• About Judith A. Ross

Shifting Gears

Shifting Gears

Category Archives: adult children

Forest Bathing

02 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, health, inspiration, marriage, work

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

forest bathing, Marc Maron, President Obama, Slow Love Life, Terry Gross

FBathing2

A friend recently sent me this link to an article about “forest bathing,” which says,

This Japanese concept revolves around a deceptively simple practice: quietly walking and exploring, with a mind deliberately intent on – and all senses keenly open to – every sound, scent, color and “feel” of the forest, in all its buzzing bio-diversity.

Of course, readers of my blog know that I have been doing this for years – but not so much recently. It has become so rare that I clearly remember the last time  I let the forest feed my soul.

Time when I am truly alone and surrounded by silence has become a precious commodity. Not just for me, I suspect, but for many of us. We all need time to just sit with our thoughts and our emotions. Time when we are truly “present.”

How often are our minds and bodies in the same place? For a dreamer like me, not often enough and over the past few weeks I have been especially distracted. Just the other afternoon, my body was sitting on the deck eating lunch with my husband, while my brain was back at my computer, parsing through an editing issue for work. When he interrupted my train of thought with a question, I snapped at him.

Forest bathing, opening ourselves to feel the gentle breezes, and fully take in the smells and sounds around us can also teach us to be more present in other parts of our lives. It’s a habit we all need to cultivate.

still life with flowers

Recently, my son urged us to listen to comedian Marc Maron’s podcast, WTF. In listening to Maron interview people such as NPR’s Terry Gross and President Obama, I noticed how “present” both he and his subjects were throughout the entire conversation. Being that focused enabled both parties to listen, hear what the other person was saying, and then respond thoughtfully—unearthing some never-heard-before information in the process.

Uncovering new information, finding insight where you don’t expect it, those all can result when we are fully present. For example, one of the things that the leader of the free world told Maron struck a chord deep within me — and it wasn’t a comment about foreign policy.

He said that because his father wasn’t around when he was growing up, being a good father to his daughters is one of his top priorities. Parental absence left a big hole in my life—particularly my adult life. When Obama said that, I realized that living with that void is why being the mother of two adult sons has been both wrenching and joyous. It is a relationship that I can never take for granted and, more significantly, one that I don’t have a blueprint for.

This summer I have several projects going on, but as I turn my attention to each I am going to keep the image of “forest bathing” in mind — even when I am not walking in the woods.

It’s time for a reset.

reset

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Spring into Summer

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, environment, inspiration, mid-life transition, pets, writing

≈ 5 Comments

Bowl o'Sunshine

Scented geranium, aka bowl o’ sunshine.

The summer visitors have arrived. They show up all of a sudden, in an array of styles and colors that practically scream, “summer is here!” One day the landscape comprises a crowd dressed in varying hues of green and the next — well, see for yourself.

1-columbine

Columbine

Peony

Peony

false indigo

False indigo

5-clematis

Clematis

My “Little Miss Kim” lilac shows up in a burst of grapey color and then immediately fades to white, leaving behind a trail of sweet perfume that fills the yard for days.

4-lilacs

Little Miss Kim

Here in eastern Massachusetts, the transformation from late spring to early summer is a visually joyous one. In the woods, the air feels both lighter and fresher — a soft caress has replaced the chilly slap of April. I may still need a light jacket for my morning walk, but the knitted cap and gloves remain in the closet.

Rhododendron in the woods

Rhododendron in the woods

New ferns

New ferns

Yet underneath all the outward cheer, early summer leaves me feeling a little empty. As the weather warms up an old sadness resurfaces as its mid-June anniversary approaches. And as a young, working mother, the close of the school year, with its many festivities and fond farewells, was always tinged with melancholy. One more year of their childhood torn from the calendar.

My days of year-end band concerts, sewing on name tags, and packing trunks for summer camp are long over, but for me, June will always outrank January as an important marker of passing time.

Summer breeze

Summer breeze

The great thing about getting ‘older,’ though, is that I no longer have to concern myself with summer’s superficial branding. While I do pay attention to advice about protecting my skin, I can turn the page when I see headlines like, “4 Weeks to a Bikini Body,” because, really, who cares?

