Rare Certainity

With our world as it is, every day, I become more and more certain about what I want to do with my life.

Happiness is

an ice cold shower on a hot, humid day.

$5 pitchers of Blue Moon.

music that makes your heart swell.

realizing that some hurts, though they don't go away, eventually sting less.

playing Scrabble and not being as bad as you usually are.

being healthy after being sick for so long.

cotton candy.

finishing a wonderful book, knowing you'll miss the characters.

sunshine, especially after a week of dark skies and rain.

knowing that it's ok to cry and feel the pain because it won't last forever anymore.

recognizing how blessed you are.

She Asks Me

Hari Maya and I are talking about the birth of her children and whether or not she wanted girls. She tells me she always wanted girls and is very happy to have them. Or at least that's what I gather from her broken English and my very limited knowledge of Nepali. She smiles, beaming, and lifts her newborn daughter, Sanya, into the air and says, "girls are most priority in US, yes?"

I don't quite know how to answer her. I don't know how to tell her that though girls and women are treated so much worse in many places in this world, they are still not priority here. That although girls and women go through to the top of the educational system, they are still not thought of as as smart as men. I don't know how to explain to her that men and women with the same background--same education, same experience, same everything-- don't make the same amount of money in the same job. I don't want to burst her bubble. I want her to think that girls are priority. I want her to think that as a woman in the US, she is priority. I want her to think that it matters.

I want to believe it.

But I know the truth. I know that we are not. I know that though her daughters are the most precious things in the world to her, they aren't the most precious children here in the US. I know that in our lifetime, her daughters will face discrimination, not only for being refugees and immigrants, but simply because of the fact that they are girls. They will face wage discrimination, stereotypes, sexual assault. They will face so much just because they have XX chromosomes.

But how do I explain this, and so much more, to Hari Maya. How?

Instead, I tell her that girls are important. I tell her that I love girls. I love holding baby girls; I love playing with them; I love teaching them. I tell her that in the US girls are wonderful. I tell her that within families, girls are amazing gifts.

I tell her this, because I don't know what else to say.

I make him call me so that I know he still cares.