Rare Bird: Asfour Nader

In my 8 years of blogging, first privately as I shared family news with a selected private audience, then publicly sharing thoughts I wrote in English and in Arabic, this is the first blog post I did NOT want to write. But here I am writing it because I felt I had to.

Why am I doing this to myself? I guess it’s because I fell in love with a boy who was 12 years old, and forever will be. I fell in love with a boy I’ve never met, and I never will. I fell in love with a boy called Jack. I heard about Jack during the first few months of mothering my daughter. Those long days and nights that looked all the same as I tried to navigate this new life with a toddler boy and a new born girl were extremely lonely and I needed something, anything to help me survive.

My sister’s friend shared an article from Momastery on her facebook page and that’s how I got to know Glennon, so I started reading her posts which one day lead me to Anna’s blog “An Inch of Grey” and the story of Jack’s accident. It was easy to do the math, Jack died two weeks after my daughter was born. Later I’ll start hating math because it revealed so much of what I had in common with Anna, only a decade ahead of me. In the fall of 2011 Anna was 42 years old and I was 32. Her jack was 12 and my son was 2, her Margret was 10 and my daughter was a few months old. We’re both Christian, believers, church goers, and English teachers, veterans to be more specific, neither one of us is teaching now (or was teaching 4 years ago) and I’ve recently developed a love for painting furniture to decorate my gift shop/art gallery Kharbashat-Doodle. Then gradually over the past 4 years my son seemed to have so much in common with Jack. He too loves words, Legos, acting, jigsaw puzzles, and making up new games. He is kind to his sister (also 2 years younger than him) and he loves his Sunday School class as his love for God is starting to show and grow. Did I mention how cute and funny he is too?

I mourned with Anna, I grieved with her overseas. I wrote her a few e-mails and comments telling her that a Syrian mother married to an Egyptian pastor is praying for her and sending her love all the way from Alexandria, Egypt. Then when Anna posted a question on her blog for readers to choose the best title for her upcoming book about Jack, I clicked on the one choice that seemed to make most sense “Rare Bird”, apparently many readers and friends picked the same title and the book was out. When I started planning to ask my sister to order it for me and send it with someone coming from the US to Egypt, I received a message from one of my American friends, Jessica, who is also a pastor’s wife asking if there’s a certain book I’d like her to buy me because a guy from their church is coming to spend a few months in Alexandria!

Jessica’s sweet gift sat on my night stand for months. It wasn’t until last week that I decided to read “Rare Bird”, From the first few pages I knew two things, I need an extra dose of courage to continue and I’ll end up writing something about this book. I hated it and loved it at the same time. Anna's writing style, the way she crafted words and sentences with both language skills and honesty was captivating. She took me with her back in time to the last few months of 2011 and to a brand new state not included among the five I’ve visited when I went to the US in 1996, 2000, and 2001. I felt I was physically right there on September 10th 2011. I rarely cry when I read sad novels, but this is not a novel, it didn’t even feel like a book at all, it felt more like a movie, one of these 7D theaters in which you experience the story with more senses than you thought you had. I was stupid enough to take the book with me once as I waited for my son to finish his piano lesson, and I started crying! I wonder what the other parents in that waiting room thought, she looks like a crazy mother, she doesn’t look Egyptian, she’s holding a book in English, we pity her son…. I don’t know and I didn’t care.  

I received the book months ago, and the timing I chose to read it was a bad one , we’ve just celebrated my daughter’s 4^th birthday which meant that in a few days Anna, along with everyone who knew and loved Jack will commemorate 4 years of his departure. I couldn’t help but think that this year Anna turns 46, the same age her mom was when she died. Why am I doing all these calculations and making all these connections in my head? Maybe because I was looking for more and more things to mark my family as DIFFERENT from Anna’s, different enough to feel safe!