Instead, I’ll look beyond the sunny façade and shake things up. That warmer air and lack of weather-related obstacles frees us all to tackle something different, something hard.

Never finished Middlemarch? Maybe this is the summer to do it. Climb a mountain, learn another language, or try a new form of writing. Test the limits of your brain and your body.

Or—as my husband and I plan to do after decades of full-time work—give yourself a sabbatical.  Taking a road trip, living someplace new, and launching a project are all on our agenda.

So yeah, the summer visitors are here, let the season begin.

***

This post also appears today on Women’s Voices for Change. 

A Recipe for Love from the Men in My Life

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, marriage, meditation

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Daily Plate of Crazy, food, love, Morocco, Pizza, Shakshuka, Valentine's Day

Shakshuka photo

Shakshuka

It has taken me half my life to associate food with love. For many years, especially when I was a young, single, working woman, food was fuel consumed with a large dash of guilt, and I closely monitored my intake.

But recently, I’ve realized that morsels of edible love have been coming my way for a long time—most of them prepared by the men in my life.

It started with my dad, who would cut my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into four precise pieces. “Triangles or squares?” he would ask.

My relationship with my father was a rocky one and I often found him difficult to be around. But whenever I envision those tender triangles of grape jelly and creamy peanut butter layered between two slices of Pepperidge Farm white bread, the negative feelings fade away, and I feel cossetted and adored.

Once I became the mother of two young boys, the “food as love” concept was delivered more forcefully through a traditional Mother’s Day breakfast in bed.  One year, “fortune” muffins were on the menu. A soggy slip of paper baked inside one of them announced in a penciled scrawl that I was “The Best Mother in the World.”

These days, that message of love, folded into a heaping cup of caring, is delivered with more subtlety via elaborate meals cooked by those same boys, now fully launched adults. Shakshuka—a spicy mélange of vegetables, feta cheese, and eggs—and crusty homemade pizza are among their specialties.

They absorbed this technique from my husband, who has also delivered a steady stream of edible love notes throughout our long marriage. There have been more pots of chicken soup to cure a cold than I can count, and for much of our time together — especially after the boys arrived — he has taken on what I once viewed as the daily drudgery of putting a meal on the table.

At first, cooking was a novelty. A rich minestrone soup or homemade brownies were a way to impress boyfriends, and, I naively thought, get them to take me seriously. But once I’d hooked my man via quiche and a curried mushroom soup, the novelty wore off when we became ensconced in family life. It was no longer fun to deal with food through the nausea of pregnancy and later through the film of fatigue and time pressure that came with combining work and kids.

But lately, there’s been a shift. I no longer get defensive if I don’t have an answer when asked, “What’s for dinner?” (What kind of wife/mother was I that I didn’t have a week of menus at the ready?) Now that we both work from home and it’s usually just the two of us, I look forward to the discussion — and even manage to plan a few meals in advance.

Homemade pizza and shakshuka are on regular rotation. They are my favorite meals, because when my husband and I are kneading dough, or chopping herbs and feta, it’s as though our sons are here too. I’m surrounded by my men, cossetted and adored all over again.

The Recipes (Shakshuka and New York Pizza)

The first time I ate shakshuka was in my older son’s Brooklyn apartment. He moved around his compact kitchen with ease, chopping and tossing ingredients into the pan like a pro. Watching him do all the work was incredibly relaxing. It was the best breakfast I’d had in a long time. Later, he sent me the recipe, which came from the New York Times.

Younger son is a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, where all baking takes place over a gas flame inside a blue box. Oven temperature is gauged by eye. Pizza is not readily available there, and he often makes it when other Peace Corps volunteers arrive at his door. Recently, he sent us this recipe for New York Style pizza. The dough is best, he says, when it’s left to rise in the refrigerator for three days.

The Pizza King, photo courtesy of Kitty O'Riordan

The Pizza King, photo courtesy of Kitty O’Riordan

This post is part of a series on Food and Love over at Daily Plate of Crazy.

