The following weekend, standing in the Movieland Wax Museum gift shop, I was having a hard time deciding among the visor, the inflatable mini pool with the museum logo, and the deck of cards emblazoned with four different movie stars. Then I heard my father utter the magic phrase “Why don’t we just get all of them?” “Good idea,” I said, hoping his newly generous view of useless purchases was more than a passing phase.

We left the gift shop with my father holding firmly on to my hand, just as he had done the entire day. Clutching my purchases with my other hand, I basked in my new status as favorite child. Perhaps I did owe that rodent something.

Swoosh-Swoosh

Swoosh-Swoosh

Every family has a daredevil. In my father’s family, the honor goes to Uncle Nematollah, whose daring feat consisted of selecting his own wives, three times.

Marriage, in my culture, has nothing to do with romance. It’s a matter of logic. If Mr. and Mrs. Ahmadi like Mr. and Mrs. Nejati, then their children should get married. On the other hand, if the parents don’t like each other, but the children do, well, this is where sad poetry comes from. As odd as these logical unions may appear to the Western world, their success rate is probably no worse than that of marriages based on eyes meeting across a crowded room and the heart going va-va-va-boom.

After my uncle’s second divorce, he decided to take a break from his medical practice in Ahwaz and come visit us in Whittier. For my American friends, “a visiting relative” meant a three-night stay. In my family, relatives’ stays were marked by seasons, not nights. No one bothered coming halfway around the world for just the month of December. Might as well stay to experience spring in California, the children’s graduation ceremonies in June, and Halloween. It didn’t matter that our house was barely big enough for us. My father’s motto has always been “Room in the heart, room in the house.” As charming as this sounds, it translates into a long line for the bathroom and extra loads of laundry for my mother.

My father and his younger brother, Nematollah, share many interests, none stronger than the love of new foods. Some experience a foreign land through museums or historical sights, but for our family, America was to be experienced through the taste buds. Every day, Kazem and Nematollah, like cavemen headed for the hunt, would drive to the local supermarket, returning with cans and boxes of mysterious American products. They picked foods for the pictures on the containers, inadvertently proving that American marketing is sometimes better than American cooking. Since Iranian flavors are quite different from the flavors found in American convenience foods, most of the purchases ended up in the trash can.