publishing houses, reviewing submission procedures and forms, writing and submitting query letters, I came to realize that from a business process perspective the publishing industry was broken. To put it quite simply, there was an enormous entrenched bureaucracy in between me, as the author of a book, and the buying consumer. I saw no reason why I should buy into what I recognized as a broken business model (see my website www.thepoisonpen.net). SoI tossed out any idea of going through an agent or publishing house and once freed of that artificial constraint and then examining the numerous technological options I decided I would self publish.

Q: Where is the book available?
A: Through Amazon.com, Booksurge.com, and Alibris.com

Q: And what is your website again?
A: Absolutely, http://www.thepoisonpen.net/, the greatest book website in existence. Questions for the author? Email: Info@writersstudioworkshops.com

"Happiness and Other Disorders" - Honestly!

“The author’s stunning prose and subtle sense of the symbolic allow the tales to transcend their conventions. . .the author of Happiness and Other Disorders possesses an entirely singular form of ominous and lovely second sight; he also has the literary chops to give it voice. Saidullah is a tale-spinner of the first order, and this collection is both a mystery and a treasure.” —Quill & Quire (starred review)

“Saidullah’s stories are clearly the work of a painstaking and meticulous craftsperson. This is a skilled literary engineer.” —Toronto Star “Saidullah’s book is . . . studded with powerful images.” —The Globe and Mail

“Saidullah has thought seriously about what he wants to achieve. . . his decisiveness and descriptions are beyond those of most first — or even second — efforts.” — EYE Weekly

“Ahmad Saidullah is a storyteller with an engaging and original voice and a surfeit of talent.” —Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Cracking India and Water “These remarkable stories are propelled by a quiet but purposeful insight. They twist and turn in delightful ways. Where you would expect anger, there is compassion; where you might anticipate grimness, there is humour. An accomplished first collection.” —Rabindranath Maharaj, author of A Perfect Pledge


“Reading Ahmad Saidullah’s stories is like slipping on a pair of glasses that distort the world in fabulous ways. The dreamlike rubs shoulders with the real, the mythic with the contemporary, the riotous with the mysterious, assassins with Indian women who madly whistle Scottish tunes. Obsession and desperate attempts at escape propel these interconnected lives. This is a startling and memorable debut.” —Catherine Bush, author of Claire’s Head and The Rules of Engagement

“The short stories in Ahmad Saidullah’s Happiness and Other Disorders surprise and enchant long after the book has been set aside for future savouring and pleasure. Not only is his imagination unique, but his singular voice stands out from the myriad forms of expression in modern writing and deserves to be heard. Brimming with unexpected humour and poignancy, and rich in sub-text, Saidullah’s stories never disappear. They haunt you!” —Deepa Mehta, Director of the Academy Award–nominated film Water

“Saidullah's love of language is evident within the first three pages. . . [he] has done a great job of using various devices to keep things interesting. All in all, this book will appeal to anyone interested in South Asian culture.”— Desi Life Magazine

AHMAD SAIDULLAH was born in Ottawa, Ontario, grew up in India, and now lives in Toronto. His writings have been published in Academic Matters, Altar Magazine, Blackbird, EnRoute, L Magazine, Gowanus, The Quarterly Conversation, The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, and on CBC Radio One. Although he began writing fiction in 2004, his short stories have already garnered many honours. CBC Literary Awards jurors Catherine Bush, Anne Collins, and Eden Robinson praised his award-winning short story, “Happiness and Other Disorders,” for its “idiosyncrasy, humour, and empathetic breadth.” The short story, “Flight to Egypt,” was a finalist in Drunken Boat’s Pan Literary Awards, and “The Sadness of Snakes” was longlisted for the Fish International short Story Prize. He was also named a New Voice in Fiction by New York’s L Magazine.

A Requiem for the Lost

As I read through the works of fellow writer Sandhya Nankani on her blog www.literarysafari.com, some of her writings posted as early as 5:00 a.m., I wonder what’s happened to my own writing. I realize, with much clarity, that it has gone the way of hacks. I just write. Write without feeling, without thought to whether I or the reader will learn anything worthwhile from my writing, or whether it will give me or the reader reason to pause and question life, or wonder at its ways.

In the beginning, in the very beginning, all I wrote was a conversation. There was a story to tell, a matter to discuss and I wrote in order that I and the reader could reach new vistas in understanding. It wasn’t about meeting deadlines. It wasn’t about throwing words across a page just to get the job done. It was about writing to find myself and invite another into my world. Reading http://www.literarysafari.com/, I realized how far I’d wandered from being that person.

Do I suddenly know all the answers and hence have no need for ruminations? Or am I just not sitting still long enough to have those thoughts? Most recently, however, there has been a reason to pause and ponder. My grand-mother’s house, the one where all my pre-wedding day festivities were held, the house that became my home each summer for years on end, that home is to be sold this coming week. The house brought us all from across the globe to one place, a place all of us considered 'home'. My grandparents, without question, extended their roof to every short-term and long-term visiting child, sibling, niece, nephew, grand-child, friend. That symbol, that house is soon to become another’s. Another’s only to be demolished.

I remember the tall eucalyptus tree in the courtyard, it’s branches swaying dangerously, threatening to fall on the roof, each monsoon. I remember the rooms in that house – my aunt’s paintings dotting the wall. I remember the curtains long and limp at each wooden door, the high, curved ceiling, white paint, peeling limestone walls. I remember the monkeys that descended to devour our guavas that were ripe for the picking and my grandfather taking aim with his rifle, from behind the iron gated door in the inner courtyard, intending to frighten them off.

In that same house, I also remember my great-grandmother being ill and bed ridden for eight years. The same great grand-mother who hid chocolate in the mouth-piece of her phone to keep it safe!!! The great grand-mother whose love for After-Eight chocolates inspired my own love for them. Even with bent fingers, for old age and frail bones had taken their toll, she wrote letters to each of her grand-children and children who lived in countries flung across the globe. That’s what I remember of Nanna. She was Nanna to our father and that’s what we learned to call her too.

My own paternal grand-parents, though, are a more vivid recollection and that house is taking with it the most vital, non-living symbol tied to two people I loved so very much. In fact, the last time I visited India was to say good-bye to my grand-mother, five years ago. It’s strange that I still call that house my grand-mother’s house rather than my grand-parents house.

As my aunts and uncles and dad divvy up my deceased grand-parents belongings, I’ve asked for some of them for myself as well. There are black and white photos of my grandparents and myself. In one dada is holding a two-year-old me as I point at the love-birds he had as pets. He had a cage as huge as a room for them. I can’t recall how many love-birds lived in there but I remember small earthen pots being their nests. I’m wearing a short dress. My thighs are fat and chubby and I believe have stayed the same in honor of that picture. There’s another picture of dada and me eating ice-cream, another of me with my aunts watching over me…. I don’t remember all of them but I’ve asked my aunts to give those pictures to my parents who’ll keep them for me. My mom is an ace pack-rat and never loses a thing. For safekeeping, hers are the best of hands.

I’ve asked for those pictures and for a piece from a wall that was a lattice. It is cement but has a pattern that lets the sun through. I want one square I said to my aunt Mahnoor, in jagged broken sobs. I had already taken my grand-mother’s hair curlers and her night-gown as a memento in the days following her death. Everyone seemed surprised. My grand-mother, who was always immaculately dressed, wouldn’t I want one of her sari’s instead? Yes, she was immaculately dressed but no one sari seemed to leave the imprint that the black-and-white print nightgown did.

I remember that night-gown all too well. The lights would have been dimmed, mosquito coils smoking and my grand-ma in that nightgown, glasses on her nose, would sit in the spray of lamp-light, figuring out a crossword puzzle. Or she’d be wearing that nightgown to attend to Wimbledon. Or, that nightgown and the curlers, those were a frequent pairing. She was as stylish as she was well-dressed, and put more time into looking great than I’ve ever mustered the patience to do. My cousin Huma asked for my maternal grandpa’s dentures when he had passed. Considering that, my request for the hair-curlers, nightgown and lattice don’t seem so odd, even if Huma was all of ten when she requested the dentures. It’s strange what we remember about our adults.

“You have good in-laws and a good husband. Look after them well,” was the advice both my dada and dadi gave me. I think that was the only time they weren’t patting me on my back and instead seeing that I needed to be set on the right track. When my grand-mother died, and people spoke about her, they all seemed to say one thing. She took such an interest in each of their lives. I saw that she had cared to be involved in their lives just as she had been in ours. Listening well is another way of saying I love you, after all.

