Chapter Forty-Four
Before
A couple of weeks after Adam went to college and we became empty nesters, Ali and I were on the back deck smoking hookah.
We used to enjoy the occasional sheesha session before we had kids, but we stopped after Ayla was born because we didn’t want our children to think smoking was acceptable.
Even though, in recent years, Ali had started having the occasional cigar on the back deck.
I wondered if all parents became less themselves in order to transform into the role models they think their children need.
Now that Ayla and Adam were both at college, Ali and I had started to regain our rhythm as a couple. He exhaled a neat column of smoke.
“I could get used to this.”
I took the hose from him and inhaled deeply. “Me too.”
I’d expected to miss the kids terribly once they went to college, and I did.
But it also felt like Ayla and Adam went out into the world at an appropriate stage in their lives.
By the time each of them reached their senior year of high school, they had started to chafe at the parameters of home life.
They’d outgrown the family routine that defined their childhoods.
For me and Ali, it meant that we didn’t have to try to keep track of who would be home for dinner when, and what we should cook that the children would eat.
Now we could fry up some eggs, add sliced cucumbers, some labne and a few olives, and call it a day.
We’d gone back to being just the two of us.
A sweetness that was the past and the future all at once.
“What about Virginia Beach?” he said. We’d talked about getting a second place, a weekend and vacation home. But, at that point, we were still in the dreaming-of-it stage.
“The waves are so rough there.” I exhaled, watching the smoke dissipate into the night. “Have you forgotten that Jamal dislocated his shoulder when he went there for spring break? Old people like us need calm water.”
“OK, Grandma. How about a lake?” he suggested. “Maybe Lake Anna.”
I made a face. “Next to the nuclear power plant? Talk about the wrong kind of glow-up.”
He chuckled. “So maybe not Lake Anna.”
“What kind of place do you want?” I asked. “A condo, a house?”
“Whatever you prefer. We should get something nice but not too expensive.”
I laughed. “That should be your epitaph.”
His brow crinkled. “What should?”
“‘Something nice but not too expensive’ is basically your motto.”
“You’ll be glad after I’m dead that I saved so much money for you and the kids.”
“I might die before you,” I pointed out. “And then all of that scrimping will have been for nothing.”
“God, I hope not.” Then Ali uttered what was probably the most romantic thing he’d ever said to me. “Ya’aburnee. I hope you bury me.”
It was an Arabic saying, an expression of hope that the person you loved would outlive you because you couldn’t bear to live without them.
In the end, of course, Ali got his wish.
And I was thrust out into the world alone, left to live without the man who’d loved me completely and gave me my first real sense of belonging in the world.