Lessons from ‘I Love Lucy’ and my Mom’s Journey to America
Note: In the midst of a pandemic, I began having an identity crisis. The rise of hate crimes against AAPI brothers and sisters left me feeling heartbroken and powerless. I turned to the writing community for a sense of comfort, and to help me take my power back. Writing has always reminded me that I still have a duty to document and tell our stories. I will be publishing excerpts from my unpublished memoir throughout the month. Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! #APAHM. (Excerpts 6, 7, 8)
After having an arranged marriage with my dad in 1986, mom stayed in India for about a year until her sponsorship and papers for the U.S. cleared.
The first year living in America was intimidating and overwhelming for my mom because she had to adapt and learn so many new things.
“When I landed in America, it was scary and overwhelming leaving my parents and brother and everyone back home,” my mom described in our interview.
She didn’t encounter many people who spoke the same language as her, and there weren’t as many Indian Americans she could befriend in her neighborhood to help her navigate a new norm at the time, mom shared in our interview.
The familiar pattern of comfortability had been broken, and she had to learn the new way of life in America after being sheltered and living with her parents for 19 years.
With no relatives or family here in the U.S., my mom would often look at old photographs of her parents for comfort. She’d sometimes cry herself to sleep, wishing she could have hugged them one last time before leaving for America. Although she would talk to them on the phone, international calls were expensive and it just wasn’t the same as seeing them. Mom would always look forward to the monthly letters she’d receive from her mom.
Mom constantly questioned whether she made the right decision immigrating to America and leaving her family behind while embracing her new family and her in-laws.
After the first five months of living in the U.S., my mom decided it would be best if she enrolled in ESL classes at an adult school in Rosemead, CA. Even though she could read and write English, she still needed help to form complete sentences and thoughts.
At the adult school, she met a woman named Hansa from the same town she grew up in. Hansa was a gregarious young woman with a bubbly personality. She approached my mom one day after evening ESL class, wearing a salwar kameez and bindi with a heavy book load in one arm, and said, “Hey, are you from India?”
My mom was so happy to see another Gujarati person she could speak her native language with.
“Yes, I just came from India a few months ago,” my mom said excitedly.
Her new friend Hansa was an open book. She talked my mom’s ear off about how she missed and yearned for India and how much she wanted to go back because she didn’t like it in America.
That didn’t help mom. It only added to the anxiety and dread of being thousands of miles away from her family.
Mom knew her new friend probably just wanted to vent and talk it out, so she continued to listen.
For the most part, my mom looked forward to taking ESL classes and was happy she made a friend that would help her feel less alone. Mom eventually got out of her comfort zone and felt comfortable enough to ask the teacher a few questions or work with other students on class assignments. She felt reassured to know that she wasn’t alone in her journey.
The class was filled with students from all different backgrounds who had recently immigrated to the U.S. and were eager to learn how to speak, read, and write in English and form conversations. There were some students that required more help, and my mom admitted that it slowed her down a bit because she had a general knowledge of the English language and was looking to enroll in a more advanced class.
“Some people didn’t understand when the teacher spoke. But I think I was a little more advanced, so I stopped going after a while.”
Although my mom decided to stop going to ESL classes, that didn’t stop her from self-learning and creating her own creative curriculum at home.
When she cooked lunch and dinner she’d set up the black and white TV in the corner of the kitchen and tune it to an episode of “I Love Lucy” or local news channels and soap operas like “General Hospital” or “Dallas.”
More than anything, the dialogue in comedies and soap operas helped my mom pick up common words and idioms while learning how to effectively communicate with others.
One day, when mom was preparing vegetables alone in the kitchen, she would often catch a rerun episode of “The Chocolate Factory” on “I Love Lucy.” It was the episode where Lucy and Ethel were tasked with wrapping chocolate, only to fail miserably when the machine churned out more than they could handle packaging.
“Whenever I missed India, I would turn on ‘I Love Lucy.’ My favorite episode was when Lucy stuffed her face with chocolate. It made me laugh so hard and actually helped me get rid of some of my homesickness.”
