[published September 9, 2024] how much i love my parents (salvation chronicles appendix - free)
adulthood has been radically different from childhood — (that’s for sure ❤️)
appendix material to the salvation chronicles
munich (february 2009)
i met my parents one weekend in munich while i was studying in freiburg. the air was chilly and there was even some snow around: i’ll never forget how happy i was when i saw my mom walking down the platform having just stepped off the ice train. she had such a glowing smile: a smile that told me how much she genuinely loved me, how much she had missed me: as much as i had missed her.
i’d been in college for three years by that point and not once had my mom said another word to me about hell. hell was a buried topic for her and she was moving on to other things: she was even saying that maybe hell is a figurative thing. i was happy for her and on the basis of our new perspectives we had a loving and normal relationship. i went back home often in college and i loved talking to them in the car.
i was studying international relations and they were always so interested to hear about i.r. theory, international economics, and whatever country’s foreign policy i was learning about at the time.
we spent an amazing weekend together in munich: if you saw them then, you wouldn’t believe anything i’ve ever written in the salvation chronicles. anyone who has known me and my parents in my adult life is struck immediately by how much they love and care for me: they always show up, even if i’m across the ocean.
the funnest part about that weekend was probably watching a parade for fasching, munich’s take on karneval season.
above: neuschwanstein castle outside munich (february 2009)
below: beer hall in munich (february 2009) all photos my own
freiburg (june/july 2009)
my parents and my grandparents came to germany for two weeks during my final months in freiburg.
i love to think about my grandpa, now deceased, enjoying beers in the tree-covered square. i still laugh when i remember him ordering a bratwurst: the german asked “zwiebeln?” as in, “onions?” and my grandpa looked to me for the translation.
“oh, do you want onions?” i asked him.
born in the 1930s and not the most well-traveled american, my grandpa smiled, looked right in the eyes of this german man who had given no indication of knowing english, and said, “youuuuuu betchya” with a genuinely pleasant nod.
together the five of us went to heidelberg and berlin, both cities i’d visited before, and so i was able to serve a as a tour guide of sorts, which i enjoyed. sometimes i’m still angry about myself for becoming impatient with how slow we moved (given my grandparents): i feel like, what a dick i was, you know? i wish i’d just enjoyed their presence but… i was wrapped up in other things i guess.
even so, i did enjoy their presence. i miss them very much.
my parents loved germany and ever since that year they have traveled often. whenever they go to other countries, they are open-minded to learning about new things, and it’s that fundamental open-mindedness i think i inherited from them: my mom was capable of changing from a fundamentalist christian into a non-believer, even after all that fanaticism, and so was i.
the problem is, even if you’re intrinsically open-minded, not everyone has the same advantages i had to escape homogeneity: my mom grew up poor at a rural high school in a tiny baptist town before there was any internet. i had a graduating class of 300 students, opportunities to study abroad in college, the internet while a child, and ultimately i was also able to go to a public university after attending an (ideologically not racially) diverse high school where i was exposed constantly to “liberal” ideas.
my parents did not have any of that. none of it. i do not judge my mother anymore for believing what she believed after spending her entire childhood being relentlessly brainwashed by fundamentalist christians and having no access whatsoever to the virtual world beyond her town. and yet still, even as adults, they have been able to change, and that is something i love about them: that is something they gave me.
when i returned from my trip to bosnia (i backpacked between hostels in the balkans during my year studying at freiburg), my parents were fascinated by every little detail: the history, the culture, the food, the traumas inflicted during the genocide. they kept asking questions and they wanted to learn from my experiences. they truly valued me and loved to hear all my stories and updates.
above: freiburg (summer 2009)
below: me with a man i met in bosnia (february 2009)
they worked hard to give me opportunities to learn about the world: they supported me studying in germany as a 17 year old where i lived with a host family for a month; they took me to greece in high school. my dad took me to england in college. my mom volunteers: they do not simply sit around doing nothing but watching tv.
they are still eager to learn about the world. they visited me when i was living in india, and this was a trip that blew their minds (it cannot be stressed enough how different india is from america). my mom wanted to learn about all the hindu beliefs and rituals, which honestly i did not understand all that well during the time; she even secretly bought me an idol of my favorite god, ganesha, which she gave to me for christmas. and she also bought me a book about buddhism, another christmas gift. i know more about ganesha now after reading books about hindu & south asian art, and he’s still perched up on the top of a bookcase almost ten years later.
christmas
once i got home from germany i started having all these wonderful christmases. my last bad christmas (until 2019) was in 2007 when i announced i was an atheist three days before christmas and thereby precipitated all hell breaking loose in my house.
