SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT INSIDE ME
Our family heads home to my brother’s apartment to discuss some exciting new changes in Salman’s life. As you recall from the blog last year, Salman at the time was making peace with a divorce. In September, he will be getting married to a (un)lucky lady and together the two will move to Ohio. It’s one of many reasons my family should be happy right now because of all the good news in me and my brothers’ lives.
“This is the time we should be thanking Allah,” my mom pleads to my dad. “All the mistakes we made and things we didn’t do, our five boys are fixing those mistakes with their success. When I see Aman, I feel like I’m inside him and doing what he’s doing and I’m inside Zeshawn doing what he’s doing.”
“What’s Zeshawn doing?” my dad said with a wry and squeaking chuckle. “That kid is a bum.”
Zeshawn rolls his eyes and my mom consoles him with a hug.
My dad has a personality switch that goes from stoic to goofball in seconds. One minute he’s quiet and will barely even utter a peep and the next minute he’s riffing about how dorky my glasses are. I giggle incessantly everytime he opens his mouth.
I ask my dad why he can’t sit back, relax and smile at all the joy in our family right now. My mom responds instead.
“Your father worked hard all his life for the past 40 years,” she said. “He can’t stay one day at home. He feels very good when he’s working and helping people and right now he feels like he can’t.”
But there’s no reason for him to work. My brothers and I are blessed to be independent adults who don’t need him to support us. Maybe that’s what the problem is, Salman said.
“For dad’s entire life, he’s wrapped his identity around doing work,” Salman said. “He’s used to being the one that’s in control. He’s used to driving the bus and he’s having difficulty sitting in the backseat.”
My brothers and I have tried what feels like everything to comfort my dad during this difficult time. We call him every time we get a free moment and visit whenever we can. We’re all doing very well in our respective lives and why can’t that be enough?
“We don’t know what makes him happy in life, honestly,” Salman said. “It’s important that we want our father to be proud of us, but it’s his personality he’s always going to find something to be unhappy about.”
My father has a success narrative similar to many fathers out there. He grew up in India and at a young age was determined to move to the United States when he married my mom. He was extremely poor and one of his first jobs was mopping the floors at a Dunkin Donuts. From there he worked his way up the ranks and onto corporate baking companies.
“You worked so hard, so now is the time you should be praying to Allah thanking him for all that he’s given us,” my mom said.
My dad wiggles around on the coach and squeams. He stares at a wall and I can tell he’s beating himself up on the inside. My father is extremely hard on himself and always feels like nobody likes him. Maybe it comes with the territory of being a father, a job most people often don’t give enough credit to.
“All I want is for my kids to respect me” Dad said.
My dad had a pretty traumatic upbringing in India, the details of which I barely know. But for that reason, he doesn’t often keep in touch with relatives because it reminds him of the past. But my mom asks him how can he expect us kids to respect him when he neglects people pivotal to him in his own upbringing.
“You haven’t seen your aunt in almost 15 years,” my mom said. “She practically raised you like her own son.”
“I raised you Aman like you were one of my own sons too,” my dad said with his goofy chuckle again. “Good thing I saved the receipt on you though.”
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