The First Time I Wore Hijab

I can tell a good friend by how she suggests we spend time together. I got this text at work yesterday:

“I’m going to a conference tonight at Masjid Noor and was wondering if you’d like to come. There’s going to be some really great speakers. Let me know.”

Movies, a bar, shopping… not so much. A conference? On Islam? Heck yes. Friends for life.

“So I wanted to let you know, in case you were wondering, that you do not need to cover your hair at the Masjid. You can if you’d like, but it’s your decision, and totally ok if you don’t want to : )”

She came over after work and we ate portabella mushroom salad, and then I put on hijab. It was so normal, and that’s what I’m writing about. I put it on and walked out the door. We went to the bank and chatted with a woman at the ATM. I don’t even think she noticed my head covering. So normal. We drove to the mosque. All the women were in hijab, so of course it was normal. We did salat. So normal. We listened to a speaker. We did salat again, because it was that time. Another speaker. And salat. And a speaker. Beautiful.

Have you ever learned so much in one evening, yet you feel like you knew it all along?

Food Deserts

I live a food desert, something that’s getting a lot of attention in the news lately. (I prefer food desserts, which is eating cookies for dinner, but that’s a different blog post altogether.)

There isn’t, in my opinion, a good definition for “food desert,” but it’s basically a place where healthy, affordable food is hard to get. That’s totally relative, and one key that everyone seems to be missing is access. Example: There aren’t grocery stores in suburban neighborhoods. But those who live in the suburbs choose to live there and have cars. No one thinks twice about access to food.

(I was talking to a friend about this topic, and she was like, “Yeah, I totally live in a food desert, too. I have to drive, like, 5 minutes to get to a grocery store, and I’m like, OMG, I only need some organic soy milk. Like WTF, put a store closer!” Um… I think you’re totally missing the whole point???)

So as I was saying, in the so-called food deserts, access to the healthy, affordable food is the problem. Example: The nearest grocery store is maybe a mile or two away, but the residents don’t have cars to get there. It’s impractical to take toddlers in strollers on that long walk, for example, and I can tell you from experience that bags of apples, potatoes, and canned vegetables are really heavy. So this is where the problem starts – that it’s more convenient to go to the corner gas station or liquor store and buy unhealthy and more expensive food. (And then it’s more difficult to save up to buy a car, to move to a better location, or to otherwise change the various situations - a huge downward spiral.)

While we’re talking about convenience, I would just like to conveniently point out this convenience store that’s on my convenient bus route to Kroger. (Sign enlarged for your convenient inspection.)

Convinent. What?

But back to the point.

Who decided that having a car is an American right? What’s wrong with not having a car? There’s this certain attitude of pity and condescension about frequent bus usage going around. Like my last post suggested, some people believe that privileged white girls should not be riding the bus with all the riffraff (other than to commute to and from work downtown, when only the white and privileged are passengers). I’m kind of sick of this mindset.

And now back to the main point. I choose to live this way, and it's really fulfilling. I feel guilty, a lot of times, that my lifestyle is a type of game, a test, a challenge for myself – just one more way to learn something new and see the world from a different perspective. And as I’m looking around at the families around me, I see that not everyone else living this way has a choice about it. It’s not a game, and they can’t just get out of it at any time. I wonder if I would be happy if it weren’t my own decision.