It was pink. The cupcake filling was pink. In all honesty, I was expecting blue. For some reason I always thought that we’d have a boy first. Not in a gender-biased way, but in an “our family kept having dreams it was a boy so it altered our expectations” way. But when my husband and I sliced the cupcakes in front of us at the same time while the restaurant staff clapped and filmed us, bright pink frosting oozed out. And after the shock, joy and tears, a sudden panic weighed deep down in my stomach. A girl? I’m supposed to raise a girl? I’m going to be a mother to a daughter?
“How do you feel?” My husband asked, a now permanent smile on his beaming face. “I’m so stressed out,” I responded through nervous laughter.
This moment I can now say was one of the happiest moments of my life, topping even the time I fulfilled my lifelong dream of traveling to Iceland. My husband called the restaurant earlier to surprise me with an intimate gender reveal for the two of us. The whole staff was so excited to come up with it, even the owner got involved. But after we drank our fake champagne, and thanked the restaurant staff for coming up with the perfect gender reveal, I couldn’t help but feel an underlying anxiety behind the joy.
As we waited for the bill, I placed my hand on my stomach. “It’s a girl,” I kept thinking, both fondly and anxiously. This new development changed things. Before, it was just a little thing growing inside me. But now, simply knowing whether it was a son or daughter gave us some sort of glimpse into what our future would be like. Now we knew what type of clothes to buy, how to decorate the nursery, and most worrisome of all, how our life as parents might look like raising a girl. “Being a girl is so complicated!” I texted Hiba and Hajir, my sisters, after I broke the news to them. “How am I gonna do this?”
I felt a kick under my palm, a slight tap, and I thought of what life might look like. I thought of my relationship with my mother. And hers with my grandmother. I thought of my childhood, the trials and struggles of being a girl. Because there were so many struggles. Especially as a Muslim girl growing up in the west. I thought about eye rolls and crying and fitting into a mold that someone else thought I should fit in. Scratchy dresses that I hated and wishing I was a boy (I was a ‘tomboy’ growing up, what if my girl likes girly things?) And then there were the teen years. Angrily scribbled diary entries kept away with a lock and key. Struggling to find where my place was (tumblr?). Awkward body changes, confusing hormones, wearing the hijab. Would she struggle with girlhood like I did?
As a teenager I was adamant that I would never marry, never have kids. Thanks to western ideologies, I saw the label of wife and mother as degrading. Lower class. A sign of giving up on your life. This is how, as an ignorant, self-important teenager, I viewed my own mother. I saw her, everyday after spending hours homeschooling me and my three siblings, standing in the kitchen until six o’clock when my father came home from work. And after a brief dinner together, she returned in the kitchen as we helped clear the dishes and put the food away in her carefully curated glass Tupperware collection. It wasn’t until after maghrib that she finally sat down in our living room, a crossword in her lap, or just resting back on the couch with my dad as us kids bickered about what movie we should watch that night.
As a teenager the thought of living that same life filled me with dread. Stuck in the middle of suburbia, no money to travel, to ‘’experience life’, going grocery shopping and folding laundry and vacuuming and rinse and repeat. It was mundane, boring. No, I would be a working woman. I’d live in my own apartment with two cats and plants and I’d travel the world. I wouldn’t be tied down to a man, I wouldn’t spend my life in a kitchen cooking for crying children. Were my views tied to the ideologies of Western feminism and the 1960s housewife stereotype – not to mention the backward mentality that a woman’s worth was tied to her husband – or did I just hate cooking? Looking back I’d say both.
Now of course, my appreciation for my mom, for her sacrifices, for our actually blessed childhood that she created, has grown into my own life. I remember waking up one Eid to see two little grey boxes on the side table my sister and I shared, two necklaces, pink and purple. A surprise gift.
I remember my mom taking out her childhood kitchen set from Pakistan, miniature steel pots and pans, little plates and wooden jugs. Spoons that could be hung on a rack. She gave it to us, a piece of her past, without hesitation.
I remember her sitting next to me on my bed as I cried because I went to the bathroom and realized I’d have to start wearing the hijab. “Are you sad because you don’t want to wear it?” She asked and I shook my head no, unaware that the tears were my hormones trying to find their place.
I remember applying for universities; on one side my dad saying that it was a waste of time, that you don’t need a degree to find work or a husband these days, and on the other, my mother, telling me not to listen to him, that I should go if I wanted to.
I remember her support and warmth when I told her through sobs of a miscarriage. Moments of life, seemingly fleeting but significantly important. Not a mundane life, but one of purpose.
Prior to finding out that we would be parents to a daughter, my husband and I discussed what it would be like to raise a boy versus a girl. “The thing is,” I tried to explain with my pregnancy-brain logic. “Is that if it’s a boy, all I have to do is be a mom. And you have to be the father and the role model at the same time. But if it’s a girl, I have to be a parent and also be the role model, and that’s just an added pressure.” I wanted my daughter to be better than me. But in order for that to happen, wouldn’t I have to better myself first? Was I an ideal role model? Did I want my daughter to grow up to be like me? Was I happy with who I had become?
What if my daughter grew up to resent me? I’d seen it before, especially in desi households. A mother thinks of her daughter as an extension of herself, but the daughter rebels and both end up disappointed with one another. What if I accidentally put all my hopes and dreams onto her, without taking into account her own? What if I want her to be who she isn’t?
“The fact that you don’t want to be like that is proof that you won’t be!” My husband encourages me, and it helps. Because I’ve also seen mother-daughter relationships flourish. All around me, women are changing the narrative. My cousin Saira shares the world through her daughter’s eyes, creating unforgettable memories. My sister-in-law Mariam raises her fierce mini, encouraging her powerful voice. My friends, Sumayyah, Sawdah, Mariyah, all living examples of daughters raised with grace. My own mother, who taught me and my siblings not just through our homeschool lessons, but through the simple way she made us homemade lunch every single afternoon. I look at them and I know what kind of parent I want to be, and what I want to avoid. Putting it into action is one thing, but at least we’re off to a good start.
That night, after licking up the pink frosting and leaving the restaurant hand in hand and filled with glee, I couldn’t help but notice pink everywhere. Pink flowers in the pots lining the sidewalk, pink petals on the concrete, pink storefront, pink lettering on a chalkboard. Even the aurora borealis pictures my sister sent me that night glowed pink. All of a sudden, after years of rejecting a color I was told was a sign of weakness, pink was my favorite color. All of a sudden, I couldn’t wait for this girl, for the color she would bring. In a few weeks, I would break the news to my closest childhood friends. Girls I grew up with, who I hadn’t seen in months but who I knew that once we met, it would be like we never left each others’ sides.
And tonight, after a ‘cupcake roulette’ gender reveal with my friends made Sumayyah scream and everyone exclaim ‘I knew it!’ or ‘so glad I guessed wrong,’ we gather in my sister’s bedroom like old times, like no time has passed at all. Six of us all cram around one bed, making room for each other. Hajir sits with Aishah under a blanket. To my right, Hiba lays her head in Mariyah’s lap, while Sawdah props herself on my knees. On one side our younger sisters rant about their mistrust and disgust with boys their age. On the other we discuss the plights of getting married and the latest jinn stories. Someone braids another’s hair while our voices overlap and gummy bears are passed around. Our conversation switches easily from books to boys to the causes of generational trauma. Under my pajamas I feel the tiniest of flutters and with it, all my fears melt away. This is girlhood, I think as I place a hand to feel the kicks. I can’t wait for her to join.
