Mommy Mariam Coming to an End?

School was starting and my parent’s vacation was coming to a close. I was ready to meet my parents with open hands not only to thank them after understanding how much effort they put into my siblings and I, but also to relieve some of the responsibility off my back, especially after running last minute errands.

I had gone on an expedition to Parkland to take the placement test for Anatomy since I didn’t have any ACT scores. I had my amazing best friends, Carmen and Sofia, assist me as I dealt with the $460 bill and registration of the dual credit class at Parkland. We spent most of the day finishing our to-do lists before the end of Ramadan and the start of school.

Everything was getting a little more hectic as I counted the days till my parent’s arrival. Thankfully, my siblings were going to start school a couple days later than me so I didn’t have to worry about their transportation to and from school. I was still behind on a lot of sleep after accommodating my days and nights to the Ramadan schedule and the family, like what a responsible parent would do. I was also forced to put forth my study mood for the year, especially since junior year was when things were supposed to get serious.

I went through sleepless nights and starving days, and with Ramadan coming to an end I was shocked by my ability to handle such a situation. The tasks I upheld throughout my parent’s absence gave me a real sense of what it felt like to care for my siblings. Even having gone through the morning drives to Bara’s annoying soccer practices, Malaak’s angelic yet emphatic behavior, and Raneem’s (sometimes) defiant attitude to my advice, I was ready to tackle any task that involved taking care of young ones.

Maybe not any task, but most tasks because after all, it was my experience as a mom.

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The Unpleasant Time Difference

It was midnight when my siblings and I went straight to bed once we came back from the mosque.  I woke up to the annoying phone ringing at two in the morning. I thought this better not have been a joke because my sleeping time was precious. Since my schedule at night was hectic with suhoor* and then waking up a bit later to take Bara to his soccer practice, every minute counts.

I answered the phone so it could stop ringing, not because of the person calling. I was about to shut the phone on the person’s face once I said “Hello?” until I realized it was my dad calling from Jordan. Unfortunately, there’s an eight hour time difference so calling time will most likely be inconvenient for someone at the other end.
“Hello, hello, can you hear me Mariam? How are you doing?”
“Oh, Baba how are you guys? We miss you a lot. Everything is under control, how’s everything?”
“ We’re good. Mama and I are running on no sleep. Everyone’s excited that we’re here. Tell me how are your siblings doing?.....”
The conversation continued for about ten minutes until my dad said, “Okay, I think I’ve talked enough with you, can I speak to one of your siblings, possibly Raneem?”
“Yeah, just a minute,” and I struggled the life out of myself to wake her up but it was never going to happen. I could actually feel with her. For Raneem, as a nine-year-old, going to sleep at midnight and waking up after two hours seems impossible.
My only resort was to tell Baba, “Raneem isn’t waking up, you want to talk to someone else?”
“No, that’s fine. I just wanted to see how she was doing. I hope I didn’t take too long. I’ll call you later. It seems like this is the best time for me to call you. I can’t really call at a later or earlier time because it’s always too hectic.”
My only reply could be, “Yeah, that’s fine,” even though I was exhausted and calling at 2:30AM was clearly a horrible time to call!

I shut the phone and went back to sleep for another hour until suhoor.

*Suhoor: The meal Muslims eat in the morning before starting their fasting. It’s also the time when Mariam becomes the maid:needing to wake up the kids, make the food, and clean up mess that her siblings have done even though they didn’t eat that much.  

Anat/Phys

As the days of summer were slowly flying away (at the same time), the idea of junior year coming to a start hadn’t really hit me. It wasn’t until I got a letter from Parkland giving me information about their Dual Credit Program.

I enrolled in the Anatomy/Physiology class at Uni, which is Parkland offered. In the beginning of the process I wasn’t sure how things were supposed to go. I asked a former senior who had taken the class if she was willing to sell to me her textbook and supplies. As I called Parkland’s office to make sure we would be using the same stuff as the previous year so I could buy it from the senior before she left, the secretary asked a couple of follow-up questions. Among the questions she asked was, “Did you send in your ACT of SAT scores?” I wasn’t a junior yet so I didn’t have any scores to give to Parkland. The secretary quickly replied, “I’m going to need you to go to the testing center and take the Compass placement test. When would be a good time for you to take it?” Her reply was so abrupt, I didn’t know what to say, so I gave her a time in the afternoon after two weeks.