My maternal grand-mother, I believe, went to heaven the day she died. I don’t think she had to wait for the Day of Judgment and her record to be read. As Muslims we believe that the graves of those who are pious are filled with light and are roomier. I believe my nani’s grave has a forest for shade, the song of nightingale, light from God’s throne filling its insides and cats for company because she loved them so much. She hated to smoke out bee hives, even when they clung just beyond her room doors, knowing that it could kill them. She had a temper but kept it within the walls of her home. Her life comprised reading novels and reading the Quran. My cousins too recall all the times she cajoled us to eat one more ice-cream when she took us out in the evenings after those hot, hot days. “Why do you all come at all when you have to leave?” she’d ask us as we bid goodbye for Bombay, happy to be done with boring old Hyderabad and its searing summers, each year. Children are lucky to have grandparents for the unconditional, unhurried love they receive. My nani, her brief if any tenure in the grave done, I bet is sitting in heaven.

The impending sale of my Grand-ma’s house has brought with it this storm of memories and it's not my feelings alone that are in tumult. "Even we feel we're becoming homeless," said my grandma's sister-in-law, Manglee Aunty. Nor are all these memories just sentimental longing or nostalgia. They are a reminder to me that relationships are precious and need involvement. Further, I see that time is a-shrinking. I need to spend more of it amongst my nearest and dearest. As I told my husband, the last thirteen years of our marriage have been spent in the shade of his parents love. It’s time now for me to reap the benefits of having my parents in close quarters. I’ve said this before, but this time I want actions to follow where words and unfulfilled desires have long been lingering. Maybe Muscat should become home for us soon.

As for our family home, my grand ma’s home, being lost, nature abhors vacuums, or so they say. A new one will need to be created; a place that connects all of us relatives with memories and feelings of kinship and belonging. Perhaps, its foundation stone will be laid by my grand-mother’s eldest child – my father. Perhaps my parents home will become the next family-home, the next family haven. I think the need to belong and to be part of one big picture will set the wheels in motion. After all, if anything at all, hasn’t life taught us that as one door closes, another one opens?

Shoban Bantwal explores controversial Gender-Based Abortions in her second novel The Forbidden Daughter

Ten years after a law was passed in India, banning doctors from discussing the gender of a fetus with the parents following an ultrasound test, some Indian doctors not only continue to break that law, but even perform abortions if the parents decide to get rid of a female fetus.

Now, Indian-American author, Shobhan Bantwal, takes us into a world where the corrupt and covert practice of gender-selective abortion still thrives, in her second novel, THE FORBIDDEN DAUGHTER, scheduled for release by Kensington Publishing on August 26, 2008. Her first novel, THE DOWRY BRIDE, dealt with the topic of dowry deaths in India.

THE FORBIDDEN DAUGHTER tells the story of Isha, a young mother who refuses to abort her second child, another girl, despite her in-laws’ dictate to have the abortion. When her husband suddenly becomes the victim of a mysterious murder, she is convinced that her rebellious decision has something to do with it. When Isha leaves her in-laws to raise her daughters on her own, she is faced with the most dangerous battle of her life.

To quote Bantwal about what inspired the book, “After being raised with love and care in India, amidst a family of five girls, it was difficult for me to comprehend that female children are disdained in my country of birth, so much so that female fetuses are aborted without regard for the law, moral values, or even the delicate balance of nature. I felt compelled to write an interesting tale about what could happen if an idealistic woman refused to abort a female child. But I also wanted the story to be one of hope and triumph and the resilience of the human spirit.” However, Bantwal maintains that gender-based abortion is not the norm. “The instances are quite rare when juxtaposed against India’s vast population, but the fact remains that gender-based abortions continue to occur.”

Bantwal weaves the universal themes of love, morality, and courage into a story set against a dramatic and rare backdrop. It brings to light the contradictions of a culture that is both modern and quaintly archaic, a society where women can aspire to the highest elected office and yet be plagued by the dark shadow of female fetus abortion and infanticide.

Many of the cultural elements come from the author’s observations and personal experiences from growing up in a small town in India.

Naazish: What motivates you to pick the topics you do?

Being passionate about women’s rights and women’s issues, I tend to veer towards topics that are dear to my heart. If I can weave a compelling story around a particular theme that has both emotional appeal as well as social/political implications, I feel it gives me an opportunity to both fulfill my creative urge and express my opinion on certain subjects.

Additionally, I find many of my American friends, neighbors, and coworkers have no idea about such issues. Some of them have never even heard of the term “dowry,” or come across a culture that is so male-centric that girls are considered a burden and can be aborted as fetuses and denied the chance to live.

Writing about such topics gives me the perfect opportunity to educate and entertain at the same time. Consequently, my first two books, THE DOWRY BRIDE and THE FORBIDDEN DAUGHTER, deal with hot-button social issues and yet have a romantic story of love, hope and the resilience of the human spirit.

Naazish: What kind of response have you gotten from readers. What's some of the best feedback you've gotten?

Feedback to date has been mixed, and it has been very typical—something that I expected long before my book was published. Most American readers of mainstream women’s fiction with romantic elements seem to love the book. Various book clubs across the country, Canada, and especially in my home state of New Jersey have read the book and continue to do so. I address many of them in person or by phone, and the overall feedback I get is very positive and encouraging. One instructor at a community college made THE DOWRY BRIDE required reading for her course on global cultures and I was thrilled to be invited to address the class.

However, South Asian readers, particularly my fellow Indians, feel that the book is too melodramatic and portrays dowry as an evil custom with no redeeming features. Personally, I find no good qualities in the system as it is practiced today. It probably started out with good intentions, as a way to assure inheritance equity between sons and daughters, but it has deteriorated into something destructive and redundant in a society where women have become economically independent to a large degree.

Some Indians also feel that I have denigrated a particular segment/caste of society by introducing a rape scene where a lower-class man attacks an upper-caste woman. In the book, this incident occurs nearly 60 years ago and the consequences are being felt by the families affected by the act to the present day. I have portrayed that segment from the point of view of an 80-year-old woman (the victim) and it is her prejudices and her bitterness at her attacker that I have put into words. Many readers are offended by this because they feel I have been politically incorrect in my portrayal of the dalit community and that I should be more responsible in my writing. Unfortunately, a writer can never please every reader and I accept that fact.

However, the best feedback has come from one or two e-mailers who have offered me balanced comments—what they liked and what they didn’t, and what they feel would have improved the book. I feel theirs are the most honest commentaries I’ve seen on my book, and perhaps the most useful.

Naazish: What would you say to a potential comment that you're washing dirty laundry in public?

I have read one man’s feedback expressing these exact sentiments. My answer is that the world has a right to know the good and the bad about every culture. It is the only way to make others aware of what goes on in certain cultures and how they could possibly help the innocent victims of certain social customs that continue to be practiced despite laws to ban them. Someone has to speak out on behalf of women who either cannot or do not have the means to request aid. No society is perfect and to write about the negatives or “dirty laundry” is one way of starting a meaningful dialogue on how to eradicate or at least diminish the negatives.

Naazish: Have you always wanted to be a writer or was this something you fell into accidentally?

Although I was a voracious reader all my life, I stumbled into writing at the age of 50. When my husband started working on a project that forced him to stay away from home during weekdays, as an empty-nester, I decided to take up creative writing as a hobby. I started by writing social interest articles for a number of Indian-American publications like India Abroad, Little India, India Currents, DesiJournal.com, and Kanara Saraswat. Then I moved on to short fiction. When my short stories won awards and/or honors in nationwide fiction contests, my ambitions gradually expanded to full-length fiction. I wrote my first novel and it got sold to Kensington Publishing in a two-book contract when I turned 54. I call it my menopausal epiphany.

Naazish: Can you describe the pitching process and how to land an agent?

I wrote very simple query letters to my top-tier of agents. During the first round I received a lot of rejections. So I wrote another book, one set in the U.S., which seemed to elicit plenty of interest from good agents. All of a sudden I got requests from seven agents wanting to see a partial manuscript and four that asked to see the whole book. Eventually three offered me representation and I picked the one that I felt was most suited for my needs. It was also the agency that represents Khaled Hosseini of “The Kite Runner” fame, so I felt the agency would be as asset for me. Sadly that particular manuscript never got sold, but when I asked my agent to look at THE DOWRY BRIDE, she did and she liked it. Luckily it got sold within a few weeks.

Naazish: What advice do you have for other writers?

Other than to keep plugging away and writing what they feel is the right genre for them, I have very little advice for aspiring writers. I took a calculated risk when I started writing Desi romances, which are what I call Bollywood-in-a-book. When I started writing them because I happen to enjoy mainstream fiction with romance as a theme, I never dreamt that a publisher would actually like them, let alone buy them, since most agents and publishers expect serious literary novels from South Asian writers. If a writer enjoys reading and writing a particular genre, they should stick with it. One never knows which publisher is looking for something different.

Naazish: How has life changed now that you're a published author?

Writing has taken over my entire life. I now have two full-time careers (one day job that pays the bills and the other my writing career that makes no money but consumes most of my time). I have no time for anything else lately. One of the risks of taking up writing seriously is the amount of time one needs to invest in it. Marketing the book consumes a very large part of a writer’s life. It is a time and money pit, where the more you pour in, the more it demands. Currently I’m working on a marketing plan for my second book, THE FORBIDDEN DAUGHTER, ready for release on August 26, 2008.

