Daughters Of Iron and Yarn

I never knew that that softness, too, is a color of strength. Not a shade, not a hue, not a tint—but a true color palette in its own right. A warm yellow, in some moments; a deep, steady blue in others. The white of surrender, the red of warmth, the deep brown that builds a home. And I never knew that daughters embody these colors of strength in the softest of ways. We are prone to protecting—as if strands of iron are woven into our very being—yet our hearts beat in a thump-a-thump rhythm, never hollow, always brimming.

1. On Daughterhood

As the eldest child, I grew up mothering everyone and everything. I once cradled a bright red bird-shaped foiled paper, left over from a gift bag. The light played tricks on the reflection of its wings, making it appear as if it was dancing in the comfort of my care. I would keep it in my bottom drawer, occasionally taking it out to stroke gently, and then tucking it back in before my nani who was visiting, would mistake it for trash and throw it away while I was at school. When my fears were realized, she was confused by my tears. “Yeh tho kachra tha! Kyu ro rahi ho?” It was just garbage! Why are you crying?

When I was five, I carried both my little brothers, three and two years old, their feet dragging behind me, as I shielded them from Mama’s daant. My feet padded along the tan spongy carpet as I trudged up the stairs, one brother in a Bananas in Pajamas pajama set, the other in a dark blue onesie, a cotton whale weaved into the front. My mother’s stern frown eventually broke into laughter when she saw my small arms heaving them away, my eyes already laced with a fierce protectiveness I hadn’t yet learned to name.

My family still talks about the time I locked the babysitter outside the room. My parents came home, bewildered—until they saw the bruises on my brother’s arm, left by her pinching. They revel in telling others about how, when they managed to open the door, they found me with my arms wrapped around my brothers like armor, steel wings protecting them from anyone who’d dare come as a foe. Later, when the babysitter was let go, my daadi also discovered several of her expensive saris, woven in real gold and studded gemstones, were missing. The babysitter didn’t just leave—she took her final bow wrapped in silk that wasn’t hers. 

When I was four, I told my nani not to yell at the maid. “Bas kare, Nani. Daante mat. Sahi se baat kare!” Enough, Nani! Don’t scold her! Talk to her properly! She smiled. “Chanchanya hai yeh, bilkul. Baro ke beech mein aik chooza choo choo kar rahi hain.” She’s a total rascal, a chick squeaking among the elders.

I used to think strength had to look loud, sharp-edged, roaring, and that softness and strength were separate horizons that could never meet. But over the years, I’ve come to recognize the quiet strength in the soft, seemingly insignificant gestures that shaped me and made me who I am. I’ve seen it in the sacred corners of the multicolored quilt of my childhood; the places where softness stood tall, like a shield. 

It was in my mother’s maroon lipstick that I turned into a pretend microphone as I pranced in front of the mirror, putting on a funny show for my brothers, their laughs warming something inside me. 

It was the blue robin’s egg I found outside our house, and my tears falling on the cracked shell like watery gems, because I couldn’t save it. 

It was in the car with the fluorescent orange warning gas light, where I cried to my parents after a brief rishta in my early twenties, had said awful things to me, and I absorbed it all—stunned, trying to piece together why he would say such things, trying to understand. My parents later told me that I needed to stop being a safe haven for those who didn’t deserve it. While my mother said I should be angry and dignified, my father understood my language of softness and strength; that I needed to soak it in first. The anger came later, in the form of relief, that Allah (SWT) had protected me. We watched the wipers quickly wiping away the rain as I dabbed my tears on the back of my hand. 

It was in the white couch with floral embroidery that all ten of us cousins crammed onto for a picture, tumbling over one another, the younger ones squirming and anxious to get back to the story I had them engrossed in (a trait inherited from my father). It was the bright blue slushie I promised those same cousins, as I led them like a mother duck down a few blocks from my grandparents’, even as my daadi scolded us from the window to come back. I smirked as I clasped the change in my pocket that my uncles had secretly given, as willing accomplices to our adventure, and their own requests for snacks.

