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Happy International Women’s Day! – In Honor of My Grandmother (and Every Woman Like Her)

In light of the fact that it is International Women’s Day today, first off, I’d like to give a quick, warm ‘HOLLA!’ to all my fellow womankind. We kick ass, and everyone knows it. Hands down.

This year there were definitely tons of amazing women who are definitely worthy of praise ON A YEAR-ROUND BASIS. Hell, just looking at this list of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women of 2012 filled me with about seven different kinds of pride and honor in not only being a mighty woman (hear me ROAR!) but being an Arab one too.

I could wax poetic about the number of women (both Arab and otherwise) who have left a visible and lasting mark on the face of almost every single institution and aspect of life on this earth. The world and all of its men (no disrespect to them, of course) would be a grim place without the XX chromosome–and not just because we’re, you know, the vessel through which all humanity was essentially borne out of.

But today, I wanna talk about a specific woman. She’s not famous and, in the conventional sense, she hasn’t really done much to change the world. But, she is by and large the greatest woman that I have ever met, heard of, read about, or even conceived of in my imagination.

That woman is my grandmother.

Now, I know–we all love our grandmothers. How could we not? They are warm beacons of love, guidance, and ARE THE QUEENS OF ALL SPOILERS. We all feel unbelievably at home when we sit around the dinner table at our grandmother’s house ready to eat her home-cooked ethnic meal of choice. These wonderful feelings are universal and, to sound like a tired old cynic of 112, nothing new.

With that said, I am not going to talk to you about how much I love my grandmother, because, in all honesty, who cares?

I’m going to talk about what my grandmother has done (and what she, essentially, continues to do) and why it makes her a truly great woman beyond the universal ‘I HEART GRANDMA’ kind of way. And while I usually shy away from revealing any specific details about my life (or the people in it), I honestly feel like this particular story is worth getting a little personal over.

You see, my grandmother is not really my grandmother–at least, not by blood. She is my father’s stepmother not his biological parent. My biological grandmother tragically passed away in her mid-twenties and left behind a husband, and four mother-orphaned children, the oldest of which was nine years old.

One can only imagine what grief and hardship my father and his siblings were going through in that difficult experience at such a young age.

Anyhow, a few months passed by and my grandfather, being the reputable, and highly busy man that he was, started looking for a new wife to help raise these extremely young children and keep his home in order. Somehow, the news reached my grandmother IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. Back in her homeland, comfortable among her family and friends, she found out about the tragic circumstances that these children had been forced to endure, and did not give the idea a second thought:

She decided that she was going to marry my grandfather (a man 10 years her senior and of a notoriously temperamental nature) and, having never so much as spoken to him or even seen a picture of him, she immediately packed her bags for a place she had never been before (Kuwait), leaving her entire family and comfort-zone behind.

Her only goal was to be there for these orphaned children whom she had never met, had no real connection to, and had only heard about once. And that’s it.

What kind of courage, pureness of heart, and greatness could rival such an act? What woman of international acclaim and widely known accomplishment can attest to having the capacity of such an open heart? I’m betting that the honest number is very few.

But, wait, that’s not all.

As time went on and the coming years saw to the growth of my father and his siblings, my grandmother’s devotion to them and her original intention to provide all the motherly warmth that she could share never wavered. To this day, both my father and his siblings will stand witness to the fact that, without her, their lives would have been in dire straits. That without her they would not even be who they are.

And while my grandmother will easily tell you that she did not come to Kuwait to be someone’s wife and held her wifely duties as secondary to her need to embrace these orphans with as much love and care as she could give; today, my grandfather will tell you openly, time and again, that my grandmother has personally saved him too.

But my grandmother has never tasted the indescribable happiness of seeing your own flesh and blood child grow before your very eyes. She only ever had one daughter who only survived for about a week before she died somewhat mysteriously.

Upon recalling this heartbreaking and scarring memory, my grandmother will smile gracefully and say, “maybe God just wanted me to experience the joy of pregnancy–because I was already a mother anyway.” Then she will lovingly add: “Besides, I can’t imagine ever loving anyone more than I love you and your sisters, so what does it matter?”

I cannot begin to try to imagine what kind of contentment and grace it would take to give such an answer honestly and to still have the capacity in her heart to so deeply love and care for people WHO HAVE NO BLOOD BOND TO HER WHATSOEVER. Especially after giving so much and receiving so little in return.

Try as I and my family might to love her, honor her, celebrate her, and serve her every whim until the end of our lives, we will honestly never do her justice. To this day, at a very elderly age, my grandmother continues to singularly care for my paralyzed grandfather WHILE ALSO acting as the support system and most primal care-giver of the entire family.

If this woman and her one-of-a-kind greatness is not worth celebrating and honoring, then what is?

So, yes, just like most people in the world, I love my grandmother. But that’s not why I’m honoring her in this post.

This post is about the unseen, ordinary heroines of the world who we desperately need more of. It’s about the women who save lives and yet require no recognition. Women who give their all and want for nothing but a smile and kind word in return.

So to my true God-send of a grandmother and every woman like her: Happy International Woman’s Day!

All my love! (and, by the way, that beautiful smile up there is my grandmother’s)