Thirty Four, Nature's Might

The glimmer, let it not
Glow meager but about.
And above those eyes that have not
What most living have, and you not.
*
There, in that boundless nullity's night
Be true to nature and it's might.
And let not a shallow rapture's delight
Take you to the fears plight.
*
And live there anew and be one with earth.
Your soul's life will renew its birth
When many never reborn after death,
But you can take a new, fresh breath.
*
Life in general was not cheerful, but now was more stagnant and darker than before. Frequently Anna thought about her life. She was forty years old now, who had lived for the past ten years with her bitter mother. But now her seventy years old mother was ill. She began forgetting things, misplacing things. It came a point that sometimes she did not even recognize Anna. Torn between her job and taking care of her mother, she thought her career was the only leisure thing she had and it was and had been for good deeds. How could she quit that and stay home with her mother? Therefore she hired a sitter who would keep her mother from harming herself, feed her and make sure that she was eating but not playing with her food, and she was not walking away and far from house and be lost. It all worked out for awhile and then sitter quit. She said she could not communicate with Fatie who did not speak English.
Talking to her mother's doctor, he recommended that nursing home was her best choice. As hard as it was for her to do that, she felt she had no other option, so she did it. One good thing about it was that her mother at this point did not know what Anna had done to complain about it and tell her that under the same circumstances she had done the same for her father; and besides she started to like the nursing home. There were seldom days that Anna was not able to visit her mother. Those days were her worst. She felt as though she had abandoned her mother and she felt guilty for putting her in the nursing home; nonetheless, she knew that was a logical things. Every evening after work, she would buy herself and mother food and go there and they had dinner together. Mother had a private room and she was in the best nursing home that Anna knew about.
Her mother's empty place at home was devastating; and she wondered day after day if the sense of guilt that had captured her since her mother was gone had any validity or not. All she knew that she was feeling guilty for many things and now particularly for this. She would cry and mourn looking at the pictures of her loved ones or the map of Iran, her native land. She would mourn and cry to think about them; and she would cry of the thought that her mother was in a nursing home.
She was pushing forty while her life was fruitless. She would cry hysterically for not having a child. She had this habit that if she was thirty nine and seven months old, to say that she is forty. Never in her life she had made her self younger but always the opposite. She thought about the last ten years and recalled many things about it; but one thing she remembered the most was her mother's refusal to master or at least to try to learn American culture, or the language. Now she understood why, for she, who had learned the culture, now knew how painful it was to know about those two entirely different cultures. She had never told her mother that how totally obnoxious her behavior was without breaking her self-esteem. Now she was glad that she had not.
Her mother had to live in that dull house even it was one of the best nursing home in Dallas, until her time would come; her death would appear. Her Alzheimer combined with a battle with ulcer that she had had for very long time were not getting any better. She would look at her mother's eyes with realization that her mother did not recognized her. She thought how little she knew about the pain and suffering of the older people. Somehow she always understood the pain of the children, but no, she could not understand this pain, the pain of being old.
At night she would sit in her apartment with no light thinking mostly about her last trip to Tehran, when she had last seen her father and nursed him to health, and she had seen the early morning obscurity. She would remember the day she asked Reza, her father's driver, to take her to south of Tehran. This was only a day before her departure. There, she had seen the revolutionaries much more vehement. Why had they been so heated? She slowly came to understand them, their misery, and their misfortune. But at the same time, she sighed, "why my father? He hadn't done anything to you?" She remembered the city in the early morning, which was always magnificent; even though smog with drought adhered to it. The haze of the pollution disturbed even Alborz Mountain nearby. She was happy to see that the women of her country with so much courage shared this revolution with men. But she was perceptive at the same time that she was not part of the revolution or those women. By immigrating, she had lost her voice. Their voice and what they wanted which most of them did not know what they were, was different than hers. Her idea of right and wrong was only emerged from the security of her home in America. People had asked her about which place was better to live, Iran or America; however that question always remained unanswered. She, herself, did not know the answer. She conjured up her sadness by people's lack of imagination; when they had not visualized the wretchedness of the future when the new regime would be in full power, when they took Americans hostage, and when they closed all the doors to everything civilized. The revolution took Iran back to a world of centuries before; and the little opportunities that women had during the Shah's ruling, all disappeared. Sometimes she even lied about her nationality, even though she had no accent. "Where are you from?" "Texas," "No, originally?" "Italy," She loved Italy or as Persians say "Italia."

To Be Continued