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The night before the placement test, I decided to go on Parkland’s website to know what the test was actually about (yay, for procrastination!). After skimming the FAQs, some phrases that caught my eyes were “study guide”, “tips”, “good night sleep”, “good breakfast”, and “practice tests”. Great, I was supposed to study for this test. And it wasn’t like I was going to have a good breakfast if I’m fasting all day. I had to wake up the next morning at 8 to cancel my appointment with the testing center for that afternoon.

To be continued.......

Ranaynay

The next and last one in line is Raneem, the biggest helper and troublemaker in the house(can that even be possible?) She has a very strong personality and boy, if she wants to do something she’s gonna strive for it whether you like it or not. She's also the type of person if you ever need help around the house just call her and she’ll be more than willing to help. On the other hand, when she doesn't feel like doing something, that usually means she's in a pretty good mood to start a heated argument with you.

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My parents left me to deal with her over the course of their vacation. They didn’t even think about hiring a nanny or sending her off to stay with my uncle or grandpa where they could control her. Her attitude that she carried once my parents left made me quite frightened by her willingness to do whatever she wants. The following happened days after my parents' departure:

Raneem:(has her arms folded across her chest, staring right at me) Okay, so you obviously know that Mama and Baba left and they said you’re in charge of us but that doesn’t mean you can make me do whatever you want me to do. I’m only going to listen to you because I promised Mama I wouldn’t cause any trouble. But you can’t boss me around!

Me: (What-am-I-supposed-to-say-to-this look on my face.)
Let me remind you with some details. I’m the eldest child and I’m about to become a junior in high school and Raneem is only nine years old and going into fourth grade. That just really shows her confidence. But just because I was supposed to be the mature one around and since my parents had only left for a couple of days, I decided to say:
Okay Raneem, I know I’m not the boss and I’m going to try my best not to boss you around. But you also have to cooperate with me. If I need help around the house, I’m not bossing you by telling you to clean the house if I’m cleaning it with you. I’ll do my best to make it really fun though if you do listen to me. Let’s get ready to go to the masjid* soon, I need at least 3 empty parking spots to know how to park the car.
Raneem: Okay, but don’t forget what I told you.

So that’s one of the characteristics of Raneem’s personality. She’s very strong which is something I (sometimes) admire about her but overall she is a sweet girl. Except when I call her Ranaynay, which is her nickname given by me whenever I want to annoy her.

*Masjid means mosque in Arabic

Weary Drives to Practices

My brother, Bara, started soccer conditioning just days after my parents left and I was the only one to take him to practice. I had gotten my license in the end of June, so I only had it for 2 months. As a 16-year-old teenager who had just gotten her license, my parents gave me the opportunity to drive my siblings around everywhere, making me already sick to death of driving before they even left. But I can’t complain now; I’m actually really thankful to have my license because if I didn’t, my siblings and I would stay home all month. That is what I would call "real torture".

To help alleviate myself from all the driving, I happened to get in contact with Bara’s friend’s mom (look at real mommy in action) and we both arranged to carpool with each other because I felt like practices couldn’t have been put at worse times in the day. Bara’s practices were Monday through Friday from 7-8:30AM and 4-5:30 PM. Let me emphasize the 7AM practice! 7AM!! That means that after cleaning the kitchen from suhoor and performing the first prayer, I get only 2 more hours to sleep. 2 hours!! BARA!!!

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Bara is my 15-year-old brother and he is number dos in line in the family. Overall, he's actually a really nice brother. Whenever I'm in need of something he can usually help me, unless it involves driving. Some traits that makes him stand out from the rest of us kids is his talkativeness. He is very talkative compared to me and Malaak, which isn’t such a bad thing because it can cancel out with my quietness. If you ask him about his day, he can go on for centuries describing something that happened in 5 minutes.

Another characteristic about Bara that annoys me (but I kind of got over it) is his addiction to computers. He has this major attachment to doing everything on the computer. Most importantly, he has all of his can’t-stop-me-now-in-the-middle-of-downloading-something moments at the time where I most need the computer. I’ve gotten used to not getting the computer, so I’ve slowly not cared about getting on the computer for my fun time, thanks to Bara.

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The Month of Patience At a Start

My parents decided to leave about 5 days into Ramadan. In case you didn't know, Ramadan is a special month where Muslims fast (or in other words don't eat or drink anything, including water) from sunrise to sunset, try to make good habits, and pray special daily prayers. At the local mosque* during Ramadan people can volunteer to provide food for the community to break their fast at sunset. It’s really fun because you can see most of your friends as well as taste foods from different nationalities. We would usually go before sunset by a bit, which was 8:00ish at the time, and stay there until taraweeh**. Since it was summer, the last prayer started around 9:45ish, so we'd leave the masjid around 11. By the time we get home we’re all hungry again. I pull some fruits from the fridge so that I can “engage the family into maintaining a healthy lifestyle” while my parents were gone, as were the things my mom wanted me to do. When I finish setting the food on the table, everyone’s done munching on what I was trying to prepare and run to their beds as an excuse not to help clean the kitchen after themselves. Because I have no other choice, I patiently clean the kitchen by myself and head straight to bed, which by that time it’s around 12:30AM.