Naazish: Do you have other books in the making?

Yes. Kensington just offered me another two-book contract, so I expect my third book to be released in 2009 and a fourth in 2010, if all goes well and I can produce the stories they are looking for. I love the creative part of being a writer, but I don’t look forward to the marketing end. Overall, it has been a mixed experience—an exhausting yet exciting journey.

Aging Gracefully, Are We?

By Naazish YarKhan

It’s 16 years ago that I graduated from college. A newborn that year is now entering university. What a thought. When I visited a local community college for some classes recently, I realized that I was double the age of the kids there. Weird, especially since I’d caught myself thinking some of the guys on that campus were really cute. Jeepers, talk about robbing the cradle.. even if only in thought.

Worse, my age shows. There I was imagining myself as a youngish-thing when one of the above mentioned ‘cute guys’ addressed me as Ma’am. You have to understand this. I don’t think of myself as middle aged, even if I may already be there, if you think that most people live till they are 75 years old. But I’m not really, supposed to be middle-aged. It’s what other people are, like my parents and all those aunties and uncles. Then it dawns. I am now one of those aunties. But no, I really am not. I refuse to be. I insist I will make every effort to stick to ‘young at heart’, instead, even when I am inclined to be older and wiser.

“We don’t think we’ve changed, beside the weight we’ve put on over the years, but our faces, actually, have grown older too,” said Farah, a relative by marriage, and mom of three. Her observation came on the heels of a comment I made as to how my friends from college looked on Facebook. “And some of them don’t even have kids so what excuse do they have for belly fat?” I stressed. Note to self: When you notice how much older your contemporaries look, you probably look the same way too.

It was in the midst of all this attention to my ‘changing’ ( or was it deteriorating) physical self, that I made a very startling discovery. But first let me back up. I am the kind of person who often leaves the house without make-up on. I am the person who had a facial last when I was preparing to become a bride. Now more about my ‘startling discovery’. All those pretty women you see in the grocery store or at the bakery, well, they aren’t naturally pretty. It’s at least partly the make up, partly the facial, the manicure, the clothes and partly the eye of the beholder. Their hair has been curled or straightened or blow dried before they ventured out. It’s not gorgeous hair by birth. That has been my number one realization this year. And to think I actually used to think some women, my friends included, were just stunning naturally.

I also discovered quite by accident that friends are skinny because they are on a perpetual diet. I thought they exercised and watched what they ate. Somehow it didn’t translate in my mind to mean that they were either on the cabbage soup diet or the South Beach Diet or the Jenny Craig diet or on Weight Watchers. “There’s no way, anyone can be naturally skinny if you eat,” says my close buddy, Faryal, another mom of three. She revealed she too lost a lot of weight with Weight Watchers after her second child. “You grew up in India, so being skinny wasn’t the first and last thing on your mind,” she said. Grow up in the U.S.A and apparently it is the stuff of ones every thought, in addition to make-up and nice hair, I mean.

Well, my goal is to drop 7-10 kilo’s. But before I dole out my husbands’ hard earned money to Weight Watchers, I had a thought. How about I try and follow some free advice first. ‘Smaller portions’ – my husband’s vote. ‘Don’t eat after six p.m., cut down on meat, switch from rice to whole wheat chapatti and drink lots of water.’ – my cousin Huma’s voice. ‘Graze on healthy foods through the day so you’re never starving. Have six small meals instead of three big ones. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Visualize yourself as slim and trim. You’ll attract what you think. Sleep early because people think they’re hungry when they’re actually tired or thirsty. Fuel up on fiber since it takes longer to digest. Take the saying ‘one-minute-on-the-lip-is-a-lifetime-on-the-hip’ to heart.’ This is some of the other how-to-lose-weight / be healthy advice I’ve heard here, there and everywhere. I have converted to whole grain, so that’s a beginning. Whole grain bread and whole grain cereal. (Incidentally, did I tell you I am the person who takes honey instead of sugar in her tea, but binges on chocolate and pie?) We don’t eat out often and fast food, including pizza, is a choice no more than once or twice a month. Only catch is I am awful when I’m hungry. Awful, Impatient, Snippy. What’s a gal to do? Seriously graze so I’m never starving?

So is there such a thing as aging gracefully? Well, I guess, for some, it will be a question of how much youth money can buy. For the rest of us, there’s the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. The ‘Dove Evolution’ video is on You Tube and will shock you. It transforms an average girl into a stunner, with the stroke of a hair brush, the stroke of a eye liner pencil, the stroke of a computer key. And you must check out the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty online. Dove soap - long considered America's beauty bar, with its ad campaign, boldly challenges us to revise our view of what is considered beautiful, shapely and young. “Dissatisfaction with body image increases as girls move into adolescence, according to a 2000 study by the Girl Scout Research Institute. Although 75 percent of 8- and 9-year-old girls in the study said they like their looks, only 56 percent of those ages 12 and 13 did. And of the 33 percent of girls ages 14-17 who said they're too fat, two-thirds were dieting. Ninety percent of eating disorders are diagnosed in girls. The data prompted Dove to launch the Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004 to help women feel more beautiful by widening the definition of the word.” Older, non-blond and heavyset women have all been featured in the dove campaign.

I doubt those ads made it to billboards in Oman but they all have real women, with real curves as models. Dove soap is also promoting the idea that 50 is fabulous – even in the face of America’s youth-obsessed culture. You have to see it to believe it.

So where does that leave my battle of the bulge? I guess as long as I do make the effort to eat healthier and exercise more for the right reasons, I’ll be on the right side of the track. It will be an effort for me, and not so much an effort to impress other’s or manipulate what others think of me. And when I catch myself putting myself down if I’m not the ‘ideal’ image, I’m going to remind myself that I have a young daughter whose watching and listening to my every attitude. That I am responsible for the ideas I plant in my child’s head, even when I do so unconsciously. That it is young girls who are driven to anorexia and bulimia by the messages we bombard them with. That I have to be careful not to let her sense of self be governed by something as fleeting as physical appearances. And that bit about being ‘older and wiser’ versus ‘young at heart’. Why does it have to be either-or? Let me say it’s going to be and-and. I’m going to have both sets of attitudes and have the best of both worlds. Amen.

C’est La Vie… Such is Life

By Naazish YarKhan

I’d almost given up on being able to get my act together. Each day more or less resembled the other and procrastination had usurped the place of my shadow and followed me everywhere I went. My deadlines for this column came and were missed. Other target dates too arrived and were left to slip by. I saw, first hand, the truth to the saying, ‘if you want something done, ask a busy person.’ Ask someone with too much time on their hands, as I am these days, and apparently procrastination takes care of it. I don’t know what I do online, but I can spend hours on the net, reading into the late hours of the night. My husband, usually, will ask what task I’m avoiding when he sees me like this. How can I tell him I’m neglecting that scholarship for school I meant to apply for, that job I had my eye on, or even the vacuuming? Someone once called it ‘moving furniture’ when your activities don’t build towards a goal and make you feel like you’re simply drifting. My friends put it down to this lousy weather. Is it? I don’t quite know. The rare spot of activity is when I volunteer at Yousuf’s school. I don’t really care to except that Yousuf loves to have me there and it’s a blessing to be able to. As one little boy asked, ‘Why doesn’t my mom help in school? I always ask her but she doesn’t.”

Then my sister called saying she still needed some paperwork from me to submit to the American embassy. She had her interview for her tourist visa in two days. Well that compelled me to get on the ball and I swung into action with all the force of a Jane alongside Tarzan. A flurry of activity filled my day as I compiled and then faxed whatever missing information was needed. That push was all it took because while Naazneen, sadly, did not get her visa approved, I did get my groove back. Talk about spillover and ripple effects. Today, with just a little planning, I was able to bake and drop off a cake for a fund-raiser, attend a meeting, cook for us and my in-laws, make fresh carrot juice in a real juicer (5 minutes) and clean up (25 minutes!), and drop and pick Yousuf from school. I felt so good about these little accomplishments
(vs. dropping Yousuf at school and coming home and getting nothing done) that I even rewarded myself with a visit to my friend and neighbor Ruth’s house for a chat. Usually, if I haven’t been productive, doing anything fun seems less deserved, and therefore less enjoyable. This visit, I’d earned.

Ruth and I were catching up after ages. Winter does that to you. The freezing cold dissuades you from even venturing across the street and our hello’s are contained to when we spot each other pulling into our respective garages, or taking out the garbage. I knew that Ruth’s mother, Mrs. Barnes, had been hospitalized – for years she was taking larger doses of her prescription medication than her doctor had recommended for her Asthma. All those steroids in her system ended up giving her a heart problem and that was why she was hospitalized. Once there, reducing the medication, apparently all too abruptly, left her mother psychotic and hallucinating. After her almost three week stay, Mrs. Barnes has now been discharged from the hospital, the situation fairly under control.

