How do you tell your daughter that some families, in fact, disown their daughters? That you can still love a country even when it does not love you back? If there are answers to these questions, I don’t know them, so I go with something simple: “Because he doesn’t like that I married Mommy.” I imagine my mother in Amman, waiting by her own phone, halos of smoke around her sunny-brown hair. I imagine her fussed-over houseplants, the throbbing reds and blues of the Persian rug at her feet.
The last time I spoke to my father was seven years before that morning on the kitchen floor. I don’t want to stand in the way of her getting to know her grandfather. I want her to believe that that all people are good. I want to believe the same thing. The parts of my story I’ve left out to protect my daughter’s innocence, the version of the world I would like her to live in. I know this is hard for you to hear, because this is not what you expected from your daughter.
The author’s brother told her that she had fallen in love with a Muslim family member. He asked: “Couldn’t you wait until they died?” “I smacked the steering wheel of my car, baking in the Georgia sun,” he said. “Jews and Muslims have a lot in common,” he said. “And she’s Jewish!” He warned her not to expect her family members to be happy for her because she’s Jewish.”.
This is what I want them to know: That I found purpose, belonging, and home in the most unexpected places. She says she is overwhelmed with the things she needs to tell them about her family history and the strength and resiliency she has inherited. The author and her wife Emily, have two daughters and one son.