An Enduring Relationship

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, marriage, mid-life transition

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Daily Plate of Crazy, mother-daughter relationships

YoungMom

The last time I saw my mother was the day I finished my junior year of high school.  It’s been more than 40 years since I basked in the warmth of her smile, or heard her musical laugh. And even longer since we argued, but I still remember the last time she annoyed me.

She had neglected to compliment me on my newly acquired driving skills. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I asked before tossing the car keys towards her. They hit her thin shoulder and fell to the garage floor. She looked at me, startled, her blue eyes filled with hurt.

She was dying and that made me mad. For the rest of that spring, I put my new driver’s license to good use, shuttling back and forth between home and the hospital every day after school.

She’s missed a lot. She wasn’t there for my high school and college graduations… or my wedding. She never met my husband or her two grandsons. And yet, after all this time, our relationship lives on.

Since her death, my mother has been with me many times — especially when I do things that she couldn’t. The first time I traveled to Europe with a friend, she was there too. She had always wanted to go, but because of my travel-phobic father, she never had the chance. On that first trip, I lit candles in churches all over England for my Jewish mother.

She made it clear that I was going to college. Trapped in a difficult marriage, a college degree, more than anything else, symbolized freedom to her. She badly wanted the ability to support herself, and she didn’t want me to be stuck, dependent —like her.

Each time that I checked a new accomplishment off her list —earning that diploma, landing my first “real” job, and renting my own apartment — I could almost hear her cheering in the distance.

Because she made sure that I got the extras, like music lessons and summer camps, my sons got them too, even when the cost seemed onerous. She’d be thrilled to know that one grandson recently performed at the Kennedy Center, and that the other is living and working abroad. She may be gone, but her influence still has legs.

Shortly before my 16th birthday, on a sunny, brisk spring day, she took me to a nearby shopping center to pick out a bracelet. We left the store with a one-inch sterling silver cuff that came in a maroon flannel bag. In my mind’s eye I see us talking and laughing companionably as we stroll from store to store.

I think of us together every time I wear that bracelet. The memory of that ordinary day—so long ago that it now seems extraordinary—reminds me to treasure every small moment I can snatch with my husband and sons.

She and I didn’t have a lot of tough conversations. I was rarely in trouble, but because she was my safe place, my comfort zone, I knew it was important to provide that space for my own children. I think, I hope, they know that they can tell me anything.

Often, I imagine her in the kitchen, cooking a meal with my younger son, who shares more than a passing resemblance to her father in both looks and spirit. Or joking with my older son, who always has a good story to tell, and whose big, blue eyes match hers. When I do those things, she’s there too

If she were still alive, my mother would be 92 this month. Even though she has been absent for most of my life, memories of what she said and did guided me through early adulthood, marriage, and motherhood. I am now seven years older than she was when she died. As I move through middle age and progress toward old age, she can no longer show me the way.

And yet, as long as I am alive, and still straining to remember her voice, and hear her laugh, the relationship goes on.

***

This post is part of a series about mother-daughter relationships published on “Daily Plate of Crazy.” Click here to read other posts in the series. 

Cozy

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, books, health, inspiration, mid-life transition, travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Thanksgiving

Anniversary Tulips

Sunday’s wind was ferocious, especially with temperatures well below freezing. It was a good day to stay home, drink tea, read books, and just be quiet.

With daylight so fleeting, it can be a melancholy time of year. In fact, that sad, wistful feeling seems to be making the rounds. All we can do is force ourselves out into the air and remember to take time to savor the small joys of life.

Go ahead, live dangerously, put a little whole milk or even cream in that tea! The extra calories will keep you warm during this dark time.

I wish all of my readers and friends a cozy Thanksgiving. Give your beloveds extra hugs if they are with you.

And to those of you in far-flung places, know that you are missed, and that your place at the table is open and set for your return.

 

Field Trip to Brooklyn

14 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, music, travel

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

"66 Square Feet", 66 Square Feet: a delicious life, Brooklyn, Marie Viljoen, Prospect Park, Raya Brass Band, wild food foraging

 NYC PumpkinsIt is October in New York and these residents, at least, aren’t happy to see this Red Sox fan. I’m a little slaphappy after our whirlwind, less than 48-hour trip to the big city and back.

