When I was first married, every couple weeks, my parents would call from Iran. Moy mom always had a list of questions for me. Some items that I remember from her list were:
1. Are you cooking Iranian foods? I mean Khoresht. Don’t eat just sandwich. My dad would continue her line by saying:”All Iranian khoreshts are made in the same way: you need goosht and piaz dagh, and zardchoobeh ..”. They would both say that if I could do engineering, then cooking Persian food was no big deal.
2. My mom would also ask about mehmanies. She wanted to make sure that I was giving mehmanies.
3. “Are you pregnant yet? By the time I was your age; at the time I was only 25, I had all my 4 kids.”
There were other items in the list too and most of them were unreasonable. I was working 60 hours a week on a new airplane and had no time to be giving mehmanies. Also, being 25 year old and not having given birth yet was the norm in United States in late 1980s. Even my cousins who lived in Iran at the time had not given birth at that age. I am in my forties now and some of my childhood friends are still trying to have babies, even though their biological clock must be way beyond ticking. It is probably completely broken.
As years passed and I found some bad habits, my mom’s list changed. Now rather than asking about positive activities that I should have been doing, her questions were replaced with:
1. Are you still smoking? Smoking is really bad for you. “hala madaret ya pedaret sigar meekeshid ke to sigar meekeshi”?
2. You should really lose weight. They say being overweight makes you not get pregnant. Maybe that is why you have not had a baby yet.
3. Diet pepsi is horrible for you. Don’t drink it.
Just today, I called my mom and after talking about other issues, in a voice that sounded as if she wanted to tell me about a major earthquake happening, she told me that Dr. Az (she always mispronounces the names) on Oprah said that drinking diet Pepsi increases the chance of stroke by 50%. Then my mom told me that since so and so in our family had brain hemorhage, then I should be careful. I tried telling her that so and so’s hemorhage had nothing to do with diet pepsi but she was continuing and saying: you know Masoud; he is one of my cousins in Iran and he is our family’s resident favorite doctor, said that drinking diet pepsi is like drinking poison. I really love Dr. Masoud and he is one of my most favorite relatives but he himself has not been a picture of health. However, still my mom does not quit telling me the latest fatwa both Dr. Masoud or Dr. Az (sometimes it is Sadreddine Elahi or some other random expert Iranian man) has come up with.
Any way, I don’t think any other mother in the world gives advice to their grown children as much as an Iranian mom does. If you object to them about their advice giving, they say:”hala chera badet miaad, man harchee maamanam meegoft ke badam nemeeomad”, so the cycle continues. I already catch myself telling my teen-age daughter exactly the kind of things my mom tells me, Like I tell my daughter to watch calories of food that she orders in restaurants and how come she does not incorporate more movement in her daily life. I also tell her that when I was her age, I exercised a lot more,etc, etc.
With these happy thoughts, I would like to tell all readers:” Happy Sizdeh Bedar and by the way, make sure you gere your sabzi so you get married in this year and have a baby, Particularly, I am talking to you ladies 31 and above, because by the time I was your age, I had my one and only kid, and it is getting late for you. Additionally, don’t be lazy and buy the Sizdeh Bedar food in the park. Get up, move your body and make some Persian food.”