The mental breach was supposed to have healed in five days, but Ruth suspects it may continue for months since there is a pre-disposition to mental ill-health in their family history. Her mother’s personality seemingly altered, “I don’t know who I was talking to,” said Ruth of her most recent, acerbic conversation with her mother. She’s not quite sure if the accusations Mrs. Barnes made comprised an episode of mental ill-health or if it was just her mother being angry and resentful due to the turn in events.

Ruth isn’t in tears but she is visibly distraught. Her sisters and she live in three separate states, and their parents in a fourth state. They aren’t quite prepared to handle this. But then again, how often does bad news come with advance notice? But Ruth agonizes that this was a train wreck she had seen coming for years. She related how often she and her siblings had advised their mother not to over-do the medicines, to stick to the prescribed dosage and how Mrs. Barnes dismissed them as ‘over-reacting’. Ruth’s words leave me thinking. How often have I myself brushed aside my husband’s advice that I exercise? How often has he asked me to have a check up because I run out of breath climbing ten steps or laughing too hard? I think what we don’t realize is this: Maintaining our health is the best gift we can give our loved ones. In this day and age, when we grow ill, we don’t usually die. We become a burden.

But it’s not like I’ve thrown caution to the winds. I bought the juicer specifically because the nutrients in juice are absorbed quicker by our bodies and is good for health. I even use the pulp that’s left behind as fiber and add it to my cooking. Celery, fennel (anise) and cucumbers are good choices to begin juicing since they’re easier to digest. Cabbage juice has one of the most healing nutrients for ulcer repair as it is a huge source of vitamin U.
(I didn’t know there was a vitamin U!) Dark green vegetables, such as spinach, are very nutrient rich. Other veggies worth juicing are asparagus, string beans and cauliflower (including the base), though I haven’t tried any of them. Key is to listen to your body. Make sure it’s not growling and grumbling after you’ve done drinking the juice. I bought a big bag of carrots but learned that carrot juice is full of sugar and adds to insulin levels, as do other fruits, so is better in small dozes, if at all. http://www.mercola.com/nutritionplan/juicing.htm has details.

Two nights ago, I also spent a good deal of time online researching the benefits of raw honey. It’s a panacea for almost every ill from asthma to aiding weight loss. It’s not pasteurized and so retains more of the nutrients than the honey that is processed and sold in bulk. I then called a place or two to find out if they sold raw honey and am going to pick some up. So how does one make sure one’s day is action packed and productive when there isn’t much going on? Does ‘research stuff online’ cut it?

“Why did you cut his hair?” I suddenly hear my husband yelling in the background. Er…he’s not quite thrilled with the trim I gave Yousuf. Well, that’s what you get when mama has time aplenty, (and no coupon in hand, that’ll gives two dollars off at the barber’s.) C’est la vie mon ami.

Room To Grow

By Naazish YarKhan

With the year slowly coming to an end, it’s always worth it to take stock of where one has been and where one wants to be financially, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and yes, physically, in the year coming up ahead. Psychotherapists and self-help books encourage one to put it in writing, to visualize in your mind what you want to have and even create a visual image or picture of it. Cut pictures from magazines, pictures of and quotes from role models, create an image – a roadmap to the year ahead. As the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad put it, before the journey or even the planning for a journey comes the idea of one.

Here’s what I know about myself and know that I must change. Hope it gets you thinking about your list.

If it’s not on my to-do list, it doesn’t happen. In fact, not only does it not happen, it doesn’t even cross my mind that it’s a matter to be taken care. Imagine how much gets left undone! So have a to-do list at hand.

Misplaced To-Do Lists. Would that mean I make multiple copies of to-do lists or perhaps figure out how to use my cell phone to the fullest. My husband tells me my cell phone can easily double as a planner. I only have to figure out how. Hmmm….??

Mulling and mulling over a matter, getting increasingly anxious about it, instead of tackling it and getting it over and done with. Too much analysis leads to paralysis they say, and it’s true. Note to self : Stop self when descending into this unholy mess.

Dreading the enormity of a to-do list, instead of tackling it and chipping it down in size. This has to be one of my worst and most unproductive habits. Sometimes I forget Rome wasn’t build in a day.

Shock when I do actually do it and discover how simple it was all along. Next time fear stops me from getting on the ball, I promise to remind myself how easy it was to actually get done the previous thing I had similar sentiments about.

Being a people pleaser and allowing my sense of self to be based on others think of my accomplishments. Freedom comes when you realize you don’t need external validation of yourself.

Procrastination. I need to remember that half the issues on this list stem from procrastination. That it’s not a vice to take lightly.

Making excuses as to why some things aren’t on my to-do list. Remind self that where there is a will, there is a way.

Once in a while, giving myself permission, not to have a to-do list.

Dealing with criticism and difficult people. Reminding myself that it’s okay to be frustrated and it’s okay to give myself permission to vent about the person, but that everyone has a point of view from which I may learn something. There is no one reality. There are always two sides to a coin. In life, there are many perspectives of an issue.

Reminding myself to step outside my comfort zone. Comfort zones keep you small.

Life isn’t a spectator sport. Be a participant. Make decisions, take chances, grow be it as my role as a mom, wife, human being, daughter, daughter-n-law, or woman.

Mirror to the Soul

Stirrings

And so it happened that I began to write again.
Began to whisper onto paper thoughts that were my own.
Ribbons of light, rising from places deep.
Feelings uncoiling
Me so clueless they even lay within me
Now spilling onto the page before me before I could stem the tide.
I wondered about the strength of such things;
Acquiesced.

Words.
Thoughts.
Things so potent, so powerful.
And the more I wrote, the better I knew me,
And the clearer I could see that my life
as I knew it -
It was over.
I was on the brink of changing forever.

The View In the Mirror

By Naazish YarKhan

The Shema in the Torah, starts: (Deuteronomy 6:4) Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! Likewise, Jesus said: (Mark 12:29) “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one”. Likewise, God says in the Holy Qur’an: Say: He, God, is One. / God, the Self-Sufficient Besought of all. (Al-Ikhlas, 112:1-2). The Unity of God, love of Him, and a love for his creation form a common ground upon which Islam and Christianity (and Judaism) are founded.

But that’s not what the media covers, nor is it the message anyone sees when they read the news related to Muslims or Islam, or when they read blogs on the topic, or when they learn of another suicide bombing.

According to Business Week, Jan 2007, “59% of Muslim adults in the U.S have college degrees, compared to 28 % of all American adults. Surveys show that the median family income amongst Muslims exceeds the national average of $ 55,800. A 2004 Zogby International Poll, reports that one in three Muslims earns more than $75,000 annually.”

But this too is not the stuff of most news reports. It’s just not juicy enough for sustained play in the papers. And that’s where a magazine like Muslim Girl steps in, (www.muslimgirlmagazine.com).

In Muslim Girl Magazine (MGM), Muslim girls see themselves – both hijabi and non-hijabi. We see ourselves portrayed as normal. We are portrayed as beautiful, as smart and as capable and it’s a breath of fresh air. It reflects the experience of teenage Muslim girls from all over the Muslim world – Bosnia, Africa, Palestine, Egypt, India. It shows Muslim girls a mirror to what they know exists in the Muslim world they live in.

And for a change, it’s not selling you bad news. It’s fashionable, it’s trendy. “Being able to find modest clothes and yet being trendy at the same time can be an uphill battle,” said one girl I spoke with. “ The magazine lets you see that you can be a fashionable yet modestly dressed Muslim,” she said. For many hijab wearing Muslim girls, MGM is a support group of sorts. For still others, it is a source of information to share with their non-Muslim friends. (Incidentally, my son, who is only five, is now hankering for a magazine for Muslim boys!)

Most importantly, a magazine like Muslim Girl, gives Muslim girls a voice. It reflects thoughts echoed by many teen girls in dorms and at dining tables across Muslim America and Canada. In it, Muslim girls see themselves and for once, find that they are no longer the invisible minority, or the minority which is visible only when another bomb falls. For parents too, it is many things. For starters, it’s a better alternative to Cosmo or YM magazine.

But it’s not just teenage girls who are reading the magazine from cover to cover. Yours truly here, does the same! I’ve also just finished reading another young adult novel – Does My Head Look Big In This. The writing is great, the pace never dulls, but I see and hear myself in it and that’s what keeps me turning the pages.

Another must read for Muslims and Non-Muslims alike is Being Muslim. I remember in college, having a friends’ dad say that Muslim women had no rights. At the time I didn't have a come-back because I didn't know much about Islam. But it was what pushed me to learn, so that I could defend my faith if I ever had to do it again. BEING MUSLIM allows teens and adults to do that. I talked to the author, Haroon Siddiqui, as to why he wrote the book. For one, the book talks facts about contemporary issues facing Islam and the West these days. Once readers have an understanding as to what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan or in their backyard, they can argue their case with eloquence and facts instead of being tongue-tied or reacting defensively or being in denial. For instance, yes, in today's worlds, most terrorists are Muslim but that doesn't mean all Muslims are terrorists. In another age, and another era, Catholics and Protestants in Ireland were at it, and in another time Kamakazi's were the main terrorists.