As a Presbyterian Christian by birth, I didn’t grow up to believe in signs, but I come from a Middle Eastern culture that believes in luck and optimism. It’s also a culture that believes in the evil eye and envy. In my family and at church we were raised to believe that our future, luck, or destiny is guaranteed in God’s plan for our lives, so we need to worry not. It’s easy to believe this and relax when you’re not a parent yet, a mother to be specific, but when you grow up and discover the harsh fact of life that bad things do happen to good people then you start to doubt your faith. I’ve never doubted that God is good, but I’ve never had to face a tragedy that shook me to the core and turned my world upside down. The war in Syria is the most recent tragedy I've experienced, with its ugly daily bloodshed and destruction, with horror stories of ISIS taking over beautiful parts of my beloved country, treating humans in the most savage of ways, left me bewildered and depressed. I mourn my country, a country I used to visit twice a year but haven’t seen in almost 5 years now. Still I count my blessings in spite of all the pain and tears. My uncles, aunts, and first cousins are all safe and healthy, at least physically. My friends are all still alive, my parents’ apartment, the only place I knew and called “home” is still there in a relatively safe area in Damascus, so I can still dream of one day going there and getting my photo albums, stacks of letters, journals and diaries. I dream about taking my kids there to visit their grandparents who will give them my childhood toys. When I get depressed upon hearing more bad news from inside Syria or news about refugees abroad, I try to re-count my blessings, which is easy sometimes because I don’t have a firsthand experience of what my friends and family members have been through and are still enduring.   

So when it comes to signs, I kind of wish I believed in them. They would’ve saved me so much trouble making big decisions in my life, like choosing my husband and moving to Egypt. And later it could’ve saved my husband and I the hard weeks of making difficult choices regarding our kids, life, work, and ministry. My husband believes that God gave us our brains, life experiences, and the Holy Spirit to guide our decision making process. We talked about it a lot as I shared with him my secret wish for a story like Giddeon’s in the Old Testament with his wool fleece (Judges 6 : 37), but we don’t do signs in our family, we don’t ask for them, we don’t look or wait for them. Instead, we think, we pray, we consult experts, we give ourselves a time frame, and we decide.

But yesterday, something happened, it made me re-visit this area of not believing in signs. I was reading the Rara Avis chapter of Rare Bird, specifically page 154 that has the poem Anna’s friend wrote about Jack. I read the poem (for the second time because I had read it previously on the blog) then Anna wrote about the time she posted this poem on her blog and started receiving stories from all over the globe. “They are amazing stories of birds catching people’s attention at precisely the moment they think of Jack.”. My son sat next to me as I read early in the morning, he woke up with the same severe headache he had the night before due to his high fever. I gave him his medicine and he decided not to go back to bed so we went to the living room and he started building something with his Legoes as I grabbed my book and read.

Finishing the poem and the page next to it I choked, I didn’t want to cry, besides, it’s too early in the morning to start crying, my son is right next to me, a little sick but alive. So I thought I’ll smile instead, thinking of the so many people who thought of Jack and saw birds. Then, all of a sudden, in the silence of the 6am Alexandrian morning I hear it, so clear and close, coming from our bedroom. Our rented apartment is on the 11^th floor and even though it overlooks the golf field of the famous Sporting Club in Alexandria, it’s difficult for birds to make it this high above the tall trees. I’ve seen birds by our bedroom window often but not that often, and definitely not in the blazing heat of August. The window is covered with a fine metal net that doesn’t allow mosquitoes and other insects through.

When I heard the bird sing, I grabbed my camera and walked slowly to the bedroom to try and take a photo without scaring the bird away or waking up my husband. I knew if I took a good picture then this will prove to me that this sign is not a figment of my imgagination. The picture was bad and hardly showed any bird, then the bird flew and stood on the rusty laundry bar I never use, I took another picture, still with disbelief. Then I said to myself, if I can capture the bird’s face looking right at the lence in my hand then I’ll believe. Much like Thomas’ request upon hearing the story of Jesus’ resurrection. And here it is.

Dear Anna,

Your book took me on a roller coaster experience of reading such an amazing story about pain and hope. At times I wanted the book to end so the story would end with it and I can walk away and pretend none of it happened to you and it never found its way into my life. At other times I read and read and never wanted the book to end because I wanted to know more about Jack and to love him more, I wanted to know how you’re doing years after the accident.

