Mid-1970s

PARIA KOOKLAN

I love this picture of my mom and dad in the mid-1970s, taken in the garden of my dad’s family home in Tehran. I love the way my mom is laughing here—how spontaneous it seems, how unselfconscious. And I love the tender way my dad is looking at her.

This picture was taken before my parents’ lives were upended by the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. Before they had to immigrate to America with toddler me in tow and rebuild their entire lives from scratch. Here, my mother is still just a young law student, married to a newly minted architect, a bright future ahead of her. She doesn’t know that she’ll never get to be a lawyer. Or that she’ll never again live in her own country, speaking her own language, surrounded by her family and friends.

My parents’ lives in America have been defined by hard work and sacrifice. They raised two children, made mortgage payments, cared for and eventually buried their aging parents. My mom managed to work full-time, earn a master’s degree, make homemade Persian food every night, and chauffeur my sister and me to myriad classes, activities, doctor’s appointments, and friends’ houses. It’s no wonder that in many of my childhood memories, she’s tired and worried.

This picture represents another side of my mother. Her mischievous sense of humor, her kind heart, her zest for simple pleasures. Despite the fatigue and sometimes sadness I couldn’t help but notice, she was a warm and playful parent, always making us laugh with funny voices, hand puppets, impersonations. Once every few months, she would let me play hooky from school and take me to the mall for Icees and Cinnabon rolls. She sang me to sleep every night with a song from my favorite movie, Mary Poppins. She did kind things for others: baking cakes for the neighbors, giving cash to homeless people, inviting in Jehovah’s Witnesses for tea.

My parents now travel a lot, and my mom still makes friends everywhere: on airplanes, on trains, in Viennese cafés. She’s good with babies and old people. She’s great with puns, even though English is her second language. She loves finding little hole-in-the-wall restaurants and texting me pictures of what she ate. She regularly makes me laugh until I cry.

This side of my mom is what I love most about her and what I try most to emulate. If ever someone tells me that I’m warm or fun or funny, after I thank them, I always say that I get it from my mother.