Being Muslim is ammunition for every reader who has ever been put on the spot post 9/11, or anyone who has had to shoulder this collective guilt every time an act of terrorism occurs. It is the book for those with questions about the West and Islam.

Anne Frank in her diaries wrote that when a Jew is at fault, all Jews are held accountable and when a Christian is at fault, it's the fault of just that one Christian. Islam is going through that period now. Former Secretary General of the U.N. Mr. Kofi Annan, had the good sense to see through the smoke and mirrors and point out that acts of violence by Muslims were rooted in anger at U.S. policies and not because of the freedom’s enjoyed by America, as the current administration and the media have led the people to believe.

God willing, these negative times will pass and when they do, as they most certainly will and when society finds the next scapegoat, God willing Muslims will raise their voices against it. Having been at the receiving end of it, we know how unjust and far from God’s way it is.

White Space

By Naazish YarKhan

Blank space….I never look at the screen before me as white space needing to be filled. It’s much the opposite, most times. It’s too many thoughts whizzing around, needing to be downloaded, offloaded, shared. Summer is ending and school will be back in session next week. It’s all come to an end much too quickly. With me working, it wasn’t too many days that were free to do with as I pleased. That’s not to say the kids haven’t had a great summer. They’ve spent hours and hours playing or riding bikes. They had sleepovers with friends and spent time at their grand-parents. I had, however, wanted to drive down to nearby Wisconsin, have the kids experience the Dells – one big town, made up of water parks galore. But four years ago, we skipped all that and went further north into this state of cows and cheese to Door County. That was easily one of our best vacations and I wonder how the summer has slipped by without us making the time to visit there. Neither did we go camping. Still, there are 10 days or so left. Maybe fewer. I wonder if summer time is a microcosm of life. Blink and its gone.

But summer is far more relaxed that the school year. Although I do get a bunch of hours all to myself in the school year, with swimming, Arabic and homework, it does get very tight. Still, Taskeen who is nine, did take her first dives into the high end of the pool, on her last day of swimming lessons last month. I wouldn’t want to compromise her learning, just when she’s getting to be a stronger swimmer. This past year was the first time she took swimming lessons. They began in fall, and went on through bitter cold temperatures in winter. I didn’t think it was possible. It is an indoor pool but wouldn’t it be freezing when they stepped out to get to the car, I had wondered. But it wasn’t bad. In fact we did it and I don’t remember it being miserable. Another lesson learned about assumptions.

Talking of lessons, I’ve been reading two books that I loved. One is ‘Cracking the Millionaire Code’ (www.crackingthemillionairecode.com) and the other is ‘The Secret’
( www.thesecret.tv). Both tie financial success in this world, to success as a person of faith. Both emphasis consistent gratitude to God, regular charity from one’s earnings, asking God to show us the way, prayers and meditation first thing in the morning, exercise and working for a win-win situation for all those involved, as keys to material success. Both look at money as stepping stones to improving the lot of humanity, for example, as evident in the actions of Bill Gates.

‘The Secret’ is all about attracting more of that which you think of. For instance, why do we suddenly start seeing cars similar to the one we just bought, all over the place? It’s not like they didn’t exist. They did exist, but we are now more aware of them because our own new car is now on our own radar and we see more of what we think about. The book talks of putting up visuals and pictures of your dream objects and attracting those into your life. I don’t really know reading this book had anything to do with it, but we recently went looking at homes that cost half a million dollars. Let’s hope we attract one into our lives!

Both books say that generosity attracts wealth because we’re saying, “we have enough.” Stinginess, on the other hand, sends out a message to the universe, that says, “I don’t have enough” so the Universe delivers on that thought. One of the best part is when the authors say, give in charity but without expecting anything back from God. Don’t treat charity as an investment in God’s company, for dividends in this life. Instead, you’re your charity poor, by giving it as your way of saying thank you for each aspect of your life, including hardships, for those hardships are the kernel of great tomorrows. One of the exercises, in fact, involves listing down all the good things and all the bad things that happened to you in life, as a way to show how even the worst incidents in one’s life, opened the doors to better things. I guess in a way, it’s like the pangs of childbirth do eventually do lead to the joy of having children.

The Secret is all about visualizing what you want and asking for what you want, while being positive. The author asks to not to ask God to end famine but to provide everyone with food. A peace rally will bring peace, while an anti-war rally, attracts more negative emotions around it. They talk of asking the right questions, and allowing God to answer it for you. Isn’t of saying ‘Why Am I Fat?’, which in turn will give you only negative answers that endorse that self-perception, the authors recommend you ask, “How can I get slimmer?” I’ve heard this same advice at a Tony Robbins seminar. Instead of saying “Why am I not succeeding?” we should ask “How can I succeed even more?”

So backtracking to what I began writing about. Maybe if I visualize long, languid days filled with memories, I’ll attract those. If I say the days of summer are short lived, they will be short lived. If I say we didn’t do all we wanted, there’s no chance we will do those things.

So here, now I am going to say, the days of summer are long and full of everything I ever imagined them to be. We’re going to go down to the beach, visit a museum or two, travel perhaps, spend time as a family on vacation. The weather is going to be amazing, blue skies, cool breezes. When the school year starts despite all the activities and commitments, we are going to have time for prayer and time for each other and time to laugh and play a board game or two. I am going to be calm, collected, and gently encouraging. When school starts we’re going to wake up way early, we’ll always be on time for the bus, maybe even early. We’re always going to be organized with not a back pack out of place. Yousuf is starting a new school, God Willing, and he will love it there and want to go back for more each morning. He’ll learn a lot and enjoy the challenges and make lots of friends. Taskeen will too. She’ll love school and they’ll both excel. Homework will be a breeze. There will be laughter and sun shine each day of our lives. In the spring, we’ll visit India and my parents, God willing. And somewhere in there, I will find a full time position at a university or college. It will be the beginning of great new things. Amen. As I write this down, I see that what happens to be unfolding is a prayer. This is the stuff of prayers!

In the Quran, it says that when we make a prayer for others, Angles say ‘Unto you to’. So these are my prayers for your family too. As you begin the school year, or continue a year that has already begun, may all these wishes come true. Amen.

Reality is not what you see, but how you see it.

By Naazish YarKhan

One sure fire way to stay in vacation mode – or at least enjoy its last remnants, is to be afflicted with jet lag. The first two days or three days it was great. Here was our whole family waking up when it was still dark outside and getting a move on the day. It felt like being kids and reading under the covers past bed time. My children had never been so dressed and ready to go to school, so not ‘You’re getting late!! Go! Rush or the bus will leave’. By evening, we hit the covers by 7:00 p.m. because we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. So it was fun, as I said,… initially. But today, the fifth day I’ve awoken in my own bed, but at the holy hour of 4:30 a.m. I tell you, I did try willing my body and mind to stay asleep. No such luck. My mind filled with thoughts re: the day’s doings and I just had to get cracking. I had a deadline for Oman Observer to meet so here I am.

I like to hit the road running so I sent the kids off to school the very next day after our return. They were up at 4:00 a.m. anyway so why not? Yousuf, my son, complains how everyone has some work to do ( his being school) and how mama does nothing. I am, of course, offended by this observation and ask who does the laundry and the cooking. “Baba and I do the laundry,” he shoots back, not batting an eye-lid. Jeezzzz!

Anyway, because I was feeling badly that I am not the best of house-keepers, nor best of cooks, I actually pulled out a Khana Khazana cook book and went and purchased all the ingredients to make some delicious food. I am not the best of cooks, but seeing my kids eat so well at my mother’s has given me food for thought. If I am a stay home mom, I better have something to show for it. Funny, though, how email creeps up and mislays your best plans. I have spent more time fiddling with email than cooking. But I have faith. I will make a better cook of myself. And if I fail, that is the only way one learns. Like biking or swimming, you know. So in the end, to all the hats I wear, I can don a Chef’s hat as well. Ha haa. Taskeen, especially, misses breakfast being ready on the table, which was how it was at my mother’s house. It made me sad to think that I don’t even have breakfast ready for the kids before hand and have them drink a meal replacement drink on many mornings. What kind of mom am I ??? But I’m glad she brought it up. It is a simple request and one, I hope, I can fulfill regularly ( and not just when I’m jet lagged).