I found the book to be scary, because it got me thinking that something might happen to my family, something so sudden and tragic that it will leave me broken beyond repair. I keep convincing myself that the real reason I’m reading your book is to help grieving people and as a pastor's wife to understand their struggles more. The psychology courses I took in collage fifteen years ago are very helpful, but a book such as yours written through the "perspecticles" (Glennon’s word) of a Christian mother is definitely a priceless reference. But you’re not a case study, and I’m not writing a term paper. It’s Jack we’re talking about, it’s Jack we’re missing, and it’s Jack’s life we’re celebrating. So my Egyptian bird came to remind me of that. Asfour Nader. “Asfour” (starts with the letter “ع” Ayn articulated from deep down in the throat) means “Bird” in Arabic. And “Nader” means “Rare”, noting that nouns in Arabic always come before adjectives.

The Rara Avis chapter was a beautiful one, so beautiful I didn’t cry till the very end, instead I had misty eyes, goosebumps, and a smile on my face. It made me love the bird metaphor even more. A bird not a fish, for instant, because fish swim but birds soar. This chapter was a milestone in the journey of reading the book, it gave me peace and comfort. One thing caught my attention is the fact that there’s no English word for a parent who lost a child, while in Arabic there is. It’s not a very pleasant word to hear, it sounds bitter, more like a curse or an insult. It’s mostly used in the feminine form for mothers and you can very rarely hear the masculine one for fathers, the root can be used for losing an offspring or a loved one.

This year Margret is two years OLDER than Jack. At the beginning of your new school year in the USA and ours starting next month, I wish and pray for Margret to have a safe, fun, and fruitful year, regardless of the painful math!

I worked as a part-time then free-lance translator for over 7 years during which I kept contemplating the idea of translating a book. But I kept shoving it to the back of my mind convinced that book translation is for people above the age of sixty, so I still have 24 years before I start. I don’t know how serious I was when I felt that Rare Bird might just be the first book I’ll translate, but what I do know is that it HAS to be translated into Arabic Anna, please make sure you have Arabic on the list of languages you’d like to see your book published in.

From the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, I'm sending you a huge THANK YOU. Thank you Anna for every minute, hour, and day you spent, thank you for every tear you shed writing this book till it saw the light. I think all Christian mothers should read it. It took one brave bereaved believer mom to write it and it took me all my courage to read it. Thank you for this journey you honored me to be part of, I’ve learned so much as your words addressed specific fears and doubts I have in my own faith in Jesus. Not only your book has nothing dishonoring to God (one among the many fears you confessed), but it also brings glory to God. The God we all tend to put in a box like you said you did, our little own boxes are as different as we are. But God surely is bigger, greater, and more active than we can ever conceive.  The most beautiful part of your book  is what comes next, your story is a real and an ongoing one, I don’t have to wonder what will happen to the characters beyond the book cover because you’ll keep us updated as we keep praying for you, Tim, and Margret.

Shukran Anna. 

Love,

Riham 

Carry On, Zinvor !

my alma mater was Haigazian University, an Armenian college with high standards of education known and respected worldwide amongst other private universities. more than half the students were Armenians, the rest were mainly Lebanese and Syrians.

Lebanese colleagues hated me because i was Syrian (mostly because of some history between the two countries) so finding friends for me at a foreign (and not so foreign) country meant fighting against a double-layered wall of prejudice and stereotyping, when i thought of it i decided that learning the Armenian language is easier, it meant less fighting and more singing. i literally started memorizing Armenian songs and articulating words i had no idea what they meant just to make some new friends, who were Armenian Lebanese, or Armenian Syrian. 

Armenians are a minority almost everywhere around the world and just like any minority group they have strong ties within their small circle but they are more open to "others" who are "different", they also know history too well not to repeat mistakes of their ancestors (or any body's ancestors) or waste their time and energy on prejudice and stereotyping, after all if your house is made of glass then throwing stones on others is not an option for you. so i had a few Armenian friends and collecting stones was our hobby !!!

my Armenian friends invited me to outings and church events with them and were glad to answer any question i had regarding the language, a couple of them helped me learn the alphabet (38 letters man!) and i was able to write (like a 1st grader) they corrected my pronunciation and with my black hair i would be mistaken for a real Armenian if i excellently said a few words initiating a conversation, but the moment the person i'm greeting speaks back to me i froze and admitted that "hai chem" (i'm not Armenian). 

