It’s the Small Things | A Letter to My Mother

“It’s such a lovely dress!”

These were your words on the evening of my office party, when, after deftly zipping up my outfit, you dashed off to dial your best friend’s number. It was an indulgent chat that of course included details about how nice I looked when I didn’t live in a “battered pair of blue jeans”.

You had returned from school a while ago, cheerfully weighed down by a bag of notebooks, a tea flask, and your purse, looking very elegant in a handloom sari and a subtle shade of matching lipstick. You never did wear much make-up. “Just a touch to brighten the face,” you always said.

I sat on your bed listening to the clatter of kitchen utensils and your high-pitched musical laughter rising above the tea-kettle’s familiar whistle. Wondering what you were so amused by (probably something your friend had said earlier), I began to feel the office party could wait.

Leaning against the open window, I took in nostalgic sights and sounds of Dubai’s Al Karama neighbourhood, where we had lived for decades. That sandy playground between two rows of buildings, children scattering everywhere, a call to prayer from the nearby mosque…

I heard you calling me from the kitchen, but my eyes grew heavy, snapping open to an unfamiliar, sunlit room. Except for a screen buzzing nearby, everything was quiet. I thought about the rotary dial telephone you had called your friend from, a gadget that dated back to my childhood. I remembered you helping me dress for an office party, which was strange considering you hadn’t been around when I started working. I hugged the confusing yet wonderful dream to my chest as it unleashed a torrent of memories.

Remember when you first tried to teach me how to cook? It was back in 1992, when I was a teenaged brat about to leave for college in India. While relishing the prospect of independence, I didn’t quite understand the responsibilities it entailed.

“But won’t I get food at the college hostel? And there’s always fast food… and aunties who live nearby…”

In retrospect, they were feeble protests that deserved to fall on deaf ears. Pointing to a hand-written recipe on the counter, you left me to my struggles and went to the sink. As you began to wash a tumbler-shaped glass jar that had contained cheese spread, the gas lighter somehow flew out of my hand, making us both laugh.

While I dropped, spilt, and burnt almost everything I laid my hands on, you calmly soaked the jar in soapy water so that its label peeled off easily, then inverted it on a towel to dry. What was it about this ritual of yours that was so infuriatingly calming?

Even at 17, I was aware that it didn’t take a lot to make you happy. Now I know why the little things that mattered to you make so much sense.

Do you remember how expat life, like Dubai itself, was smaller and simpler in the 1980s and early 90s? You would be dazzled by Dubai today! But back then, the World Trade Centre was still the tallest building, going to Abu Dhabi was still considered an excursion, and community groceries, still untouched by the blight of hypermarkets, flourished.

Thanks to these groceries, your glass jars multiplied and held pride of place in their own dedicated cabinet. They made regular appearances at parties serving Tang, cola, samosas, patties, potato chips, and cake. Sometimes you made cheese and chutney sandwiches, which disappeared rapidly from everyone’s plates.

How I missed your sandwiches once I started college in Ahmedabad, sitting awkwardly with strange girls in a mess, trying to digest bland meals. “Give it time and patience,” you said, and you were right about things eventually falling into place.

Cooking in the hostel meant labouring over Maggi noodles and eggs as I watched other girls pull off complex recipes with enviable ease. Every evening, the warden would appear in a dramatically spectral fashion to “lock up” the gas cylinder.

One day, as old Hindi songs played on a contraband radio that would promptly be switched off and hidden during Eagle-Eyed Specter’s rounds, I told my roommate about my first cooking lesson. Though we laughed at the story between sips of tea, that wise girl did say something about you I’ll always remember. “It wasn’t just about learning to cook. She wanted you to be self-sufficient… a survivor.”

You had sent me off to college with a warm hug and everything I could possibly need including a mobile water heater, a family pack of handkerchiefs, and even a tiny iron. Years later you revealed that you had wept in solitude once I left for the airport. “The fact that you were actually leaving finally hit me,” you said.

You left too, slipping away from us like precious time. Did I ever imagine that one day an eternal dimension would claim you, and memories and dreams would be all I had left?

Enid Parker is an independent journalist based in Dubai, UAE. She hopes to someday fulfil her decades-long dream of writing a book.

We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.

And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.

Read the series here.

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