Saturday night we were up until past 2 am partying with Raya Brass Band.

After a rowdy night and a little sleep (my ears barely had enough time to stop ringing), Older Son made us his usual 4-star breakfast and then we raced over to Prospect Park for a foraging walk. (I’m working hard to feel guilty about the pile of dirty dishes we left him with, but so far that’s not happening.)

As a result, many of my photographs look like I took them after being up all night. I actually considered going out and reshooting these plants in my yard: Ironically, I went all the way to Brooklyn to learn about wild plants that have been growing under my nose for at least 20 years.

The walk was with Marie Viljoen, author of 66 Square Feet: a delicious life. If you haven’t yet visited her blog, I suggest you put on some sturdy walking shoes and head over.

After a night that was months in the planning, and then giving his all while on stage, our musician still had enough game to start the walk by picking some salad.

dandelion greens october

Dandelion greens. Photo by Marie Viljoen. Used with permission. 

It turns out that a lot of plants that have been encroaching on my garden and annoying the heck out of me are actually wild edibles.

For example,

violets

Young violet leaves (not older ones like these), which grow freely all over our yard and have a tendency to take over one of my gardens, combined with lamb’s quarters (below)  will make a lovely salad.

Lamb's Quarters

These pretty little pink plants, called smartweed, that also run rampant around our grounds, are a Thai coriander — just the thing to zip up a meal.

Smartweed

Blue flowers on long stems began popping up among the vinca and other ground cover in my back garden. I was on the fence about them: liked the blue, didn’t like how pushy they are. Marie set me straight. They are called commelina and their shoots, flowers, and seeds are all edible (again, apologies for the tired, unfocused photo).

Commelina

These gallant soldiers have young leaves that taste like sugar snap peas, and can be cooked like spinach. Exactly the kind of motivation I need to do a bit of “weeding.”

Gallant Soldiers

Then there’s goutweed, its leaves add a delicious, herbal taste to salads. Here it is back home mixing it up with my european ginger. I tried pulling the stuff up, but it’s nearly impossible to uproot. In addition, Marie says that breaking off the roots will encourage it to send out more.

Goutweed

I guess we’ll just have to eat it.

Nature Girl

21 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, environment, inspiration, politics, writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

350.org, Bill McKibben, environmental activism, great horned owl, nature, Oil and Honey

Birches

Never mind what the dream was about. It could have been about so many things: my mother-in-law’s passing last month; my kids being far away; my own mortality, my husband’s, the dog’s… But in the moment of the dream I felt as deep and raw a sense of loss as I’ve ever experienced in waking life.

But then I woke up, and poof, the feeling evaporated. Soon after that, I realized that I haven’t heard the owl this summer. Usually I’ll hear him in the wee hours through the bathroom window, a muffled hoo, hoo, hoo, hoooo floating softly over the grass between our house and the woods.

His (her? their?) call has been a comfort these past 20 years. I first heard the owl a year after we’d moved in while I was in the midst of cancer treatments. That summer and fall, I found the nature here—the owl hooting from the woods, while I lay awake, feeling my poisoned blood pulsing in my abdomen, or a pheasant strolling across the lawn on a sunny afternoon when I was waiting for test results— to be comforting omens.

Being in nature grounds us. And, in fact, it’s good for writers. “Nothing coaxes jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences like sitting under a shade tree on a pleasant day,” writes Carol Kaufmann in last week’s New York Times, “With a slight breeze blowing, birds chirping melodies, wee bugs scurrying around me and a fully charged laptop or yellow legal pad at hand, I know I’ll produce my best work.”

I also heard writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben speak this week about why we must fight to prevent approval to complete the Keystone XL pipeline as one step in solving our climate crisis. He is so smart, so sensible, so inspiring, I hope everyone will join me in reading his new book, Oil and Honey: The education of an unlikely activist.

Nature is one of the things that truly matters to all of us, whether we know it or not. It is what binds us to this earth. We can’t live without it.