one particular song i loved says this: "khatchin misht nayerlov, havadki vahanov, hastadoun kailerov, hratch kna zinvor" Looking always at the cross, with steadfast footsteps, onward, go, soldier.
the song had a very nice and relevant melody but what i loved more is the music i could hear by just saying these three words "HRATCH KNA ZINVOR" onward, go, soldier... and soon enough "HASTADOON" (steadfast) became one of my favorite Armenian words, it's interesting how many letters it has in common with the English translation. 

i proudly graduated in 2005 which was HU's 50th Anniversary too, moved back from Beirut to Damsacus, then got married and moved (again) to Cairo, a year later to Alexandria and here, in another coastal city by the charming Mediterranean Sea i got to know Momastery blog through my sister's friend. and 14 years after my first encounter with the "hratch kna zinvor" song, i read the "Carry On, Warrior" book... there was an undeniable sign here, a voice i couldn't ignore and walk away from... at a time when i'm constantly fighting instead of living or simply living life as a fight, experiencing motherhood as a war zone, perceiving being a pastor's wife as a battlefield... let alone the REAL war going on in Syria which turned us ALL into soldiers, online, offline, inside Syria, outside Syria... how and when did life become so hard? is it normal to live a constant struggle or am i doing it all wrong?

Glennon's book didn't have magical answers for me, it just opened a window next to mine showing me that a fellow wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend (i only wish G was a pastor's wife!) is marching onward, our paths never crossed (and maybe they never will) what we have in common is close to zero but we're both marching on, we're both zinvorner (not sure if that's the plural of soldier in Armenian, a wild guess) each has her own journey in life but when i read about hers she gave me permission to look through this window like two women working out on neighboring treadmills at a gym smiling at each other... life is hard (according to G... and everybody else who couldn't phrase it this way) not because we're doing anything wrong but because it's hard, so through her book, Glennon kept me company for a few weeks, i laughed and cried with her, i scribbled notes on my paperback copy of her book (bought a B2 pencil specifically for this mission) i even wrote back to her (on the book with the B2 pencil !), words of objection or applause... and today i finished reading the book and put it next to me staring outside our window, THE window, singing that Armenian song... 

so carry on zinvor, march forward dear strong brave warrior woman, keep marching with steadfast steps... stay HASTADOON in everything you do and everything you ARE... these are the words i need to hear today and i'll keep repeating them to myself till my kids pick up the Armenian song and start repeating after me... "khatchin misht nayerlov, havadki vahanov, hastadoun kailerov, HRATCH KNA ZINVOR"

p.s. a big fat salut to my Lebanese friends, i found a few after all, during these 5 brutiful years in Lebanon (brutal+beautiful in G's dictionary) i miss you all and am thankful for facebook updates :) you know who you are and i'm really proud of our friendship with each and every one of you as i'm sure that Syria is in your prayers not because of how the war there is affecting Lebanon but because you love me and you love and pray for peace (after 15 years of civil war!)

p.p.s. an even bigger "khatchaghoutyoun" (peace/greeting) to our campus minister (who arrived at HU in 2000 just like me and left a couple of years after 2005) parev badveli N.B yev digin M.B, and to HU president Rev.Dr. P.H whose family is so dear to my heart even before he became president of Haigazian Hamalsaran

p.p.p.s i did attend Damascus University for 4 years just to be fair, never graduated (studied economics for 2 years and biology for another 2 will leave details for later) gave it my best shot before i abandoned public higher education all together and God opened another door

photo cutline: i took these photos last month as part of my Rihamiat project but they never appeared on facebook, i thought that not many people still read books and no one would be interested in a handmade leather book pouch, so i kept the pouch and photos for myself. as i was adding them to this post i realized that this specific book mark is also handmade and was a gift from the wife of HU president (do you remember it digin M.H?) why did i unconsciously select an Armenian handmade book mark for my Zinvor book? ... it all makes sense in a weird way, sounds like a conspiracy to me now!!! a sweet one though...

