It's mornings like these..

That make me want to

sip hot tea with my parents and eat "shirini"

go to starbucks on Arboles with Sheva and discuss our plans for the future until age 80, (among other things).

listen to Simon and Garfunkel and overthink my future so many times my head hurts

have a french baguette with some butter and jam

Get nostalgic about rainy days during elementary school, where recess would be inside and my fifth grade best friends and I would bond over hot chocolate and chocolate mints....

Watch Love Actually because rain reminds me of Christmas.

Want to be a kid again

Fall in love

Weekends, "meat water" and my mother.

Weekends, "meat water" and Iranian mothers.

It sounds kind of disgusting right? Meat water or Water meat; better known in farsi as: "ab goosht". A most delicious Persian stew with beef or lamb simmered with garbanzo beans and eaten with either bread or in today's case, "cheveed polo": green rice?

White basmati rice with some green stuff...sounds strange.

TASTES exquisite.

Coming home is always a very wholesome experience and I mean that in the most Mr. Roger's Neighborhood kind of way.

Ironically no matter what, I usually don't get enough school work done at home but I do feel (in most cases) refreshed, well fed and caught up with my sleep.

There's something cathartic about the stillness and the quiet of my parent's house that lets me put my mind on pause.

The older I am getting the more I realize and appreciate what home is and what it means. CLICHES are true and I'm telling you that distance makes the heart grow fonder....this is applicable to situations (gasp) OTHER than one's romantic relationships

For example, today at dinner my parents were cute enough to set a "sofreh" (in Farsi). That means they laid out dinner on the floor and WITHOUT a doubt my mother and I easily found a topic of discussion to bicker about...

If this situation were to have happened two years ago I probably would have been so hot tempered I would have put down my fork and refused to complete dinner (threats to disregard one's food in a Persian household is very insulting).

But instead I got pissed off for two seconds (cheers! Applause!) and realized that in fact my mom will do anything and I mean ANYTHING, to create some sort of dialogue at the dinner table/breakfast table/chai table/car rides.....

And no matter how lame or frustrating the discussion is my mom enjoys to converse, to speak and to argue, not because she likes to "argue" but because of the former former: "conversing."

This is a genuine effort on my mom's part. Perhaps she's worried that she will lose me to the english speaking world forever. Even though she is as much a part of society as myself I sense the worry some look in her eyes once in awhile. That maybe, just maybe I would just would rather "converse" about something else WITH someone else.

BUT DO NOT FEAR!

As long as my mom has really hilarious topics to discuss about and Meat water simmering on the stove, my heart will always belong to my mama's. I take that back. My heart will always belong to my mama's, with or without her RIDIK conversations (or sometimes monologues) and meat water...."ab goosht"

The better moments are the fleeting ones

Maybe it's rare, but I am happy to be a college senior.

I honestly feel as if this is the first year I'm going to get college right. In retrospect, I feel as if the first three years were a series of trial and error experiments and now this final year the fog that used to always cloud it seems to have thinned out in the atmosphere (cliche metaphor I know, get over it, Im not trying to win a Nobel prize for literature here)

at least for me.

If there is one word I can choose to describe my character in my last few years at school, I'd choose: WORRISOME.

I spent hours and sleepless nights tossing and turning, taking too seriously what I should have taken more lightly and vice versa.

I hated making decisions; I didn't realize the whole lot of gray in between black and white.

I wish now that the person I am now could have knocked at the door of my freshman dorm of my freshman self and calm her down a bit. Let her know that I didn't have to try so hard to do everything I thought I should have been doing at the time. That my only investment worth worrying about was my sanity and well being.

Fast forward 3 years:

I have a better attitude now, I'm no where near the avenue of perfect but I can say that I am more at ease with the things and situations that make me stress out, perspire, etc...

School, my family's situation, my sensitivity being as thick as a tangerine peel (there's a phrase like that in farsi).

My point being: you realize you are a little wiser when being patient no longer is a practice but an acquired habit.

I appreciate the miniscule moments that give me a reason to sigh a breath of relief and forget whatever it is that's bothering me.

For ex:

My roommates reactions to my unconscious singing in the apartment at all hours of the day.

Blasting Mozart in my car with the windows down,

being ruthlessly inappropriate with Belinda or Courtni,

or listening to my brother talk about the human liver...

These are the moments I cherish, the ones that semi distract me from the heavier things that can weigh me down. My goal for today, for tomorrow? To allow these moments although fleeting to motivate in pushing through whatever it is that worries me.

Thats all for now.