Well, besides the progress I hope to make in my academic career, this year I hope to:
1. Eat healthier. I have already started working on this a few months ago and have now eliminated all processed carbohydrates, refined sugars, all products containing high fructose corn syrup, and all non-organic meats from my diet. After watching Food Inc and Food Matters a few months back, I became disgusted at the food industry and became convinced of the necessity of eating whole and minimally modified food. I have cut down on my meat consumption, using tofu, soy milk, spirulina, eggs, legumes and nuts as protein sources, have swapped raw for cooked foods (including raw cocoa beans for chocolate–can you believe it? I found them in Whole Foods), and have started to eat salad at least once a day. Although I am feeling incredibly good and energetic on my new diet–which combines the best of South Beach (good fats, good carbs), the Paleolithic diet (eat as the cavemen used to), and the Susan Somers diet( food combination, good carbs), I must say that it is becoming incredibly inconvenient (as well as slightly more expensive) to eat healthy. I am absolutely APPALLED at how corn syrup is in everything. I want to find one type of bread, JUST ONE TYPE, that contains no added sugar or corn syrup. I guess I am lucky I have lost my cravings for bread and other junk foods. I find that my friends are incredulous when I tell them I actually feel no desire to order pasta and desserts, but this is the truth. So I hope to continue launching my war against junk and high fructose corn syrup. Anyone want to join me?
2. Start Yoga or Pilates, or any other sort of cool group exercise club. I have a gym at my residence, and have started to go to it on a regular basis, but lately I have been fantasizing about group exercise. I tend to be somewhat dyslexic when it comes to aerobics, so I thought of giving yoga a try. Or perhaps Pilates. I could use some core body strength.
3. Be a better friend and keep in better touch with my friends. This is not always easy as many of my old best friends are now many miles away, but we can do it! Thank God for facebook and skype!
4. Read more history. I am actually becoming very interested in this topic. I feel that without history my knowledge of the present world is somewhat incomplete.
5. to write. I am sick of making excuses and of not having enough time. I will make time for writing, as I will make time for exercise. Writing is my true purpose in life and it is time to pick up the pieces of my lost dream and realize it once more.
6. Ready? the most important resolution of all: TO SAVE MONEY! Yes, I know this might be a new concept for me, but I have to realize I am living in a city where cost of living is high. Which means, no more shopping until forever, no more calling people long-distance, and paying your bills on time! I don’t want the electricity to go out on me like it did a few weeks back. Living two days with only a flashlight while all your food rots in the fridge and while you freeze to death is NOT fun!!
That’s it for my resolutions. Peace out.
I know its the beginning of a new year, but I wanted to reflect a little about last year, for it has been a bittersweet yet important year in my life. But somehow, as my mind tries to recall it, images flash quickly together like a short video–the cold winter of the beginning of January, anxieties about the Match, going home to find that cute pet rabbit my family had gotten while I was finishing up my rotations in the US, the way the warmth of my peninsula greeted me after that monotonous gray New York winter, the last few months before graduation (full of relaxed-schedule electives and those last lecture classes), graduation and celebration, the summer, moving back to the US for my research work, making new friends and finding ways to distract myself from my life back home, returning home for a brief visit (which now seems like a dream), and the last few months of work, sleep, and long weekends spent catching up on sleep and leisure and friends. It passed by faster than any year of my life.
But last year was a hard year for me too. I lost two cousins, both in car accidents, and my great-grandmother, who had suffered from emotional neglect that only i recognized and acknowledged. In fact, I had a dream about her last night. I dreamed she was still alive, in her little bony figure. I can still see her clearly in my mind, as I crouched down to where she sat on a low stool in the Big House’s living room, to look into her eyes and kiss her bony hand and pat her bony little knees.
“Mama Fatma,” my father started to tell me that day when we were skyping. “What’s the matter with her?” I said, panic seizing my heart. “God bless her soul,” my father replied.
I could not talk to him then, and needed to be alone. I wandered to the corner of my studio and broke out in tears. I would miss her. Maybe it was true that she wouldn’t suffer anymore, suffer the torture of old age and the neglect of the new generations. But I would miss her. And deep down, I was scared of what Mama Fatma had taught me–that life is as short and ephemeral as a fleeting breeze. You would be at the end of your life before you knew it.
I remember once, during that summer when I had lodged at the Big House for my job as a teacher’s assistant at summer school, I took out a magazine and went through it with Mama Fatma. She fluctuated between moods an awful lot, being capable of cursing and praising a person in the same half and hour, and being able to greet a little child with motherly smiles and coos which would shortly be followed with an unexpected burst of steamy tears. She must have been in a good mood that day because clearly I felt it appropriate to look at the magazine with her. She nodded her head as we went through the pages, and smiled with her elderly smile. It must have been some sort of travel magazine, because I remember her telling me she had been to all of the places. We reached a picture of a beautiful island, with palm trees extending their arms to a peaceful turquoise blue sea. Suddenly Mama Fatma broke out into tears.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, worried, rubbing her skinny shoulders and moving closer to her. My body was always so much larger than hers, for she was so petite and fragile.
She shook her head with her eyes tightly shut, as if it was futile to explain, or even, inexplicable because of the pain. My great grandmother was known to go through such moments of emotional turmoil, and I always believed it to be the result of looking back at better times in life from the perspective of being near the end of it.
Even when I cannot imagine myself as an old woman, I know that my time will I come. I cannot imagine how painful it will be, and how I will react. Will I be as brave as my great-grandmother?
With no doubt, there was one emotion I never saw in her eyes, that of fear. I saw sadness, and regret perhaps, and happiness, and bitter anger, but I never saw fear in her eyes. For many years, she fought on, proudly sitting on her stool in the living room, fighting for her rights, yelling at my rebellious teenage cousins, yelling at the maids, living on Fruit Loops and milk tea, dying her hair with henna (which you could only see if you caught her dressing in her room at the ground floor, which I did once when I had stayed up till morning watching movies with my aunts one day in the summer and was confronted with her angry, shrill voice, “Who’s there?!” as I ducked back behind doors and out of sight), showing off her fluffy feather shoes and silky dresses, and occasionally, when she was in a good mood, offering me nice prayers and pointing her bony finger to the sky and giving me a confident, assured smile, to say, “God is there.”
Yes, Mama Fatma. God is there. That thought brings me relief too. No matter what happens to me, no matter what catastrophes hit the earth, no matter if the end of the world is near, there is one thing for certain: that God is there.
So I bid farewell to last year and open my arms to 2011, and as long as I remember my great-grandmother’s wisdom, there is nothing to fear.
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