Shortly after my father immigrated to America…
he met my mother, and they got married and got on a plane to Lebanon so he could introduce her to the family. My mother and my grandmother didn’t share any language, my mother not speaking Arabic and my grandmother not speaking any English. And in her innocence, as my mother walked around their Lebanese home, she pointed to a small frame on my grandmother’s wall. A frame that held white wax Arabic letters dripped onto a stretched red cloth set behind a pane of glass. My mother so admired it and innocently communicated that using her warm smile and gestures. She had no idea that in the Arab world if you admire something someone has, be it the shirt on their back or a piece of art on their wall, they will take it off and give it to you. And that’s exactly what my grandmother did. She took the frame right off her wall and gave it to my mother.
Many years later, when my parents got divorced, my mother gave me that frame. And I took a picture of it and texted it to my dad, and I asked him what it says in Arabic, and he told me it reads: May God give to you what you desire.
I’m grateful for my grandmother’s blessing. This message she has somehow passed down to me even without her knowing. These words have invited me to consider deeply and often – what is it that I really want?
And if you know me well, you know I’ve wanted to write our family’s four generations story about my great-grandfather, my grandmother, my father, and my return to Lebanon over these last few years to learn about this place from which we come. The story is now complete. And if you *really* know me, you know I love to be on stage. So I’ve been sharing the story on stage to some really supportive audiences. And I’m very happy to say that there’s much more to come.