My mom would also spend a good chunk of the day sifting through the pages of an English to Gujarati translation book. Mom wanted to learn as much as she could to keep busy while staying at home and taking care of her in-laws while her husband worked long, 12-hour shifts as a computer programmer.
Mom would keep the translation book in handy whenever there was a phrase or word she didn’t understand on TV. It also helped her understand how to have general and simple conversations like asking someone if she could have a cup of water.
My mom had studied some English in college, but never had the chance to practice it at home or with friends. In the household, she would often speak her native language of Gujarati. “
I only studied Gujarati Medium in India, not English — so it was initially difficult for me and it took a long time to even have a fluent conversation in English.”
Although she was having some difficulty with English, my mom never spoke to my dad about some of the frustrations she encountered because she was slightly embarrassed about it at first.
“I couldn’t talk to dad because I was shy about opening up some of my feelings. There were so many times I cried…sometimes I cried in the bathroom while I was washing clothes.”
One of the hardest things for my mom to adjust to was accepting the large “super-sized” portion sizes at American fast-food restaurants like KFC and McDonald’s. In India, mom never let food go to waste. She cleaned her plate clean and never cooked in excess. Seeing some customers throw away their meals or over order was perplexing to her.
One evening, my dad took my mom out on a date in the San Gabriel Valley and ordered a large mashed potato (without the gravy because it has beef stock) and coleslaw for my mom. “He said, ‘we’ll eat something here and you’ll like the coleslaw here.””
When my mom put the coleslaw in her mouth, she was repulsed by it. She couldn’t get herself to eat it when the smell of chicken somehow crept its way into all the vegetarian options.
As a devout vegetarian and Hindu, my mom set it aside and didn’t eat the rest of it. Even the Indian spices and vegetables in America tasted slightly different and less tasty to my mom.
“All the American food grossed me out. But I was so skinny, so your dad encouraged me to eat and at least try the mashed potatoes,” mom said in the interview.
“Your dad used to say, ‘In America, you have to eat because you have to be strong and work hard.’”
Mom repeated that phrase whenever she needed some pep talk. She knew she had to try. So, she forced herself to take two spoonfuls of mashed potato without gravy and had my dad order biscuits and KFC honey packets on the side — her favorite.
Eventually, my mom took a liking to fast food even though it took her quite a while to get there. One of her favorite memories was when my dad took her out on another date to Shakey’s in San Gabriel, California. They sat in a booth against a brick wall and listened to loud ’80s music. By now, her stomach had been able to adjust to vegetarian pizza, Mojo potatoes, and other fast-food vegetarian dishes.
When she went up to go to the restroom, a white lady came up to her to compliment her bright Indian outfit, the salwar kameez that she wore. This wasn’t the only time someone would compliment or stare her down.
“They would usually look at my dress, sometimes they would say, ‘that looks pretty..’”
Mom shared that sometimes she would feel like she was different from others because of the clothes she wore. She’d be embarrassed of her thick Indian accent which made her feel like an outsider. She wondered whether she should start dressing up differently so people would stop staring.
“It took me a long time to change my outfit to traditional American clothes because I lived with my conservative mother and father-in-law. Culturally, we respect them… once I married, I didn’t wear a skirt or anything. It took me many years to finally decide to wear a skirt.”
Growing up in India: Mom’s Story
Mom grew up in a small town called Kapadvanj in Gujarat, India. She was the youngest of two sibling brothers.
During the summers, she would play a game of gillidanda with her brothers and the neighborhood kids. Her brothers would always keep an eye on my mom, for fear that she would scrape her knees or be in danger.
But that was never the case. Mom always felt protected and safe with her brothers by her side. Whenever it would rain, mom and her brothers would step into puddles, stick their tongues out and catch refreshing rain droplets — without a care in the world.
“We would go out and we would just basically take a rain shower or bath outside and get wet. I was really young. After getting our clothes wet, we’d run home for dinner and my mom would change our clothes,” mom said in an interview.
