Yeah, I’m Still Here

It’s just been a tough couple of weeks and I’ve been too darned busy and tired to blog.  Crazy kid schedule, crazy schedule for me, status quo around here.  The big news is that the belt test went fine on the 30th and I am now an official ITF-certified first degree black belt in taekwondo, but that actually isn’t what prompted me to finally sit my butt down at the computer, at least not directly.

I went to lunch today with a big group of my ninja girlfriends, one of whom is the Egyptian former instructor who started studying taekwondo to show her then-tween daughter that the headscarf she wears as an observant Muslim does not limit her.  Love this woman.  Her daughter is now a college sophomore at a major state university and pursuing a teaching degree.  As a function of their conservative religious beliefs and her gender, they require her to live at home during college,  although she is free to participate in whatever activities she is interested in at school and it sounds like she is away from home most of any given day.  I can understand and respect that as a compromise given where they are coming from.  The interesting thing, though, came up when we started discussing the elder of their two sons, who is currently a high school senior.  I asked where he was looking at for college next year, and she listed four universities that are in our general area, although some would be a further drive than others.  This made me wonder if they were requiring him to live at home while he attended college as well, so I inquired.

Turns out that the answer is yes, but not for the reason you might expect.  They recognize that they are asking a lot of their daughter, who is American-born and -bred, in the name of their religion by requiring that she live at home while attending college, so in a spirit of fairness and solidarity they are extending the same requirement to her brothers.  They don’t want her to feel singled out simply on the basis of her gender, so they will be treating all three the same way.

I can’t even imagine the tightrope she and her husband walk daily as conservative Egyptian Muslim parents trying to raise three children in an overwhelmingly Christian, white-bread part of America without losing their cultural identity.  It must be tremendously difficult for them, and I give them all kinds of credit.  They are good people and they are raising three fine children.