be still... take a break... get a tattoo !!!

these three sentences are lined up according to chronological order... so the story starts like this:

once upon a time, not too long ago, i was sinking under layers and layers of work, plans, and Rihamiat project material and i realized that it has been a while since i last visited Momastery and i decided to do some blog reading and there it was, G's POST, saying "see you next year" not using these exact words, but she's taking her advent break and will be back when December is over. "Be Still" was G's ADVent ADVice and i thought well, my December is not that busy, i don't get my kids too many gifts anyways and when i told my son you're having 3 gifts this year just as many as baby Jesus received, he was quit thrilled, so maybe i shouldn't grab my organizer and pencil and start crossing out plans and cancelling events blindly, honestly, there isn't much on this month's page.... so what's the problem then? why does this "Be Still" STILL sound relevant? i thought for a moment then a drawer opened in my head, it wasn't stuffed with useless things, everything there was useful, practical, and much needed, i could also close the drawer easily without the need of squishing things and squeezing them together, but the problem with this drawer was its lack of categorization and you know how much i love CATEGORIES and COMPARTMENTALIZING my life and my everything... THAT's it then, this is why Riham is unable to function well, even though compared to others i appear to be well organized and things are perfectly planned, TO ME they are NOT... and in order to do some winter clean up to my drawer i need to "Be Still" so that i can have a clear mind and sharp eyesight to decide what's important to me and my family and what's not, to separate jewelry from junk (figuratively and literally... again, because of the Rihamiat project material).

the next chapter of this story arrived with my decision to take a break, not in the sense of doing nothing, but actually doing more, and doing it differently. Where's the break then? the break is stepping outside my comfort zone of familiar people and familiar places, as much as i love the small circle of people i know in this city (which is 99% composed of church members) i still needed a break, i needed to walk away for a while until i can say "i miss you guys" far enough to feel like going back again. so i signed up for a Christmas bazaar, a gathering of 40 different groups or individuals who have their own projects and business from food to crafts  to clothes to leather bags to Christmas decoration ... you name it. the table rent was a bit expensive so i shared it with another lady who paints on cushions, so half the table had Rococo hand painted cushions and the other half had Rihamiat items.

i carefully selected which items to take with me on that day and accurately calculated the discount i want to add on some pieces. i didn't know what to expect during the 9 hours i'm spending on that chair but i was open and ready for anything and everything only to discover that one can't be fully prepared for "anything and everything" specially when the attack comes from your own memory with floods of images, feelings, smells, people's faces, songs and languages... it was overwhelming and at some point i felt that i can't take it so i remembered the "Be Still" technique and it seemed to work right then and there...

the general atmosphere was so familiar, when i was growing up, one year after another we used to organize and participate in Christmas bazaars just like this one, Christmas music, cold outside (it was the last day of the "Alexa" storm), warm and cozy inside with dim yellow lights in a beautiful huge room... there were pieces from my Damascus there... several times during the day i wondered just for a split second why people were speaking Egyptian Arabic and not Syrian!

then the language i heard brought back memories from my collage years in Beirut, i tried to remember words and sentences with some Christmas and New Year greetings too and shared it with a few people who spoke Armenian, they were total strangers and the Arabic they spoke was Egyptian (again not Syrian), but they made me miss my Armenian friends and a flow of memories rushed inside my head of how i first fell in love with the Armenian language and culture 13 years ago because i saw it through the eyes of my friends who were proud of their nationality and heritage just as proud as i am today of my Alma Mater, my Haigazian University...

little did i know that by logging out of my present i'll be automatically logging in-to my past and wearing the glasses that show me again who i am, where i come from, and how and where a major part of my character was shaped, these 9 hours spent on one chair at one table were a trip back in time visiting places so dear to me giving life to memories i stopped feeding for such a long time i thought were dead... in the middle of the trip i was still meeting new people, getting to know amazing potential friends, exchanging experiences and ideas with a fellow soldier on the battlefield of establishing her personal project... in every new encounter i had and during every hour of this bliss i felt grateful for my husband and mother who took turns looking after the kids until it was time for them to pick me up...

whenever i step into unfamiliar territory i take with me a weapon or a defense mechanism that i might need to use and on that specific day the first thing i could think of (other than three photos of my husband and two kids) was Brené Brown's book "Daring Greatly" and i was on the "Mind The Gap" chapter...