Mom had a happy childhood — one that was filled with rainy monsoon weather and frequent shopping and movie trips with her mother while crossing perilous roads with no one to direct traffic.
At the time, her dad had rented out a two-story home with a large terrace that family friends and neighbors would enjoy in the summer months.
“I still remember the terrace. In the summertime, we used to sleep on the terrace and I could see the whole neighborhood,” mom recalled in our interview.
The terrace gave my mom a bird’s eye view of the town she grew up in. She could see the makeshift rooftops of homes, dangling electricity lines, and dirt roads from miles away. Sometimes she’d escape to the terrace after getting into an argument with her brothers or simply seeking refuge or some quiet time.
Family friends and guests would often come over to my mom’s house and ask if they could fly their kites during the Indian kite festival known as Uttarayan.
“I still have the memory of my big terrace. It’s a huge part of my childhood…that beautiful terrace,” said mom.
Mom recalled that she would often go to the terrace every morning and would see an owl that was perched near a building she could visibly see from her terrace. “I still remember that big owl. It was the same owl that came every morning.”
The owl seemed like some sort of deep symbolic message she didn’t quite understand at the time. Maybe it was a guardian angel or protector, my mom said. But to this day, she has never forgotten the owl that visited the same building whenever she walked up the stairs to her terrace.
Growing up, my mom’s mom took care of the family while her dad worked for a local government office as an inspector handling affairs related to weights and measurement procedures. He’d get ready for work and then come back home for lunch, take a brief nap, and then go back to work.
“Everything was closeby so you could go home, have lunch, take a nap, and then go back to work,” mom told me in the interview.
My mom’s mom met her husband (my maternal grandfather) at a wedding. From the interview with my mom, she explained that her dad couldn’t take his eyes off the girl with the beautiful sari at his brother’s wedding. He fell in love with her deep brown eyes and spirit.
My mom said that at that time, her parents had a rare love marriage, which was strikingly different from the marriage she chose to go through with in the future. “Somehow my dad had the courage to talk to his sister-in-law and asked her if she could tell him whose daughter was at the wedding.”
It turned out that my mom’s dad’s parents already knew the family and had talked to them before, which made it easier. Eventually, my mom’s dad met up with his future wife (my maternal grandmother). Of course, they’d always have a chaperone or a family member with them if they were to go out on dates.
“My mom used to tell me they used to write love letters which is really fascinating to me to hear about,” my mom said in our interview. Mom had once discovered a stash of her parent’s love letters stored inside an intricate wooden box that her mom had kept. Of course, she never took a peek.
In our interview, my mom explained that her dad was always a romantic person who would express his love in different ways without saying “I love you.” Back in the day, it wasn’t culturally acceptable to be intimate or physical with someone, my mom explained. There was no kissing allowed, and she never heard her parents say, “I love you” to each other.
Love was a language in the form of garam roti my mom’s mom made for her husband when he came home from work. It was the way she massaged his head with oil or recited the lyrics to his favorite Bollywood songs. That was love.
My mom’s dad would often have legendary singer Anoop Jalota’s ghazals playing in the house. He was a diehard fan, and also always had the radio on while he’d work on other tasks in the house. Eventually, mom’s dad invested in a record player and would put the record on full blast.
“Sometimes, we’d get embarrassed and say, ‘dad, turn it off…all the neighbors are listening,’” my mom recalled in our interview, adding that she credits her love of music to her dad.
Mom later moved to Vadodara, Gujarat, India, and spent her college years at M.S. University. She described herself as a “shy, calm person” whose parents didn’t allow her to date.
There were multiple occasions when some of her male classmates would go up to her as she was carrying her books to class, and ask in a forward way, “Hey, do you want to go out?” My mom wouldn’t know what to say. She’d just try to walk faster and pretend the conversation never happened because the only guys she ever talked to were her brothers.
One day, my mom’s girlfriend convinced her to ditch class with her and go watch an American film at the theater across the street from the university.
“She told me, ‘Hey, Smita, we should enjoy the day. Let’s go watch the movie.”
