We're leaving

I love telling this story about my mom because it shows her ability to make split second decisions, and in this case, one that many people were too afraid to make at the time, and therefore criticized. Those same people would tell her what a good move she made, twenty years after the fact, so whenever I tell our life story, this is included.

It was a Monday in early August of 1980, over a year after Iran had voted to become an Islamic republic, when I had gone into school to pick up my report card. It came with a letter to my parents, which I was told was regarding a change in the dress code.

Once home, I showed my report card first since it was good (for a change). Then, my mom asked me for the envelope. She opened it and read the overly formal wording that basically said all female students must come to school wearing a veil starting September. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for an Armenian Catholic school to send out that letter, and I wish I had kept it, but my mom crumpled it, threw it on the floor and said "Pack your bags. We are leaving!"  I asked where to, excited for another trip, and she said "I don't know, but no Christian daughters of mine are wearing veils."

She got on the phone with her brother and convinced him and his family to leave with us, and on the Friday, five days after she had uttered those words, we were on a plane to Greece, and eleven months later, landed in Canada.

My father was not the only person to try to talk her out of this, after all, we had just spent 11 months in Vancouver trying to make a go of it, and had been unable to. He hated the weather here, and really was in love with his country, being a successful photographer there. But my mom was single-minded and once she had made a decision, there was no changing her mind. She had been in love with this country, having taken the train from the east to the west coast some years before and knew this was a safe place to raise children, where if they wanted to become physicists, as my sister Jacqueline had stated she did, they would be able to. She was right. Jackie went on to Oxford to do her PhD in physics and I went to Ryerson and followed my father's footsteps. Would we have been able to do so had she been swayed or complacent? Likely not. And she always did say "My life is for my daughters" and many of her decisions to come would prove this statement to be true.

Thank you mom. I wish you could enjoy your retirement more, now that we are ok, thanks to your brave move.