      

(by the way, the organizers of this huge event made sure all tables were covered with  a nice green plain table cloth, but they gave us the freedom to change or add to it, so this was my "sharshaf aghabani" a Syrian red Christmas table cloth i chose to come along with me on this journey for luck, good vibes, positive energy... all of the above and much more)

whenever i felt weak and hungry during that adventure i would read a few lines and re-energize: "Minding the gap is a daring strategy. We have to pay attention to the space between where we're actually standing and where we want to be. More importantly, we have to practice the values that we're holding out as important in our culture. Minding the gap requires both an embrace of our own vulnerability and cultivation of shame resilience - we're going to be called upon to show up as leaders and parents and educators in new and uncomfortable ways. We don't have to be perfect, just engaged and committed to aligning values with action." and i may add to Rene's paragraph Glennon's famous phrase: "We can do hard things".

towards the end of the day, Christine, the  mastermind behind this event and the most energetic authentic extrovert i've ever met, came to my table with her big smile: "Izzayek (how are you) Riham? Eh el akhbar? (how is everything going)". i asked her about this henna tatto lady downstairs, i noticed her table earlier when i went down to grab a super tasty lasagna piece with an extra yummy éclair mini cakes for lunch, "Go go now, she's leaving" Christine ordered in her usual over-excited mode. so i ran downstairs and the lady was just finishing when she looked up to me and smiled, the last customer left admiring her Christmas bells tattoo and another bell rang in my head "Be Still"... it's my very first henna tattoo ever and it's for free so shouldn't i feel guilty for choosing anything other than my kids' names or my husband's or a Christmas symbol? no, because "Be Still" encapsulates all of the above including myself... the lady looked puzzled so i wrote the two words down, she admitted her English handwriting is not as great as other tattoo shapes she masters, but i told her it was ok, yet she added a heart instead of the dot above the "i" and this looked beautiful  enough to me... and a couple of minutes later i walked back upstairs holding my left sleeve up with a "Mind The Tattoo" look on my face addressing the crowds till i reached my table safely and waited for an expected Rihamic regret to creep into my heart and wash away my internal big smile.... but it didn't...

"dare greatly" doesn't literally translate "go get a henna tattoo", and it's such an adolescence-ish behavior to say "i want a tattoo like Glennon's" but this was my visible proof to myself that i've sealed the deal (with black ink instead of red wax), i can do hard things, i can get a henna tattoo (was that story i heard about a henna tattoo that never came out as promised true?!!!!), i can participate at a huge Christmas bazaar and display my work for the public opinion to crucify me or carry me to the seventh heaven, i can leave my kids for 9 hours for the first time in my life (for as long i've had them, inside or outside of my womb, Sep.2008), i can be sociable and presentable with total strangers once again all on my own since the day i got married (Aug.2006), i can step into the arena and say this is who i am, i can show up and be there one hour at a time.... then i can go back home and justify to my kids why "mama wrote on her arm" while they are not allowed to draw on their faces and each other's skin !!! (but the actual message was that mama gets away with it without anyone yelling at her but poor them, they get yelled at and sent to the bathroom to step on their stool and keep washing the paint off their hands and faces, life is so unfair i know)...

the story doesn't have a happy ending though, to be honest there isn't an actual ending, yet.

the next morning i had to take a picture of my tattoo (of course) in daylight, and (of course) near my beloved window (the one you're sick of hearing about in almost every post)

but then the effect of yesterday's ecstasy faded away and i went back into my regular daily routines of unexpected routines, the kids were fighting and demanding breakfast, i couldn't get up early enough to have my coffee before i could recognize their voices, the house was more messy and unclean than ever because i was too busy in the past few days preparing for this stupid Christmas bazaar, i had no plan for lunch, and things got out of control inside that drawer once again...

i tried to silence all the voices in my head so i could "Be Still" for one minute... SHUT UP I WANT TO BE STILL... the magic left the tattoo and i had to handle things all by myself without the super powers of any wand...      