That day, my mom constantly looked over her shoulder after crossing the busy street filled with noisy rickshaws and pedestrians who were not paying any heed to the rules on the road because there were none in place, to begin with. She was scared that someone like her neighbor or family friend would rat on her and spot her watching a movie instead of studying in college for the day.
“The whole time we watched the movie, I was so scared. It was an English movie and we crossed the street to go to the movie. That was the last time I bunked class!” my mom explained.
That evening, when she came home from school, my mom felt so guilty but never said anything to her parents about the boys that came up to her to ask her if she could go out, or about bunking class for the day. It was the first time in her life that she had told a lie to her parents, my mom admitted. “I was always open and never lied to mom. We never discussed boys or talked to our parents like that. It was more like out of respect for the culture…that you don’t talk about it even if you like some boys at that age.”
Navigating Motherhood and a History of ‘Firsts’
For several years, my mom would often have vivid dreams of her life back in India. Every dream would be about the beautiful mango and hibiscus trees, or the hair oil that her mom combed through her long, frizzy hair.
“Every dream was about India. I felt like I didn’t belong here in America. I felt like I was forcing myself to stay in America, those days I feel like.”
It took my mom 30 years to get rid of her inferiority complex while navigating and finding her own identity in America.
“I had my two kids, and family, and I think now I’m more attached to America than India. I still love India, but ever since my parents passed away, I don’t want to visit too much. I’d rather stay here with family. This is my country now. It took me 30 years…. it’s a lot of years,” my mom said in an interview.
In 1989, mom gave birth to me at the Queen of the Valley Hospital in Covina, California on September 6. I was a 3-pound preemie baby with the tiniest fingers and an alien-shaped head. Sorting through old photographs of my birth, my mom told me I was always alert and kept my eyes open most of the time.
In an interview, mom shared that she was happy with her decision to be a stay-at-home mom during the first decade of my life.
“In a way, it’s nice to be with your kids once your kids are born. My first child was a preemie baby so I don’t think I could have worked.”
Mom explained to me that dad had a stressful job as a computer programmer and was clocking in 12 hour work days which left very few hours for him to spend quality time with his kids. He’d keep his beeper next to him and would constantly check to see if there was an urgent work matter.
“Anytime he had to wake up and leave the house for work, he couldn’t take care of the kids, so basically I was the one who took care of the kids throughout the day and night,” mom explained, adding that while my dad wanted to be more available for his kids, his work was quite demanding.
One of the main reasons why mom didn’t actively look for a job is because she felt she had a duty to take care of my brother and I during our first few milestone years. When we got older, she started rethinking the job search.
My younger brother Ronak and I were also raised by my grandparents (ba and dada), who both lived with us. Mom took care of my grandparents and served as a caretaker to them during their final years.
Whenever my mom would be invited to pujas or birthday parties, she shared that she would often feel inferior whenever aunties or uncles boasted about their daughters-in-law, describing, in detail, how they did a great job of balancing their family and work life, while claiming a sense of independence through activities like driving, shopping, and holding down a successful job.
“It kind of made me sad that no matter what I do as a housewife, it doesn’t appeal to anybody that I’m a good housewife or a good mom… I felt like I should be going to work,” my mom said in our interview.
My mom would often feel left out of these conversations, or would feel as if she didn’t have the skills to do what other women in the extended family did.
After my brother was born, my mom started actively looking for a job but worried that her lack of experience or completing her college education would make it even harder to find a job.
Mom would often take my brother and me to swim classes every summer at a recreational community center. She wanted us to take advantage and learn essential life-saving skills to prevent a possible drowning incident while picking up a new hobby. Mom never learned how to swim, so she was happy for the opportunity for her kids to learn from a skilled swim instructor.
One day, mom made a friend with a bubbly lady who brought her younger daughter to swimming classes. “I’m glad I met her in my life,” my mom shared.
The friend helped plant the seed of hope and inspired my mom to not underestimate her talents and to keep applying to jobs. She recommended that my mom apply to the local public library. Mom hesitated at first and explained that she didn’t get the chance to finish her college in India and wasn’t sure if she’d be the right fit for the job.
