Back in the summer of 2019 my cell service allowed people with blocked numbers to leave voice mail messages. It was through this loophole that I learned my mother, at that point blocked for the better part of three years, was planning to hire a private investigator to learn about my life. My immediate thought: What TV show gave her that idea?
My father, born and raised in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, first met my mother in her small High Atlas Mountains village during a family friend’s wedding. Fifteen years my mother’s senior, he convinced her to build a life with him in America. They opened a deli in Central Florida. Their lives as immigrants were arduous, and then further complicated by racism in the early 2000s — our neighbors spread rumors that my father had a harem of four wives, allowing one outside at a time. What’s more, I was repeatedly suspended from elementary school for fist-fighting students who called my hijabi mother “towel head.”
To put it generously, my parents were “misguided” in the child rearing practices that followed my troublemaking. But in our religious household, our parents were second to God; they had impunity.
The one silver lining? My experience of that Florida by way of Morocco chaos became the basis for the essay that earned me a full ride to Yale in 2016. A direct quote from my 17 -year -old mind: “While money may still be tight and prejudice may never disappear from this world, by refusing to let negativity mar my success, my happiness will never again be limited.”
One essay full of similarly melodramatic sentences later, and I became the first in my family to attend college. My parents bragged endlessly, and I couldn’t wait to see the world through the eyes of the elite.
Still, the memories of their strictness weighed on me. I felt trapped and limited by our shared history. At Yale, however, I could gain autonomy. If my parents were never going to see things my way, perhaps I needed to divest from their point of view entirely. I blocked their numbers and got a therapist. I cut them off.