Speaking of Muscat, it was heart-wrenching leaving my folks and siblings behind last week. And it isn’t like family is sugary-sweet all the time and yet I miss being surrounded by people who undoubtedly love me and care for my well being, and who want to help me out when they see I need it. Plus, I’m plagued by ‘Who knows how long we’re going to be on this planet’, and that kind of thinking. A Nigerian neighbor of mine read my mind apparently and said he’d pack his bags and move back, if it hadn’t been for his American wife, and now American kids. This realization struck him last year after he’d been to visit family in Nigeria after a 12 year gap. His mother, in fact, didn’t recognize him!

This trade-off, we immigrants make emotionally, has really been playing on my mind. And then to affirm my thoughts that here in the U.S, we have thin relationships as opposed to thick ones, one of my students mother, a German woman, commented on how, in America, we have oodles of acquaintances but few people we know really, really well. Americans are friendly and because of that, they end up sending the wrong signals that they want to be your friends, but they really just want to be friendly acquaintances, she was saying. So I was right. Here, rare are the people who have the time or want to make the effort to have a thick relationship...and having lived here 13 years, I can be that person, very often, too. What’s odder is that many Americans do think acquaintance = friends.

I asked my husband, who is born and raised here, if the paucity of inter-dependent relationships, where friends need to bond regularly, where they feel revived and reenergized in each others company, whether the paucity of that was something that bothered him. His answer was a no-brainer, simple sentence. ‘This is all I’ve ever known.” So he doesn’t know if there’s something he’s missing because he’s never had an alternative. I, on the other hand, have lived elsewhere and have a frame of reference where I can make comparisons and yes, the relationships we have here, don’t hold a flame to those that people have in India or elsewhere in the East.

Not only that, it’s not going to happen in the US, because individuals are raised to be independent and not inter-dependent. And if you don’t feel the need to have another person and can do it all by yourself, then having another person in the picture isn’t productive – it only slows things down. But how precious is a support system. A real support system which can be the wind beneath your wings, the oil that keeps your machine going.

They call FaceBook this great way to keep in touch. To me it’s just another way to fool yourself that you’re in touch, and have a relationship. Sending a nudge or a poke, as FaceBook allows you to do, replaces having to make that phone call or download your thoughts in an email. Sending a mass note instead of a personalized one which reveals who you are on the inside, creates emotional ties only to the extent that reading a columnist regularly gives you the feeling that you are friends with the writer.. when, in fact, that really isn’t the case.

I end with a quote from an editor of the New York Times who’s in charge of a section called Modern Love, where readers send in essays about love and not just romantic love. According to him, “in pursuing love, electronic communication allows us to be more reckless, fake, distracted and isolated than ever before. According to the personal accounts I've read, men and women today are apt to plunge into love affairs via text message, cut them off by PowerPoint, lie about who they are and what they want in forums and blogs and online dating sites, …ignore the people they're physically with for those who are a keystroke away, shoo their children off their laps to caress their BlackBerrys, and spend untold hours staring at pixilated … stars when they should be working, socializing, taking care of their children or sleeping.”

On that note, give your kids an extra hug, tell your spouse you love them and can’t imagine a world without them and call your parents and tell them how much you miss them. Take care. Au Revior. Adios.

The Darjeeling Limited Derailed

By NaazishYarKhan

This evening, as it so happened, Farhat was home from work early. Early meaning at 5:30 p.m. Plus it was a Friday night meaning no school tomorrow, so no homework, no making lunches for the next day and so on. He and the kids planned to hang out at his folks’ and I had plans to watch a movie with a gal pal. Now, somewhere between checking who all were available to join me and Melinda, and which movie to watch, Melinda got scuttled from the plan and I decided to ask Farhat if he wanted to watch a movie with me. Watch a movie with ones’ spouse. Ah… After 13 years of matrimony and two kids, it’s quite a rarity that you and beloved can actually get any down time alone! His brother agreed to watch the kids and we found ourselves buying tickets to ‘The Darjeeling Limited’, that American movie made in India.

Now how should I put it? It’s not like I didn’t like the movie. Sure, it moved me. Sure it was engaging but it just didn’t do it for me. Now I go to a movie, for I guess, an “out of mind” experience. To be engrossed, enthralled, blown away. Hindi movie style, larger than life, mega entertainment, lush landscapes, witty dialogue, beautiful characters traipsing across the screen. I don’t go to the movies, to a read a book. That’s actually hitting the nail on the head. ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ was equivalent to reading a book. It had substance, it had character development. No flash, bang, kick, shove.
Boy, the indigestion I got when I got home. I was irritable and grouchy. I hadn’t signed up for our rare, once in a blue moon, movie night to turn out so hum drum, so devoid of dishum, dishum. I felt cheated. And then I began to write, because I had to figure out how I could be so emotionally affected by disappointment in a movie of all things. How could I be so emotionally involved in what a movie does for me. How could a movie turn me into Grouchola, with a capital ‘G’.

I write to figure out stuff. So I began writing. And as I write, I’m wondering, was it really the movie, or was it the fact that I have an 8:30 am breakfast tomorrow with a friend, then a 2:30 p.m. babyshower in the city and then a 7:30 p.m. get together at a friends – are thoughts of those impending appointments the ‘background noise ’ responsible for my turn of mood. I was in fact in a great mood when we set out to the movie.

The more I typed, the clearer it became. I like things just so. I like them to go smoothly, as planned. I don’t like them to turn out differently than planned. Maybe most people are like this. But maybe the lesson for me ( that’s one thing about me – I always have to find a lesson to learn) is that I need to relax a little – take a deep breath and get on with life even if it doesn’t go as planned – esp. if it’s a movie of all things. And the more I thought about this being the crux of the issue, the truer it seemed to be the crux. After all, lightening up seems to be something all of us in our home need to do.

My son’s teacher at the recent parent teacher conference stated how diligent and earnest Yousuf is about school. How particular he is about not having fun, and obeying rules and doing just as he is told instead. They preferred it when he was able to get a little light hearted instead and play the fool a little. Taskeen came home one day complaining how chatty and un focused the kids at her table in school were, and that it kept her from focusing exclusively on her work. I asked her to ask the teacher to move her to quieter, more focused table. Maybe this uptightness is something both kids are inheriting from me. I am uptight. I am very ‘this has to go as planned’ and every item on the to-do list must be done. I’m used to being productive. I think that’s the bigger issue here. Learning to let go….Take a deep breath. Hold it for 2 secs. Let go. Take a deep breath. Hold it for 4 secs. Let go. Take a deep breath. Hold it for 6 secs. Let go. Ah… oxygen straight to the brain.

Well, so much for The Darjeeling Limited. At least I got to hash the issue out on paper. Atleast I got to get it out of my system. As those who have a regular sounding board will guess, I’m one of those who needs a regular sounding board. My friend, Faryal, who is all ears as needed, in fact, is missing in action this week. Tonight is too late to call but tomorrow’s another day. So all I need to do is take a deep breath and walk away from the computer once I’ve added the last period to this article. I’ve mulled it over, written about it, gotten it out of my system. The Darjeeling experience is now past. No more breath, time nor fonts are to be spent on it. Amen.

Public Apology

By Naazish YarKhan


As those who read this column regularly know, I’m working on arranging discussions and book signings for author Haroon Siddiqui, whose book ‘Being Muslim’ is a Canadian bestseller. But my! The wrath my email invites have evoked amongst a few! Outpourings of hate against Islam and its prophet. Outpourings of venom against the faith and its people. To all of that, I have only one thing to say. I am sorry your experiences with Muslims and Islam has been so negative. You speak based on your experiences and if those have been bad, it can be easy to react accordingly. To all those who haven’t had the best of experiences with those of my faith, a public apology. The prophet would be hurt that you met with Muslims who misrepresented the faith, and pushed you away from it. He was a gentle, soft hearted man, one of great patience, and capable of great love, one who would call on you in sickness and in health, even if you despised him. He would never have wanted for you to feel hurt nor made you feel unwelcome, even if you followed a faith other than his.

I acquired this manner of reacting from my daughter and a friend, Shaheen. Shaheen was at an inter-faith gathering at which an attendee spoke up in full-fledged opposition of Muslims and Islam, much to the chagrin of the Christian organizers of the event. Following the speeches, small groups came together for more intimate discussion and Q&A, and Shaheen found herself at the table with this angry woman. I am not sure I would have handled the situation as well as Shaheen did, but when selected to speak in this small group, Shaheen began by thanking Americans for being as gracious as they were to Muslims in response to 9/11. Shaheen narrated that area churches, in fact, wrote letters to her mosque, offering Muslims their support in this time of crisis. She added that had 9/11 happened in some other country, riots would have erupted. In America, this never happened. Here, many, many people responded with understanding and Shaheen acknowledged that. Shaheen’s words made an unexpected impression on the lady who had, until then, only hateful things to say about Islam and Muslims. This lady now turned gracious and carried on for the rest of the session, speaking only gracious words. What an about- turn. “Sometimes one needs to be gracious, in order to teach another to be gracious too,” said Shaheen, simply.