It was in the grey pavement next to the university where I would give granola bars to a homeless man named Peter, and each day he would share a story of his rich past with me as my friend and I waited for our bus. I was thankful for the exchange of honeyed oats and tales—despite my friend’s warning “Don’t get too close, they could be drug users.” I refused to believe that he, or any human being, was not worthy of conversation and respect, simply because they had fallen victim to a broken system.

It was in the bright ginger fur of the cat that I impulsively bought my grandparents, knowing that any formal family discussion would drag on for days with all the what-ifs and can-we’s and is-this-practical’s? I quietly left their home after a busy morning of messaging sellers on Kijiji, and came back half an hour later with a box in hand. I silently opened it, and watched my daadi’s bewildered eyes become warm as she met the amber eyes of the meowing little furball. Her scolds and coos braided into one another, a soft buttery lullaby tinged with spice. My daada smiled and he and that furball, eventually named Raaja, became inseparable. 

It was in the black of my grandmother’s curls as I brushed her hair, her lips kissing my palms and telling me, “Tum meri hon. Tum nahi jaanti tum mere liye kya hon. Meri anna manna.” You are mine. You don’t know what you are to me. My anna manna.”

2. On Womanhood

I was the daughter who was used to leading, used to healing, who grew into the woman who took pride in fulfilling others’ wants and needs, even if they didn’t ask. Because I think I always knew that kindness is a kind of belonging. And softness, when held steady, can bend iron. And daughters especially, are born absorbing other people’s pain, swelling like sponges, like that Studio Ghibli spirit who kept swallowing everything until he burst. How much hurt can we carry before we, too, erupt?

“Don’t look,” my husband warns during any violent scene in the show we watch in short segments after the kids are asleep, knowing that depictions of physical gore will make me go numb. 

“That’s an insane level of empathy,” a coworker said when a student apologized to me through tears—and I began tearing up, too, pulling him into an embrace.

The woman I grew into, the one who carried all that feeling but was never sure how to thread it into something—would at times unravel, at times become a warm blanket, for others. I never realized that, somewhere in your womanhood, the iron inside you, meant to shield others—can begin to pierce you. The yarn you used to weave a blanket for others—can strangle you. That you will ache for the same warmth you so often give. That you’ll crave friends whose hearts carry iron and yarn, too. It took me years to understand what true friendship was, and even longer to believe that I was worthy of it. I had walked on many roads of thorns, giving others my slippers, while my feet were scarred and wounded. 

But now, my corner is warm, and my feet have found safe ground.

Stephen Chobsky wrote, “We accept the love we think we deserve,” and I was telling a close friend the other day, a woman whose soul mirrors mine, when she felt like the blessings were overwhelming and daunting, “We accept the blessings we think we can hold.”

I’m thankful for the women whose hearts bleed in the same colors as mine, their iron both shield and sword. Women who stood beside me through the births of my children, driving an hour to drop off food and clothes during COVID. Planning a virtual baby meet and greet for friends and family, porch visits with masked faces and gloved hands as they waved at my daughter, cherishing her with air kisses and du’aas, with a longing to hold her and envelop her and welcome her into the tribe of mothers who would give their life for her. 

After the incredibly difficult birth of my son (who is an embodiment of all things soft and loving), one of these women of iron and yarn insisted on speaking to the doctor every time he entered my room. “Do not let them bully you into anything, satkee.” It is an endearment we have for another, short for satke java, in her Punjabi tongue, meaning to offer oneself as a sacrifice for another. What a befitting name between the two of us, who take pieces of ourselves constantly to fill the gaps of the other. 

“Let’s talk shop,” her voice would bellow over the speakerphone, her usual sweet voice replaced with a deep, composed, matter-of-fact tone reserved for her fellow physicians. “That girl is my sister. I want to make sure you’re prescribing everything she needs to recover.”

The night before, she had brushed up on medical knowledge outside her field of study, drawing from old medical school notes, while leading her team during her rounds. Every time the doctor walked into my room, sheepish and wary, he asked, “Is your sister going to talk to me again?” Thinking she was my literal sister. The thought made me smile.