Now when I think back to that dream, I don’t worry about my mortality or my family’s — or even the owl’s, who if it was the same one, lived a good, long life.

No, I worry about the end of nature as we know it, and how little time we have to halt its decline. Not succeeding would be the greatest loss of all.

naturegirl

Wallowing

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, aging, books, environment, health, marriage, mid-life transition, music

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

"This Train Is Now", climate change, garden, heat wave, Moms Clean Air Force, Raya Brass Band

cobweb

The past few weeks have brought hot, humid weather to the Northeast. Morning after morning, I hustle Karina along our customary walk, swatting away the multitude of flies and mosquitoes that swarm around us all along the way.

The heat and humidity make it hard to focus, and if I were to have a coherent thought, typing while my fogged-over glasses slide down my sweaty nose (and this is after a shower), is nearly impossible. To top things off, my computer went haywire, the cursor skipping around from sentence to sentence, clicking on ads and other links of its own accord.

I was wallowing. A lot.

It started in early June. A piece that I had put my heart and soul into didn’t get published when promised. It may soon see the light of day, but its timely lead is no longer timely and it is deeply personal.  As more time passes, the more nervous I feel about people reading it.

As June progressed, and the weather got hotter and hotter, I deflated and drooped a little more each day. Pretty soon I was comparing my publishing success to that of others….always a sure road to nowhere.

To be fair, June has a history of being difficult. It is a month of anniversaries that clearly demarcate the all-too-swift passage of time. Forty-one years since I became motherless, and 30 years since I became a mother. Yes, I have a child who is 30 years old. That particular anniversary, more than the other one, hit me hard this year.

Nest

In mid- June I pulled some muscle or other in my thigh. Swimming and walking are fine, but rooting around in the garden isn’t possible, and so, I’m letting it go feral this summer. Like everywhere else, it’s too hot and buggy in there anyway.

As if I weren’t already feeling decrepit enough, my dermatologist implied that my multitude of freckles/moles were solely due to too much sun. Sun? Really? In the Northeast? Haven’t you heard of genetics, Bub? So I wallowed in that for a while… until I noticed a woman at the pool. Deeply tanned, her skin was covered with large dalmatian-like spots.

Sometimes, comparison is helpful.

Then my computer went kablooey, and there were histrionics.

The atmosphere inside our little house got even hotter, and to escape, I started reading a book with an angry woman narrator.  I am so into that book right now (The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud). And I can’t wait to discuss it with the friend who gave it to me — especially the comment my local bookseller made as I was buying it for another friend. He said that he found the opening paragraphs “a little too shrill.”

Female anger is such a bummer, especially for men. My husband can handle it though. As he told me after the histrionics subsided, “… it’s good that it wasn’t directed towards me.”

But today, things are looking up. First off, the temperatures are in the 80’s not the 90’s and I can actually type this post without dripping all over the keyboard.

Yes, my computer has been fixed.

  • New track pad: $90.
  • Having a place to vent: Priceless.

And, I have had some writing published this summer. Climate change, always on my mind, came to the fore and I submitted a couple of posts to Moms Clean Air Force.  One on how Climate Change has hit home, the other on how it is threatening New England seafood. By the way, you don’t have to be a Mom to join, just an engaged citizen, and if you haven’t already, I’d urge you to take action.

Then, a couple of days ago, the brilliant D.A. Wolfe reminded me of how lucky  I am that my sons are independent, that they still want to share their lives with us, and that both are doing work that they and we can be proud of.

Shameless plug: older son’s band is releasing an album on October 8. Freckles or no freckles I’m still cool enough to rate an advanced copy. I’m listening to it now and the music has enough energy to make even the most lethargic among us want to get up and dance.

And you know what else? My garden is doing just fine without me.

garden

In so many ways,  I am a free woman!

We all need work, we all need purpose and I’m glad that those are the things I’ll be obsessing about this summer — rather than who’s publishing where, or who or what is or isn’t to blame for my spotty skin — because the day we stop looking for work and purpose is a day when the wallowing has gone too far.

