Bonding with your Daughter Guide

Christmas at Last

Christmas was just an ordinary day in my house when I was growing up. But the year I was nine, the holiday took on a different kind of meaning for me and my family – especially me and my mom.

We'd been living in the deep American south for about five years then. My parents, along with me and my siblings, had moved to Atlanta from the Middle East when I was four. It wouldn't be fair to say that my mom and dad, both of whom were born and raised in Syria , didn't know what they were getting into when they made the move to the States. They'd lived in California and the UK when my brother and sisters were young, before I was born. But that had been a good 15 years earlier and just for a short time.

I think the transition was particularly difficult for my mom – a woman who wasn't exactly religious or traditional but who identified strongly with the culture she grew up in. I don't think she ever expected that her youngest, a daughter with a sense of identity all her own, would grow up under entirely different circumstances than she had.

She tried to expose me to the things she had known as a kid, in whatever diluted form she could. I was enrolled in Arabic classes on Saturdays (nothing in the world could have sucked more in my estimation at the time). We spent summer vacations in Damascus . After school, I'd come home to dinners of lamb on rice laced with pine nuts and cinnamon, and milk pudding scented with rosewater for dessert. I far preferred Kraft Dinner and green Jell-O. Occasionally she'd relent and while the rest of my family dined on stuffed grape leaves, I enjoyed the most delicious meal on earth: Chef Boyardee Ravioli.

Christmas, because of its religious connotation, was tougher for my mom. Year after year, I'd visit friends' homes and be mesmerized by their trees, towering above me all glittering and magnificent. Year after year, I'd ask, can we get a tree? The answer was always a resounding no. (You can look at the tree at school, or at the mall, or at your friends' houses – the list of reasons was always the same.)

But the Christmas I was nine, I didn't let it go. For two weeks straight I asked every day, and the conversation would always end the same way: tears on my end, a raised voice on her part, and the door to my bedroom slamming. (“Why are you so mean?”, “You don't want me to be happy!” and “Why don't you understand anything?” were my popular, if not original, retorts.)

Then, my mother did something remarkable. I came home from school on a Wednesday in mid-December and in our front hall, propped up against the wall, was a giant, green, glorious Christmas tree. And off to the mall my mother and I went to buy our first family holiday decorations.

I didn't know it then, as a nine year old wandering the aisles of the holiday department of Macy's in sheer bliss, but my mother relenting on the Christmas tree wasn't just her crumbling to my persistent demand. More than 20 years later, I can see it for what it truly was: a compromise. It was her way of acknowledging that I wasn't who she had been as a kid, of telling me she understood that, and that it was ok – it was her way of meeting the girl who loved the Cosby Show and Reese Peanut Butter Cups half way.

We decorated the tree together that night – minus the carols and egg nog. But we talked quietly, contemplating the positions of various ornaments, observing that the star was definitely the perfect topper for our tree and thank goodness we hadn't gone with the angel.

We'd only have four more years of decorating the tree together – when I was 14 my mom died suddenly of a heart attack. But every year, when I pull out my own Christmas ornaments, it's that holiday season so many years ago that my mind drift towards. And I'm filled with gratitude.