“She’s already waiting,” my husband said, handing him the phone. The nurse in the room winked at me, sending her silent approval of my satkee’s advocacy in this broken system. 

In the same breath that she defended the doctors who were trying their best, she demanded I not settle for mediocrity and had me rehearse questions with medical jargon in case she was in the middle of rounds and couldn’t be there. In the same breath that she showed her moments of rage at the doctors’ incorrect judgement calls, she still reminded me that this is from Allah (SWT) and that He doesn’t give us more than we can bear. “Say ‘khair, inshallah’ satkee. Even in this, there is khair,” repeating the same phrase I had told her during her moments of difficulty. 

To say she saved my life is both literal truth and a gaping understatement. I never knew such friendship as a child, always the one gathering warmth for others, giving protection—exhausted and fraying at the edges. And yet, this sister of mine has taken my jagged pieces and quilted them back together again and again. When I confess this to her, she pulls me in and tells me that, no—it’s the other way around. And that’s the language of the women of iron and yarn. Because these women, also daughters raised to give, understand the weight of that shield, and the cost of that warmth, how to give it, learning how to receive it. They taught me how to put mine down and rest. 

These women would come into my classroom and say, “Go grab a quick coffee. I’ve got your students.” When a difficult student had me question my career choices and come home defeated every evening, one of them pulled him aside and lectured him about how lucky he was to have a teacher who wouldn’t give up on him, warning him to straighten up his act—knowing I’ve done the same for her.

“Mere jaan,” she calls my own children—my soul-–and the way she says it, makes me swell with pride. I see in her words and the way she looks at them, the kind of fierce, protective motherhood I hope I carry, too. When she gave birth, she called me on her second week home. “Come, meet your niece.” I cradled her baby girl, her eyes as fierce and soft as her mother’s and thought, How lucky she is to have a mother like her. 

3. On Motherhood

Mothering a daughter of my own has stretched the spectrum of color even more. You see pieces of your soul walking outside of you. It’s beautiful. It’s jarring. It’s the most frightening and wonderful thing you can behold. 

One day, my daughter came home from school, digging through her toys to find something to give to a girl in her class who’d been unkind to her over and over again—hoping a gift would make her want to be friends. I pulled my daughter close and gently said, “You deserve better, jaani.” Her sadness shifted into anger at me—she didn’t understand how I could forge a barrier between her and the friend she craved. 

I did the hardest thing a mother could do and let go, as my mother also once did—praying she would find her way. A daughter who once pleased everyone, now a mother who is healing. And I pray, Ya Allah, let my daughter find her way sooner than I did. Protect her, ya Rabb. Let her hold the hands of others to guide them through this prickly road without having to give up her own shoes.

Recently, this daughter of mine sobbed when her little brother fell and scraped his knee. Her tears echoed his cries. He looked up, bewildered by her grief. He forgot his pain and reached for her, gently patting her back. Both of them, comforting one another. 

“Is he okay?” she asked, eyes fierce and brimming.

“He’s okay,” I said. “He’s lucky he has a sister like you.” I hugged them tight and whispered sweet things into their ears until they both settled. 

I pray my daughter, born from generations of women who forged shields and wove blankets, embraces the full power of her softness and strength better than I did. Because yarn alone is frail—tender, breakable. But woven together, it gives warmth. It binds. It shelters. And iron, yes, it can pierce. But it can also protect. Its strength is not in sharpness alone, but in what it is shaped to shield. And to be a daughter is to carry color and courage in equal measure. That softness is not something to outgrow or something to be ashamed of. 

Because when I look at her—my daughter with the fierce eyes and butter-soft heart—I see those colors of softness and strength again. The warm gold hues of her laughter echoing in the kitchen right before bedtime, the steady white of her care for her brother, the pink of her open-hearted giving, the deep maroon that rises in her olive-brown cheeks when she defends what is right, and the yellow of the stories she builds with her hands. Same colors, but with hues different from mine, and I pray she wears them without apology. 

I will tell her: Your softness, my jaan, is a strength. Meant not only for others, but for yourself, too.