Travel Lessons

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, environment, friendship, health, inspiration, travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

baking, cooking, culture, desert, food, Morocco

ruins with sunspots

The last few mornings I have reluctantly pulled myself from a dreamy, pleasant sleep. It’s not so much the dreams that I want to hold onto, but the peaceful, satisfied feelings they leave behind.

a sign

Maybe they are my way of remembering Morocco. For almost two weeks I was blissfully free of my usual, and (fortunately) mostly mundane worries. Day followed day, each unique and memorable in its own way, allowing me to use my brain and senses in ways I rarely do at home.

0-view from above

I started keeping lists of words in the local Berber dialect, along with lists of names. When people told me their name, they often told me what it meant. Karim, the name given my son, for example, means generous.

vocab list

Two different Moroccan cooks showed me that you can make delicious food with just a bowl, one simple knife, the right ingredients, and two strong hands. No measuring cups or fancy appliances required.

couscous

Couscous

daily bread

Daily bread 

By the way, in case you are wondering, I have several photos and videos of these cooks in action, but I can’t share them here. That’s another thing I learned. Putting your image online is considered shameful for Moroccan women — it is interpreted as showing yourself in a way that is not appropriate.

Moroccans grow a lot of their own food and they even know how to farm in the desert.

Young date palms

Young date palms

Desert wheat

Desert wheat

hand-wheat close up

As we were driving over the Atlas Mountains at the beginning of our long journey home, Paul turned to me, and said, “Wherever we decide to go next, I want to have a reason for going there. There has to be something specific we want to see or do.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Travel will never be the same again. We will no longer be content to just visit a country’s museums, stroll along its streets, or loiter in its cafes without some other goal in mind. Whether our objective is to learn a new language, take a cooking class, or understand a specific event, we won’t be satisfied to simply scratch the surface.

If Morocco taught us anything, it’s that finding common ground with people from other lands and cultures, no matter how insurmountable the language barrier may seem, is worth the effort. We will carry Morocco’s people in our hearts always, just as we will forever be grateful to the one who brought us there.

Karime

Beyond the Hijab: Woman to Woman in Morocco

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by judithar321 in adult children, friendship, inspiration, politics, travel

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

culture, henna tattoos, hijab, Morocco, Peace Corps, women, Womens Voices for Change

Henna tattoos back

Morocco was never on my travel wish list. New Zealand, Iceland, and Brazil were all possibilities. But a visit to a predominately Muslim, developing country in northern Africa? I hadn’t even considered it. All of that changed, however, when my 26-year-old son Karsten joined the Peace Corps.

The fact that he was assigned to work there not only put Morocco squarely on my radar, it allowed me to transcend the typical tourist experience and literally break bread with ordinary Moroccans—people whose language, dress, and culture are very different from my own.

I’ve been home just a couple of weeks, and I’m still sifting through the many sights, sounds, and tastes of my trip, yet there’s one aspect that stands out—the connection I made with the women I met there.

My first introduction to a Moroccan woman was, oddly enough, during a video chat. My husband and I were conversing with our son shortly after he had arrived in Sefrou for training, when he invited his host mother, Fatima, to join us. At this point, Fatima had already nursed our son through one illness and had given him his Moroccan name, Karim.

In what remained of my high school French, I tried to thank her for taking such good care of “mon fils.” While my French vocabulary failed me, my facial expression and our immediate connection did not. “Avec plaisir,” Fatima replied with a smile that blew through the miles and burst through the screen like a warm breeze.

A year later, Karsten now lives in Tinghir, a city located south of the High Atlas Mountains, where he teaches life skills, like typing and AIDS awareness, to a co-ed group of local teens. During the week my husband and I visited him this past April, he and a Moroccan counterpart organized games and exercises to help his students develop confidence and communication skills.

“There is definitely a feeling of sisterhood among the women here,” he told me one morning as we walked through town.

I felt the truth of that observation almost immediately. On the first full day after we arrived in Tinghir, I found myself sitting upstairs from Karsten’s place in his landlord’s apartment, surrounded by a group of women wearing the traditional hijab (head scarf) and ankle-length skirts or dresses.