The first prayer of the day, called Fajr, starts about an hour before sunrise. The real fasting begins the second Fajr starts.(The reason why I say “the second” is because everyone in the house is usually chugging down cups of water before the actual fasting begins.) Fajr started around 4:15ish, so as the cook for the rest of the month, I needed to get up around 3 to make the food.

Making the food isn’t the biggest problem, it’s waking the rest of the familia up. If they slept around 12AM, how do you expect them to wake up again at 3AM to eat? Waking the kids up was probably the hardest task because it took forever to wake them up. My grandpa was staying over with us but I wasn’t going to have him go through the torture of dealing with those sluggish kids, how dare me?

After finally waking them up, getting them to put a couple of bites in their mouth before time runs out, and chugging down what feels like gallons of water, everyone starts to pray while I’m the only one left in the kitchen to clean up after everyone. Because of their stubbornness, I leave my work and pray with them. They run straight to their beds like it’s their finish line in a marathon while I’m goggily-eyed, trying to quickly finish with the mess in the kitchen. It would be around 5 AM that I run to my bed like I’m about to win first place too.

Simple schedule of life the 1st couple of days after my parents left:
7:30PM- Leave the house and go to the masjid for iftar
8:00-11:00 PM- Break our fast, chill with our friends, then pray Taraweeh
11:00-11:30 PM Drive home
11:30PM-12:30AM- Prepare some healthy snack for the kids
12:30-3AM- Sleep!!!!
3-5AM- Make suhoor, wake the kids, pray, clean the kitchen
5AM-......... - Let’s keep that for another story.........


*Note:I will sometimes refer to it as the "masjid", which is the word for mosque in Arabic
**Taraweeh is a special prayer during Ramadan after the last prayer of the day.

The "Angel" Treated My Life!!!

As I was picking up the rental car which was the cutest black slug bug with my dad, he told me last minute things I might need to know. He gave me the medical insurance card for the physical that my brother was going to have, papers I should take for school registration, and some cash. The amount of money he gave me would barely suffice for 5 Subway footlongs. Bewildered and wanting to object to his decision he finally made a decision that he regretted once he returned; he gave me his credit card!!!!! His words once he gave it to me were “Here’s my credit card. There isn’t much to say to you because I think I can trust you with this. Use it only for emergencies, did you hear that, EMERGENCIES.”  After that everything sounded like, “blah blah blah blah blah,” looking at the best opportunity of my life to go shopping. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. After coming home, the family was getting four suitcases and two handbags in that tiny cute slugbug(don’t even ask me how it all fit in there, I have no idea.) Both of my parents also hurriedly gave me their last orders which I didn’t really comprehend until they left, but all I know is that it was a lot of stuff. Their last words before they left were, “Take care of the family, it won’t be too long, it’s only 3 weeks. We’ll see each other soon.” Dumbfounded as I was at the moment all I could manage to say was “Okay,” and wait for them by the door until the small black slug bug went out of my sight. It wasn’t until after they left that I felt the tension really kicking in.

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Among the things my parents told us(or, should I say, emphasized) were NO SLEEPOVERS ANYWHERE! Well, my tiny, angelic sister Malaak decides to throw a tantrum the second (when I say the second I mean the second, as in my parents had just left our driveway) my parents left. Malaak is the most harmless person in our family, except when she wants something. She’s known as the princess and angel of the family and it just happened to be a coincidence that her name means ‘angel’ in Arabic too!  Even though she’s the angel of the family, beware of her because when she wants something she’s never gonna let you go alive without getting it. So once my parents left, she kindly asks me(isn't that so sweet of her!) if she can sleep at my uncle's house. My uncle, who had happened to be at our house saying his goodbyes to my parents, stated that my sister was going to sleep over at his house last night. And on top of that he said boldly, "She's sleeping at my house, and you’re not the boss of anyone around here. You're only here to help." Great, doesn't he just blow everything. You see the thing is he's my uncle and he's much older than me so I can't be rude and manage to say something nice in a situation like this. I mean how can I say "I'm the boss around here" in a nice way to him? So there, almost a couple of seconds after my parents left I already got my life treated for the first time in the next couple of weeks as I watched Malaak packing her things before she left.