HISTORY REPEATS

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Today I took Becca and Sarah to a birthday party for one of their friends. Sarah's best friend last year is the older sister of the Birthday Girl. They are still close now, even though we've moved 30 minutes away.

Nikki and her family are from Iran. They've been here some 15 years, but they have a huge extended family there and speak fluent Persian to their Iranian friends here. Given the tenuous world situation today -- contemplation of war in Iran over nuclear weapons -- their allegiances must be quite torn and their fears about their family high.

One of my best friends in middle school was a girl named Vida. Vida was also Iranian. Her parents were both physicians and supporters of the Shah -- they had a gigantic oil painting of him hanging in their dining room. I remember them, too, speaking in hushed voices in Persian during the time of the Ayatollah's return and the subsequent hostage situation in Tehran.

I can't imagine what they thought of their daughter befriending an American Jewish girl, nor what issues they might have faced with their own residency and contact with their family on foreign soil. And I relish the fact that like Vida and me, Sarah and Nikki only see what's inside each other. I hope it remains that way.

Vida and I aren't friends any longer... one summer she got a nose job, designer clothes, and a brand new Firebird Trans Am and that fall, she Became Popular and I was... just me! We never spoke about being friends during the 70s hostage crisis and what might have been said or not said by our parents during that period. But it occurs to me every time I see Sarah and Nikki and I am so pleased that history (at least, personal history) is repeating itself. Maybe we'll have the whole family over and talk about everything.