I also learned to react in this manner from my daughter, Taskeen. We try, as much as possible, to end our prayers with five things we are grateful to God for, and with five requests or prayers for ourselves, our community, the environment and the world at large. When I first read the hateful emails, I felt actual pain that my prophet, so beloved to me, was being abused so much. I hoped that God would punish these people. Then I recalled Taskeen’s prayer. “Make the bad people into good people.” She didn’t pray for them to be chucked into hell. She didn’t ask God to punish the bad people. It was an approach that was far better than mine. So when I read some more of the vitriolic emails being written in response to my email, I did two things. I emailed the moderator of this email list, and all the other readers, to keep tabs on when a discussion was becoming a hate fest. It is one thing to express contradictory thoughts, it is quite another to stoop to abuse and insults. I also wrote an email to all those on that list, recognizing that a bad experience or two, could paint ones whole perspective towards another. And I apologized for the experiences that may have pushed these people away.

It is common sense and yet not commonly remembered that human beings are not one monolithic group. We cannot all be painted with the same brush. Let not your grouse against an individual, become your filter when you view an entire community. I am as guilty of this myself, when I rush to judge a group of people based on past poor experiences, before getting to even know them. Also, let not the actions of those who misunderstand a rule, mar your perspective of the rules or laws themselves. Just because I bungle a recipe when I cook it doesn’t mean the recipe is lousy. I, the cook, alone am responsible for how the end result tastes, not the recipe. So also faith. Those who practice a faith, may or may not do it correctly. Just because someone has misinterpreted or misrepresents the faith, doesn’t mean the faith itself stinks.

Having grown up in an inter-faith community in India, and now as someone with friends of every faith in my adult life, I have one small request. Life is too short for hate. Do take the time to read and discover for yourself more about some of the questions you have. Do get to know others of a faith you have questions about, if those you have already met have been disappointing. Peace and harmony are so fragile. If we are to avoid wars like Iraq, we must make sure to nip smaller rivalries and hate mongering in the bud first.
As many a bumper sticker in the USA asks, ask yourself, “What Would Jesus Do?” Ask yourself always, “how can we build bridges instead of destroying them?”

Lost in Transition

By Naazish YarKhan


My mother noticed it first. All your articles are beginning to sound the same, she said to me. I thought little of her comment. Then she said it again… and then once again. That’s when it got me thinking. Yes, it’s true. Iraq and Islam and its related U.S. politics are all that seem to be on my mind. That’s what I read. That’s what I give talks on, those are the topics that I interview others on, those are the topics I give interviews on, that’s what interests me and that’s what I write about I guess. What goes in, must come out.

But what does that say about me? That I surround myself with nothing but this? What of the kids, my friends, my social life. There’s a line in the movie, Blood Diamond. I don’t remember the exact line but it goes along the lines of the journalist having become a drama junkie, because all she does is cover conflict zones. I guess, in a way, that’s what I am. A political drama junkie – save the world, stave off horrible Bush from taking the planet to hell in a hand basket and write about it till the readers beg you to stop. Eerrrr …. let’s stop with the drama shall we?

Firstly, there won’t be that many political stories from me.. hopefully… despite how much I love them. Ever since I dropped my job as Editor of Chicago Crescent we are all breathing a little easier. I miss the stories we did and I still keep track, diligently, of all the stories we can be doing, but I don’t miss the chaos and the last minute haphazard dash that went with running a paper. Luckily, before I phased out of that, I got into publicity for authors and arranging speaking engagements. That truly is setting my own hours and it’s spaced out between months so actually works better for me, rather than the mad dash to replace 50% of the Chicago Crescent newspaper, in two days time, just because my boss didn’t have time to go over it when he should have and now all the news is old. That was not fun. Nor was it fun hearing: “wehavetogetapressreleaseoutthisminutebecausesomeonewentandthreatenedtobombthe searstowerandwe’recondemningtheallegedplot.” Whoa.

On another side, 4th grade has new concepts introduced each week and I didn’t want to see Taskeen flailing under any circumstances. She cried last week that she hadn’t gotten a 100% on any spelling test, all of 3rd grade, last year. Had I spent more time on her and less on the Crescent, that wouldn’t have been the case. All the math foundations are being taught this year… if she doesn’t get them right it can have a life long impact. A whole difference between a career in the low paying humanities versus one in the decent paying sciences or commerce related fields.

That said, I miss someone to talk to.. even if it’s your boss whose hours you hate (I’m just plain sadistic, aren’t I). Farhat suggested I go get a job in telemarketing - selling over the phone, because I don’t want to work full time. I did it when I first got here 13 years ago. Apparently I so need someone to talk to that even that looks like a good idea, when fact is I had sworn off telemarketing. All those people hanging up on you. All those people saying ‘thank you, but no thank you’. But I like people and I like talking. I mean I need to talk. It doesn’t seem like an option, to securing my mental health, to be able to get things off my chest. The answer could be as simple as making the time to see my friends. I don’t. For some reason, I rather hide behind a schedule than sit still for 60 minutes (without a computer screen in my face) and actually have a heart-to-heart.

I still have my job as managing editor of a quarterly and to pass the hours, I volunteer in Yousuf’s Montessori. And yes, I do publicity for Haroon Siddiqui and am considering expanding that to other authors. But something tells me not to look for more work. Focus on the kids, says the voice. Focus on your column for the Observer, it says too (My mom notices all the issues I haven’t written for). Then another voice chimes in.. Shouldn’t I finish editing for the nth time that novel I once began? And when do I plan to begin studying for entrance exams to law school.

Should I even do law school at this point in our lives. Now is my time to focus on the kids. Hmmm..seems to me, a life that’s a little bit in transition. A life swinging between motherhood and a life that’s mine.

TAKING A CHILL(Y) PILL

By Naazish YarKhan

When all you’ve been is a busy bee, it takes some getting used to when you have down time. Surprise! Having been a worker bee for the longest, what’s ended up happening is that I’ve lost the ability to just chill. I feel compelled to be doing something, even if it’s aimlessly window shopping and that’s saying a lot considering I don’t really like shopping. But as duty-bound as I feel to do something, I really am not doing much. I’ve discovered that I need stress to function. The less time I have, the more I can get done. The more time I have, the less I am able to focus and the less I get done.

I’ve also discovered all the little lies I told myself when I was a busy worker bee. “If I had more time, I’d actually read the books on my shelves” is one of them. “If I had more time, I’d read more Quran,” is another. Add “work on my novel, exercise, clean the house, sort the closets, vacuum and so on” to that list. You get my drift. Truth is too much time, for me, translates into too little structure which translates into nothing gets accomplished. I’ve taken to setting a timer when I do household chores, so that I work against a deadline and get it done .

People used to ask me how I accomplished things when I was neck deep in multiple projects for multiple bosses. I guess the secret to my productivity was that I couldn’t let anything pile up, or I’d be in a royal mess. When there’s no time to spare there is no room for one of the seven deadly sins - sloth – nor its cousin, procrastination.

These winter days are garbed in gray clouds and it’s pitch dark by 5 p.m, so I can’t tell if it’s me, or the lack of light that’s robbing my brain of serotonin and with it, attentiveness and focus. Norman Rosenthal, a pioneer in Seasonal Affective Disorder ( SAD) research, has estimated that the prevalence of SAD in the adult United States population in winter is between about 1.5 percent (in Florida) and about 9 percent (in the northern US). Symptoms include feeling sluggish, muggish, snail-ish, sadder. To be on the safe side and since this is only the start of a long, dreary winter I have ordered a light therapy box, which promises to do wonders. The light box makes up for the absence of natural, God-given light, flittering across our horizons these days and sitting in front of it for 30 mins a day, apparently gets the serotonin humming in our brains. So we’ll see in a week or so, if I’m any sharper, smarter, focussed. Plan A incidentally is air plane tickets to Muscat for some real sun, in late December. Yummmm.

Now if our weather was better, we’d probably do more with our free time. We’re not at sub-zero temps as yet, but besides eating out, movies, reading and shopping, I can’t think of much else to keep myself occupied. (No, no, I am not thinking housework and cooking. That never gets done! ) Or so I thought. All that changed this weekend when my husband decided to drive us to Wisconsin, which is the state next door. We were off to a state park, two hours away, to roast marshmallows and some hot dogs. This is something I absolutely love about my husband. He has the ability to turn a-day-going-nowhere into an adventurous, back-to-nature scenario. He’ll pick a state park or town we haven’t visited, located within an hour or an hour and a half’s drive from us, get directions off the net, pack some apples and juice boxes, and off we’d go.

Chalk it up to the way my brain is wired, because memories of all the road trips my parents took us on kicked in and I thought driving down to Wisconsin was a great idea. So we got the kids into two layers of clothing, gloves, hats and scarves. If we were going to be outdoors, we had to be prepared for the cold. At the last minute we switched cars, because my car has issues and no one wants to be stuck in the cold, on some highway in boonieville.