Laila, who speaks a little French, was decorating my hands with henna. Rachida, who had her young daughter in tow, spoke to me in English. The rest, friends and relatives of my son’s landlady, chattered away in the local Berber dialect.

Without my son present to translate, I did a lot of nodding and smiling. But Rachida clearly wanted more than just small talk.

“What do you think about the head scarf?” she asked me. (Most of the mature women I encountered in Morocco wore the traditional head scarf and a long dress or skirt — at least out in public —but not everyone does.) I told her that I thought it was fine if a woman chooses to wear it. She nodded her head and said that the “choice” was sometimes dictated by a strict father or husband. I had the feeling that Rachida was talking about herself. She clearly regretted not continuing her education. Once they are married, she told me, “Moroccan women are responsible for everything.” It was a lament I was to hear from other women as well.

I felt the full force of Rachida’s assertion a few days later when my husband, Karsten, three of his male friends, and I drove through a nearby town, passing cafes overflowing with male customers, while the few visible women were on the road, laden with babies, groceries, or bundles of alfalfa they carried home on their backs to feed the family donkey.

On that day, my femaleness, even more than my Western appearance made me self-conscious. I felt truly alien, oppressed by the difference between this place I was visiting and the place I call home.

Yet those differences seemed to dissipate whenever I was with a Moroccan woman; even if my daily outfit of jeans and a long-sleeved T shirt clashed with her long dress and hijab, even if we couldn’t communicate through talk, her friendliness, interest, and generosity fostered a feeling of camaraderie that coursed through our time together.

Where did this feeling of sisterhood come from? Part of it, I’m sure, had to do with the high esteem these women have for my son and the respect he shows them. In fact, one conversation I overheard between Peace Corps volunteers during an earlier leg of our trip was focused on ways they could teach their young male charges to treat girls with more respect.

Moroccans are naturally hospitable, and making strangers feel welcome is an ingrained part of their culture. Family is very important there as well, so having “Karim’s mama and baba” in their home was considered something of an honor. Beyond that—and I don’t know this for sure—I believe that our mutual femaleness in a male-dominated society triggered the sense of sisterhood that Karsten observed, and that I experienced.

For example, one morning, Aisha, Karsten’s landlady, showed me how to make the flat, round loaves of bread that are served with almost every meal. As she demonstrated her muscular kneading technique, rotated loaves of bread in and out of the oven, and cut up vegetables for a tagine—all accomplished with her 2-month old daughter strapped to her back—we also managed to commiserate, in our mutually limited French, about the challenges of nursing a newborn throughout the night.

Surprisingly, this feeling of oneness wasn’t just limited to encounters with adult women. The hugs and kisses I received from the 12-year-old daughter of Karsten’s Tinghir host family made me feel like a revered and much-loved aunt. And then there was our 10-mile trek to Todra Gorge with Karsten’s Leadership Club.

The walk, which wound through the local oasis and up a dusty road to the gorge, took about four hours. While some of the boys reached out to me, I spent most of the hike surrounded by teenage girls who were determined to teach me a few words of Berber. By the time we reached the gorge, I had a vocabulary list. By the end of the day, I had been given cookies and candy, offered the use of a coat and some lip gloss, and had acquired several new Facebook friends.

I was lucky enough to see these girls on two more occasions, when we accompanied Karsten to his classes at the cultural center. I will never forget Hayat, who was both patient and persistent when teaching me how to introduce myself and ask others their name in her native language. And I will cherish my conversations with Kaoutââr, who will soon be leaving for the university to study medicine and whose nose is constantly in her schoolbooks. Nor will I forget the feisty Soukaina or the other Hayat, a tall, lanky athlete in a headscarf who can out-throw, out-catch, and out-run all the boys when participating in my son’s American football club.

Several times during our visit, Karsten mentioned the Peace Corps mission to help “promote better understanding of other people on the part of Americans.” I’d say they are achieving that mission.

The next time I look at a photograph of a Moroccan woman, I won’t see a stranger, I’ll see a friend.

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 This post was also published today on Women’s Voices for Change.

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