Published
I knew I wanted to start a family the moment I stepped away from my first date with Kareem. I walked through Greenpoint on that late afternoon feeling more alive than the neighborhood itself. I remember being struck by an unexpected vision of Kareem lifting a little boy, who turned to me and called me "Mama." I quickly brushed the thought away, but the seed had been planted, quietly beginning to take root.
Spring in the city is always beautiful, but this time, it felt sacred. After a year of masked faces and closed doors, the city was waking up. The air smelled of fresh pavement and blooming trees. I, too, was waking up. I let my face explode into one of those uncontainable smiles that sneak up on you after hours of conversation, laughter, and playful, childlike flirtation. I dared to admit that I might be falling in love.
We began unsteady, both fresh from pandemic divorces. We were uncertain whether starting something new was brave or foolish. Although we protested defining our connection with any formalities, the love we found refused to obey. It rushed in intensely, like pressing salt into an open wound. It was searing, burning, and unbearably vivid. It hurt in the way only something real can, leaving us suspended between the thrill of connection and the fear of how deeply it might leave its mark. In each other’s arms, the rest of the world vanished. But every time we parted, we made the same promise: This would be the last time we saw each other. We would let the feelings fade before they consumed us entirely.
Nine months and five heartbreakingly “for our own good” breakups later, we gave in. Kareem picked me up from the airport after my Christmas trip to Moscow, and as we drove, he turned to me and said he was done figuring things out. My insides screamed, take me and be mine forever, but instead, I told him I needed a day to decide. On New Year’s Eve, I committed, too.
I’ve always been known as someone with an intensity that bordered on excess. I moved to New York immediately after graduating high school in Russia, plunging into dorm life in a city I barely knew. When I ran away from an irreparably broken marriage, partly triggered by addiction, I committed to sobriety and ran a marathon within months. When I decided to become a journalist at 23, I went straight to covering the United Nations.
Love, too, had always been an all-or-nothing endeavor. I carried too much love inside of me, often feeling as though I might burst when I had no right way to unload it, no proper receiver. I grew up with a hole in my heart — possibly because I come from a broken home — that no friend, song, hobby, or therapist could fill. As I grew older, existential questions haunted me. I searched for a purpose that could make life feel worth living, something to anchor my overflowing capacity to love.
I never thought a man could fix me, and Kareem most certainly didn’t. But he did fill a void, temporarily, by gifting me our great romance and the love we still share. Yet, I felt there was another layer of my existence to be unearthed.
Love, like water, cannot stay stagnant. It must remain fluid, starting as a forest creek, growing into a river, and perhaps, becoming a sea or an ocean, while bending around mountains and enduring droughts on its way. For some, this evolution means moving in, getting a dog, or embarking on a joint project. For us, it meant starting a family and discovering an even greater love than our own. Our daughter Sufi arrived almost three years after we met, on the cusp of a season’s change — late winter, when the air already carried hints of spring. I often say that before meeting Kareem, I was asleep, dreaming of a life where I could both receive and give love abundantly and freely.
With Sufi, the world cracked open. She taught me to see existence beyond myself, to realize that nothing else allows me to release that love as fully as seeing the world through her eyes. I now notice the way the green in the grass deepens as May slides into July and then softens into September, when she bends over the stroller waiting for an unseen bug to appear. I stop to watch flags whip in the wind because she gestures gently for me to pause so she can marvel at them. Even when I’m alone, I pause now, noticing the things she would. When she waves at strangers, I see them more clearly, too — their eyes, hats, glasses, coats, and shoes — and I imagine them as children once, carefully dressing themselves for the day. I feel something close to love for these passing faces.
The past few weeks have been bitterly cold in New York, confining Sufi and I indoors. Normally, I would find such days suffocating, but the simplest tasks feel joyful. Washing her water bottle becomes an act of love as I imagine her small hands gripping it, her growing body nourished by its contents.
Meeting Kareem meant finding a greater love in myself, and meeting Sufi meant finally seeing life and love in its smallest, most profound particles. In a few weeks, spring will return, and we will step outside to watch bugs wake up, birds return, and cyclists reclaim the parks — and witness the love that surrounds each of those miracles.