My mom also explained to the friend that she worried about her lack of experience and not being able to speak fluently in English.
“That’s okay, why don’t you just apply and see what happens?” the friend told my mom.
My mom eventually took her friend’s advice and applied to an open Library Page position, where she would shelve and process books, and communicate with patrons.
My mom ended up getting an interview for the position, but didn’t hear back about an offer so she applied to a retail job at Montgomery Ward. My mom was determined to find a job because my dad felt as though he was on the brink of losing his job and his health had slowly deteriorated.
Eventually, my mom ended up getting her first seasonal job as a sales associate working the registers at Montgomery Ward. She was so excited about her first job and the chance to contribute to the family and help my dad out financially.
“It was a seasonal position. I would have a job in November, December, January and those three months I would have a job. I said, ‘ok I’ll take it. It’s my first job.’”
But after receiving that offer, a week later, the public library called to see if she would be interested in the Library Page position. My mom truthfully told the interviewer that she would be thrilled to work at the library, but couldn’t let her other supervisor down because she had just gotten hired.
My mom tried to negotiate to see if she’d be able to work at the library during the day, and work an evening shift at Montgomery Ward, but it didn’t work out, and the library proceeded to hire someone else.
My mom was conflicted but also thankful she had a job. Working at Montgomery Ward taught her how to communicate, work with different personalities, all while being put to work at the busiest counter during some of the busiest months of the holiday season. She’d issue store credit, process returns, and learn how to deal with difficult customers.
One day after returning home from work, my grandfather folded his newspaper and shakily told my mom, “Did you hear Montgomery Ward is closing?!” My mom’s heart sunk — she had just started to enjoy the job and was getting a hang of things only to hear this devastating news. The next day, the rumors were true. She learned that her position would continue through the end of December. Mom was worried about how she would help my dad pay the bills with the definite shuttering of Montgomery Ward.
During this time, mom prayed more than ever. She opened her prayer book and would devote her early mornings to chanting mantras and lighting a diya for Hindu gods in her small temple in the corner of my grandparent’s room. There must have been at least 30 pictures of Hindu gods illuminated by old Christmas lights.
“I think I became more religious when I came to the USA because I missed my family so much. I used to go to the Hindu temple every Sunday and I would put bhajans on and pray a lot. I was always religious, but I became more disciplined and prayed in the U.S.,” my mom told me in an interview.
When my mom would pray, she would always pray for others first. Before setting the chai on the stove for breakfast, mom would begin her prayers and preface with the words, “Please, god. Please bless me with a job — any job, because my husband may lose his job. I need a job…any job.”
Within days, God answered my mom’s prayers. She received a call back from one of the hiring managers who had previously interviewed her for the Library Page position she had dreamt about.
He asked my mom if she was still interested in the position and my mom excitedly replied, “yes, because I’m losing my job.” The hiring manager explained that that was precisely the reason he had called because he remembered that my mom mentioned she had just started working at Montgomery Ward and had heard about the store closing. The interviewers were impressed with her answers, professionalism, and loyalty. “We really liked you in your interview. You were great,” he added.
After giving Montgomery Ward a formal notice, my mom transitioned to her second job which spanned for decades. She started working as a Library Page January of 2001 at the Temple City Public Library for what would be 11 years before moving on as a Library Assistant at the San Gabriel Public Library.
For mom, working for the library has been a blessing over the past few decades. When Ronak and I were younger, mom would always take us to Storytime at the library and encourage us to volunteer and participate in arts and crafts and Summer Reading Programs. She encouraged us to make new friends and get lost in a good book.
“I used to take my son and daughter to storytime and I always thought, ‘I want to work here.’ It’s such a beautiful, quiet, and nice place and a safe place to work, and I admire the people who work in the library,” said mom.
Everything that she had been through had prepped her for this moment.
“It makes me proud of myself that even though I was not born in this country, I learned so much and was able to find a job I love.”
-Written by Monica Luhar (excerpts from my memoir)
