There’s a song that goes “I can see my whole life when I’m with you,” and isn’t that the truth about so many beautiful things—a quiet sunrise, a bellowing laugh with a sibling, a hand from a partner you love and trust, a warm plate of home cooked food that awakens the most ancient parts of your being, a knowing hug from a parent after a hard year, a good friend who feels like coming home.
I spent the holidays with a smattering of closest friends and family, completely ensconced in their warmth, their love, their back-and-forth-and-this-and-that, their laughter that fills my soul with unspeakable peace, ease, and joy. Anne traveled in Jean Claude in a near sleepless, frosted winter drive from NY to Ann Arbor to spend Thanksgiving with us for her first Family Thanksgiving. We slept in the same room and made sweet, sweet chit chat (and the occasional—ok maybe more than occasional—doom scroll click clack) falling asleep together night after night. We made hundreds of jiaozi (and, importantly, taught Anne how to fold them like an authentic Chinese—out with the gyoza, in with the jiaozi!) to feed our twenty beloved guests, all progressively stuffed from one hot dish—and one hot buttered libation—after another, courtesy of Choctor Gao and Cocktail Extraordinaire Deedz.
We stomped and sat in the blistering snow as we watched Michigan get pummeled by OSU in the Big House (nevertheless GO BLUE!) as we tried to keep our toes from fully detaching into the beds of our frozen shoes. We helped Marilyn move rugs from here to there and then back to here again. We watched The Godfather on the new 80” TV, which, although cartoonishly large, is the only proper way to watch such a masterpiece. We filmed content for our aspirational vlogs (Anne’s less aspirational than mine, in that hers is). We daydreamed business strategy and exchanged salacious gossip with Louisa and Lama. We got metaphorically and literally gassed up on Yemeni chai with Kasey as we spun out on our existential crises. We laughed feverishly while spilling allllll the hot boy tea with Elie and Maddie while being assured by Dana, their mother, that plenty of women have kids in their forties. “It’s normal.”
This, followed by a week in Stephen and Melinda’s care, who came home with coffee that I Most Definitely Wanted but hadn’t thought to ask for, who called me every day after work out of habit (and/or to make sure I hadn’t burned the house down), whose friends gave me counsel on topics of my life that even I’m bored by, who continuously remind me as an active practice of their lives how much love and care I’m nourished by.
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And, finally, although certainly not the footnote, traveling to Istanbul to meet Ehsan and his family in what feels like a whirlwind fantasy of both everything that I had desperately hoped for and also somehow had already known the truth of. The overflowing warmth and love and thoughtfulness and laughter between Ehsan, Leili (aka Mommy), Parisa, Simin, and Nafese, and the same with which they enveloped me was nothing short of a Christmas miracle—a miracle in meeting souls who give you their heart and mirth as you give them yours, not as an obligation of formality, but from the shape of their character.
Each morning, Mommy would have, in addition to meats and breads and delectable Turkish delights, a large plate of unseasoned vegetables comprised mostly of cilantro, a rotating selection of miscellaneous lettuces, and, her favorite: sprigs of mint. And each morning, she would pull off the tender tips of each (saving for herself the brittle, coarse bits), and offer it to me, to Simin, to Parisa, to Ehsan—a wordless bid of love that was both quotidian and casual, and yet felt heartfelt and profound.
Though Mommy and I had no overlapping language, I was touched by the myriad of ways that we all wordlessly cared for each other in the small, everyday moments that constitute the most profound language of all—an inviting smile, gregarious laughter, scanning to make sure no one was swallowed by the crowds of the bazaar or the masses of the streets, sharing the best parts of your food with each other (as Ehsan would say, never trust anyone who doesn’t share the food from his plate), a hand on the elbow to usher others first, and animated conversations amongst ourselves, translated back and forth by Ehsan when needed so that no one stood the odd woman out. All of this, again and again, and then again and again.
Each of these moments felt like I was coming home—proof of the beautiful fact that love and all of its bountiful promises exist as simply and cleanly as the double helix of our DNA, if only we’re so lucky to find it.
One night, while walking home from an enchanting Christmas boat tour filled with bottomless meats and spreads and baklavas and cauldron upon cauldron of Turkish tea, I watched as Ehsan and Mommy walked side by side, talking and laughing like two old friends for whom no time had passed since their last meeting, rather than a mother and her son split across continents. As I took in the ease of their conversation, the palpable bond of their relationship that somehow transcended child and parent, the genuine joy of their laughter, Simin knowingly walked up beside me and asked “aren’t they cute? They talk twice a day, every day.” And with that, I understood the source of how, despite all of Ehsan’s problematic hot takes and pathological obsession with his “favorite kind of C” (I’ll let you figure that one out), I’m able to know the warmth of his being, to hear the love in his laughter, to feel his thoughtfulness in our friendship, despite all of his sardonic protestations otherwise. Some things are simply in the blood, and bless the women who pass it through this world.
We talked the rest of the way home, Simin and I, about family—hers and my own—and its meaning and importance in our lives, feeling kindredly spirited as we walked in tandem beside Ehsan and Mommy who filled the streets with laughter (and shoutout to Parisa trailing somewhere nearby lol).
I find myself humbled again and again by the people who stand by and with me through life, who show me the path and walk their walk so that I might be a little bit less afraid to walk mine.
From the words of Alina Baraz,
Is it me? Is my intuition wrong, or does it feel like coming home? Cuz it’s almost like you speak my language.
I hope we are all blessed with those most special souls who “speak our language”, and (!) that we trust our intuition to recognize those who don’t, and offer them peace, even if they’ve robbed us of our own. To everyone who helped me end this year better than it started, I can see my whole life when I’m with you.
On to 2026, the best yet (or so help me God)!
The Grown Up Kids 