maybe there's no such thing as a quick fix, bazze2 lazze2 (spit and paste: a term my friend taught me about work done quickly to glue things up with your own spit, sorry if the image is too disgusting), a tattoo is only a tattoo, a book is only a book, a blog is only a blog, unless each one of us finds her own steps like in step 1 step 2... step infinity... to be still in her own noisy way, to prepare Him room in her own messy heart 'n house, to feel the true joy, gratitude, and magic of Christmas in her own wandless life... i can't say that i've figured it out yet, but i'm working on it, and right now all i need to do, the step i've planned is go take a shower with the hope that the tattoo will be one degree less dark on my pail skin !

too good to be true

if you know me in real life then most probably you've heard me say this phrase a lot, or maybe a LOT, simply because in itself it's a "too good to be true" phrase, don't you agree?

anyway, this time i'm describing a gift i've just received, it's a combination of a request and a gift... to tell you the truth, at the beginning when this 3D or maybe 3B dream came true part of me wondered why didn't i dream bigger.. i.e ask for more books from my to-read-list, but then i heard the whisper of my conscious voice it out: "greedy!!!"

so i'm now over the excitement/regret/greediness/celebration mood and into the satisfaction/gratefullness/self-pinching mood, i have started to make more realistic plans for these precious ones you see in the picture. THREE new books cannot not be "too goo to be true"... mothering an infant and a toddler, then a toddler and a pre-schooler in terms of reading and my relationship to books (specifically) has been a forced and unwanted rehab program i had no idea i'll be signed into against my will, and yes i did sufferer from withdrawal symptoms often... only parenting and "what to expect" books were allowed in that program...

many mothers i know say a variation of this sentence, in person or through their writings and blogs: "there were certain things i said i'd never do when i become a mother... yet i find myself doing them" it's part of the unrealistic dreams and images of motherhood that we all have BEFORE becoming actual mothers ourselves, we used to criticize certain actions or choices of other mothers, but when we were all walking in these very same shoes we found out that perspectives and priorities change once you're elbow-deep into motherhood.

so reading for me was one of these things, i said to myself: "i'll never quit reading when i become a mother... i won't be one of these mothers who can't find time to read... who on earth can't find time to read? it's a matter of prioritizing your life... bla bla bla" i didn't have time to shower, or comb my hair, or look at my face using a real mirror (instead of a glass window or the plastic mirror in my son's soft book!!! that says "you're special"...) so yes, i admit it, as you must have figured out by now that I DID NOT HAVE TIME TO READ...

as some routines (or addictions, if we're talking about me and reading) started to gradually crawl back into my life one month after the other, reading surfaced again, but not reading books, not yet though, so after my daughter cut her 1st birthday cake in the second half of 2012 i found that the most modern and convenient means to fill my reading cravings are blogs... blog posts are mother-friendly and i'm forever grateful for the bloggers who saved my sanity and got me back on track with my reading habits... first it was Momastery world to which i've escaped for hours (or at times, minutes... whatever i found available) to take a break, "meet" real moms, and dust off whatever have accumulated on my brain cells. Glennon introduced us to Anna at An Inch Of Gray with whom i fell in love, and found way too many things in common between her and myself. then i honestly can't remember how i somehow found myself dreaming about meeting Kelle and her girls (now add a cute boy) in person after reaching her blog Enjoying The Small Things

so my daughter and i, together, started taking "baby steps" she into the real world of walking and me back into the MORE REAL world of reading... from cruising to unassisted walking ... from blogs to books... onward we marched

now the story of picking up these three specific books is a lot longer, and i've been thinking about writing a book report about each one of them, not the traditional objective kind of book report, but the Rihamic subjective one that includes a part on "how i heard of this book" and also "how the book got into my hands after it had traveled overseas with someone who love me enough to carry it in their luggage"... books are made of paper, paper is made of wood so when i ask someone to bring me a book i feel like i'm asking them to carry a tree branch in their suitcase or handbag!!!

so, soon and very soon, i'll be enjoying my own "Lala Land" experience with one of these titles... will tell you later which book will be my first stop.