Ode to parents

Om oleander and Abu oleander are going to be making it to the sleepy town tomorrow, they don't care how sleepy the town is, they don't care how freezing cold the weather is, all they care about is spending some time with their offspring, and that's exactly what I intend to do, spend as much time as possible with them. After a voyage that has taken them from Jordan to the Midwest and to the southern US, they're finally making it to the northland and I can't wait to have them up here.

I've been preparing, trying to clean up my place for almost a week, because you know how moms are.. despite my efforts, which are honestly lousy at best, I'm sure my mom will discover, what I thought was a hidden, piece of my messiness. And although her attempts to plant the fear of God in me by warning me that no woman in her right mind would marry someone as messy as I am, have failed in the past, she will still try again. I smile just thinking about that, I'll be looking forward to hearing her say it.

My parents are the most loving human beings I will ever know, they're older than what the average parents of someone in his late 20s should be. But they're young at heart, to this age willing to joke and laugh. And they're young at mind, still willing to learn new things and to accept and discuss new ideas. They have struggled through so many hardships to give their children a fair shot at the world, putting us all through college with next to nothing, it still baffles me how they managed to do it. That wasn't all, they did what must be the hardest thing for any parent to do, they let go. They watched their children one by one leave westwood over the past 20 years, only returning home on the yearly or bi-yearly visit for three weeks. When it was my turn, people tried to talk them out of letting me go, being the youngest, you have to keep m7ammad with you they told them, but they said no, he will get the same chance his siblings got.

So fate, or what have you, would have it so four of us would end up in the US, and one in Jordan. Fate, in a cruel twist, would also have it so our family will not be fully together since the day the first one of us left Jordan over 20 years ago. But at least I will have mom and dad with me for the next couple of weeks and that's worth the world.