What is Love, Immigrant Style?
The main reason I went to India was to help my parents sort out some administrative stuff. You might wonder why my parents, who have not lived in India for over 50 years, still have admin there. It's a legitimate question, one which has plagued me for some years. Sorting through the paperwork was a confounding process, in a confounding place. India learned bureaucracy from the British and depending on your perspective, they perfected, improved on, or have been stymied by it. But really this post is about immigrant parents and the way they confound you with their peculiar way of showing love.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I read Ira Mathur's Love the Dark Days while in India. Toward the end of the book, she says:
"Perhaps some people compensate for their carelessness with you by their beauty and ability to give you a strange, big life. My parents are those people. We all have our way of doing the accounts."
I was struck by the sentiments in these few sparse sentences and how they could apply to so many of us. I wonder if all children of immigrant parents can claim to have been given a "strange, big life." Isn't the very act of leaving one place for another, unknown and far away, the first step toward making a big life? Not a better one, or an easier one, but for sure a big one. These words from Mathur cracked open something for me, especially because I was in such proximity to the side effects of the strange, big life my parents have given me. One that spans continents and countries and cultures.
Maybe there's something in these words for you…
Meanwhile, if you're feeling hopeless, organize a gathering of like-minded folks, see some art, get outside, do some physical activity. And check out this list of things you can do that are not protesting or voting, from organizer and author Mariame Kaba (highlighted in Alexander Chee's Substack). And a central way to follow all that's happening is this Project 2025 tracker (thanks to Sarah Thankam Matthews for flagging).
Sayu