above: christmas at my parents’ house (that’s my cat, who spent a lot of time there during early covid)
below: tallinn, estonia, where my dad and i went together
my childhood christmases were not that great, but that isn’t due to my parents not being dedicated to creating wonderful christmas experiences for their kids. my mom always put an enormous amount of effort into giving us an amazing christmas experience, something i only started appreciating in adulthood. why did my christmases suck? well, i was terrified of hell, also my mom’s fault, but again she was brainwashed and found the strength to leave that behind: after 2005, everything that had ever happened when i was a child became a thing of the past (for a long time). it is truly bizarre to remember my dad yelling me about the military school: it’s not him.
i started loving christmas. i even came to believe i had always loved christmas. and what i loved most about christmas was coming home from college or grad school and seeing all the decorations my mom had put up, all the lights and ceramic houses, dozens and dozens of meaningful trinkets heaved up from the basement in boxes.
i always wanted to arrive at night. i love arriving at night and visiting with them.
d.c.
my parents came a few times to visit me when i was living in d.c. doing my masters.
almost the moment i got to georgetown i slipped into such crippling depression. i wanted to make it in foreign policy, but my social anxiety and self-hatred (source then unknown) left me terrified to “network.” people would invite me to hang out and i said “no,” i habit that stuck with me for years in brooklyn.
the standards of professionalism for the most basic events were astronomical. i showed up once in kakhis and a sweater to be surrounded by men wearing expensive suits: a classmate of mine walked up to me, swirled his wine, snickered at my pants. then we all sat down in the huge conference hall. a panel of “foreign policy experts” talked about some topic, maybe the arab spring, who knows. you can go for free to these events and then afterward there’s a bunch of free food and free alcohol. after these men finished sharing their views on arab politics, everyone got up and just started drinking alcohol while walking around bragging about who they knew. honestly when i was an intern, think tanks were constantly sending me to these events and almost every single day my lunch was free: i could’ve had a beer if i wanted to.
but still i was miserable. there were some moments i wasn’t: when my parents were there. i loved spending time with them. i loved spending time with them so much that i think my brain was just pushing all those dark memories into oblivion, but that did not mean those memories were not still affecting my psyche.
i’m glad, though, that i didn’t tell them: “you traumatized me into being scared of hell and therefore you are not welcome in my life.” if i had done that, none of these wonderful memories would have ever come into being, and also i would have been basing my assessment of them on a lie: the myth of the fixed being, the fixed human incapable of change. of course we have an absolute right to cast the apparently fixed beings out of our lives if they are causing us such turmoil that we can no longer tolerate them: but i didn’t want to cast my parents out, and i am so glad i did not.
they were there for me when i graduated with my masters, and so were my grandparents. it was my grandparents first and only time in d.c., and they had a wonderful time. they were so excited to see the memorials and learn.
it was the same dyanamic during my eight years of depression, social isolation, and severe anxiety in brooklyn. my parents’ visits were always such a light in my life.
the sad part
throughout all those years, though, i never really opened up to my parents about my feelings. i think the reason why is that i still carried this trauma from childhood, even if i did not acknowledge it, and that shaped how i interacted with them, unconsciously. even if our minds do not focus on memories, those memories still have a physical presence in our bodies, and those memories were behind so much of my self-hatred, so much of my anxiety, so much of my depression.
someone recently told me they thought i was writing the salvation chronicles in order to “hurt” my parents. i have no desire whatsoever to hurt my parents: i forgive them for everything. i believe in love and forgiveness and compassion: and i believe all beings are fundamentally radiant. but the problem for me is this: there is only one way for me to truly break free of this trauma, which has defined so much of my life. by writing out a record of what happened, i can divorce myself from the shame i feel: from the belief i’ve had all this time that my freakish behavior as a teenager was my fault.
i forgive and love my parents. i too have done things i regret, and i feel no anger or hatred for them whatsoever. i am sure they are more sad than i am: because i know they love me and if they could, they’d change all of this history. mostly i feel terrible for my mom: she would never do anything like that to any child now. honestly we have had such a good relationship as adults they too probably buried most of these memories: who would want to look at that? i understand. and i am so grateful that the second half of my life with them has been radically different from the first: it is the second half, not the first half, which defines them in my mind. as an adult, they have been there for me such that they have helped enable this writing to exist.
the first thing i did when i got to college as an 18 year old was join the college republicans. i’m not even shitting you.
people can change: we don’t have to let them change around us, but they can.
thank you for reading!