Two hours later, we were there and it was beautiful. The kids romped down to the water’s edge and I followed them, trying in vain to not step in goose poop. One of the fall outs of global warming has been that the Canada Geese refuse to migrate South sooner, and it’s near impossible finding a single patch of unsullied ground. So there we are at the Lake’s edge. It was beautiful and picturesque, only more so from inside the car with the heat on. I shivered, missing my jacket, that lay forgotten in the car trunk when we’d switched cars. Farhat was braver. He stuck it out without gloves that he’d left in the back-seat of this car.

‘Don’t walk into the snow, or your shoes and then toes will get wet,” was my constant refrain. Just because we in Chicago didn’t have snow as yet, we’d forgotten that wasn’t necessarily the case in another state. So here were the four of us in sneakers instead of our insulated snow boots.

Then we tried building a fire. There are match sticks and then there are match sticks for campers which light a huge fire in a jiffy. Remember that car switch-a-roo? Yep, we’d left the campers matches in there. Anyway, twigs, papers, coal that the last campers had left behind and some match sticks did get a fire going. My family roasted maybe four marshmallows while I sat in the car, clicking pictures. After all, we had made it all the way, and there had to be proof! They braved the weather for a good hour before Taskeen scurried in, followed by Yousuf, runny nose et al. They peeled off their double layers of socks and warmed their toes against the heat vents in the car. “I am so happy we’re here,” said Yousuf, as I rubbed his toes. My heart sang as he said those words and I was so glad we’d made the trek.

Once we left the lake, we saw it was less of a state park and more of a clump of wooded area in the middle of wheat fields, cordoned off by busy highways. Still Farhat, didn’t want to miss spotting deer, nor scaling Powder Hill. So he and the kids took off, waiting to watch the sunset once they’d reached the top. It was still only 5 p.m. The day was still young, when we hopped back onto the highway, only to be thrust almost immediately into a bustling town. Why does everyone think of Wisconsin as the boonies, I wonder? Parts of it are, but where we were it looked as much of a suburb, though less dense and with more fields, as where I lived.

On the way back, we stopped at a huge outfitters store, with every kind of rifle and all possible equipment necessary for hunting, fishing, and boating being sold to customers in ‘Green Bay Packers’ T-Shirts, all indications that this was Wisconsin and not Illinois.

Wanting to show the kids the city, we looped through the town of Milwaukee, where the official baseball team is the Milwaukee Brewers, thus giving away the main trade of that city. Before long, we were back in Illinois, passing up the exit where Farhat’s company is located. We’d left behind fields, and now sped past houses and buildings. Gurnee Mills Mall was our next stop. Back to the stores we knew so well. Back to our world where winter past times are reading, movies, shopping and dining out. We hadn’t ventured too far from home, but far enough to treat ourselves to a refreshing change in scenery.

How Schools & Society Have Been Short-Changing Boys –

By Naazish YarKhan

Taskeen and I are part of a mom-daughter reading group with two other moms/ daughters. The girls pick a book by turns and we all read it, then discuss the lessons in it, what made us laugh, cry, think, or giggle. This group is yet one more indication of how Taskeen’s development, by default, has dominated much of my mothering.

What I heard recently, in a brief exchange with a 30 something, professional, single girl, however, set me thinking. Let’s call her Asma. Like many girls these days, she was raised to be strong, independent, educated… discerning too. She was given credit for her views and had been taught to express them with confidence. And now, there just weren’t enough single guys who she found intellectually compatible/ as financially stable/well-rounded enough… take your pick. As young people say these days, “We weren’t clicking”.

According to her, this was partly because over the past so many years we haven’t been giving boys what they need to be all they can be, while girls are getting plenty of special attention and are being groomed to be super girls.

Whenever you’re giving your girls what they need emotionally, intellectually or physically, make sure your sons are getting what they need too, or they grow up to be half the men they can be and really aren’t interesting or the kind of person we girls want to spend the rest of our lives with, Asma continued.

Asma’s words touched a chord in me, because that was the scenario playing out in my home. Taskeen has always been the star. Yousuf’s activities have taken a back seat - it’s sometimes been because I think that I still have time with him since he is just five, while Taskeen is mine to mould only for eight more years till she leaves home for college. But other times, it’s because I want Taskeen to be this incredible young woman, who will one day be President of the United States, or this fantastic world-famous artist, or a bright star on the horizon in whatever capacity. It’s not that I don’t want the same for Yousuf, but I just haven’t funneled all that energy into him as I have into Taskeen.

Asma, by her comment, showed me that if more mother’s weren’t fostering that same intellectual curiosity and a determination to live life loud and bold in boys AND girls, we were raising girls who could very well end up single because the men around them just wouldn’t measure up.

Around this same time, I happened to have another interesting conversation with a match-maker aunty. There were 250 boys on her list and 1000 girls. A majority of these girls were professionals and many were 30 and over. I listened, a little surprised that there were as many as 1000 single girls and just 250 men enlisted for her services.

All these conversations, of course, prompted me to go online and do some reading. My behavior patterns were reflected in trends in education in the US and world wide. So much attention had been paid to honing girls’ confidence and girls’ abilities that some of it had come, unintentionally, at the expense of boys and their development. “An 11th-grade boy now reads and writes at the level of an eighth-grade girl,” I read from a report. “According to the National Center for Educational Statistics: Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to flunk or drop out of school; When it comes to grades and homework, girls outperform boys in elementary, secondary, high school, college, and even graduate school.”

More single women were just the tip of the iceberg. Less educated men meant a host of other issues – men earning smaller paychecks do mean more dual income homes, more family stress, more crime by men due to higher rates of unemployment and so on.

From my reading I learned, it wasn’t that men weren’t smart. Nor did the research call for girls’ education to be put on the back burner. But a common theme was to first acknowledge that ‘yes there was a crisis’. Men were in trouble.

The Australian government, taking this problem seriously, had a committee work on addressing the issue in 2002. The result was Boys Getting It Right[1]. “Research has found that, in effect, boys’ capacity for hearing and processing verbal instructions is, in general, less than girls’, from the early years of schooling on. This is a remarkable finding, and one that was not well known prior to the inquiry. It has important implications for classroom instruction and pedagogy.”

According to many of these articles, boys became disengaged from school and homework, because of the manner in which school is conducted.[2] Boys need recess. They need play time to get rid of their energy. A huge trend has been cutting down recess or throwing it out altogether. Without that outlet, it’s but obvious that boys will fidget more and be distracted rather than sit and learn.

Another recommendation was teaching reading via phonics (rather than learning whole words by sight) was a better suited to boys since they have shorter attention spans. Still another recommendation was that boys learn by doing, rather than how most schools teach – taking notes. Also, girls are good at processing things so are apt to excel at essay type questions, for instance, whereas boys can come up with the right answer but can’t always explain how they got to it. So, in a way, the way schools work, can put your son at a disadvantage.

The less involved any child feels with school and studies or the more trouble they get into at school, the less likely they are to do well…When their inability or difficulty becomes their identity, over time boys are unlikely to find themselves motivated, possibly activating a downward spiral.

What I see as a related trend in the US is the ever increasing numbers of kids, especially boys, who are diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In fact, “four of every five children taking medications like Ritalin for behavioral disorders are boys.” For a while now, I’ve wondered how on earth there could be such an upswing of this. So yes, they perhaps didn’t know to label this behavior all those years ago when we were kids. But my more dominant feeling was, ‘people are expecting kids to act like little adults rather than expecting them to be kids.’ And boys, especially, aren’t girls, so they aren’t going to sit as long as girls do. Somewhere along the line, the expectation that boys would sit or learn just the way girls do, became commonplace. No wonder boys who are genetically programmed to be active, are getting stuck with the label ADHD.

I’m no expert but my guess is another reason for this upswing in ADHD diagnoses, is us parents who don’t have the time to be parents. When both parents are working, we don’t really have the time to put up with kids who don’t toe the line. We have little energy and get exasperated faster. End result? Boys are apt to express their genetic coding and we adults think the kid has an issue. (And if you live like us where winter keeps us indoors, you definitely think your son is hyperactive, what with having no outlet.) If we step back for a moment, it’s really pretty obvious. It’s us, the adults, who don’t have any bandwidth to spare, and need all our ducks in a row and the world to function just so, so that we can accomplish all we have to do, in whatever little time we have left over from our careers. Others call it a juggling act or a balancing act. I call it a tight rope walk. That is how life is when both parents have to work.

The long and short of it is this. I have a son who is still young, so I’m still on the right side of the clock. I also have a host of 20 something male relatives who haven’t quite kept up with their female cousins as ample proof that this, indeed, is a legitimate issue. While there will always be those who will look at this research as controversial, my job as a parent is to become aware of all the research out there on this topic and to use it. I need to do whatever it takes to meet the distinct needs of my son and my daughter, in order that Tomorrow, God Willing, brings out the best in both.
[1] http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=969
[2] http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys