Chaplain Melody Meeter on struggling with a daughter's decisions

A Tale of Two Cultures: A Mother's Struggle
to Embrace Multicultural Ideals

I‘m proud to work as a chaplain for The HealthCare Chaplaincy, “a multifaith community of professionals from many cultures dedicated to caring for persons in spirit, mind, and body.” And I was proud when my college-age daughter chose to do an exchange semester in Morocco to study Arabic culture, religion and music. But when she broke the news, two months into the semester, that she had a Moroccan boyfriend, my imagination flew toward a future hell – separation from my daughter, stuck in Morocco with a husband who couldn’t get a green card. And since my son already lives in Germany, I imagined drearily divvying up my annual vacations for years on end: one week in Germany, one week in Morocco, one week in Michigan with my aging parents, one week with my husband at our cottage in Ontario.

I went to visit her there, as we’d planned. Daughter and boyfriend met me at the airport. For a few hours I managed to be gracious, but soon my body gave way to grief and anger. She was serious about this guy! Our time in Morocco was marked by many difficult conversations, in which I was angry and tearful and she was angry and hopeful. Everything irritated me, from the absence of toilet paper, anywhere in the country apparently, to the 3:00 a.m. call to prayer from the mosque next door. The grief! No matter how much I tried to tell myself to “get a grip,” or “this will blow over,” my body was hearing none of it.

We had good times too, of course, traversing the land by train, by bus, by “petit taxi,” and on foot. I knew my grief was selfish: I don’t want my daughter on the other side of the earth from me. But much of my grief was for her: I want to protect her from the pain of an interfaith, cross-cultural marriage. Statistically speaking, such marriages are doomed. Marriage is difficult enough! Don’t do this to yourself! I also hurt for the world. The newspapers were filled with the photos of the tortured Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. My daughter’s boyfriend was grieved, enraged, and unimpressed when I told him that Bush’s popularity had gone down to 37% because of these revelations. “Thirty-seven percent?!!,” he said, “why is not 0%?!!!”

I do not know the ending to the story. My daughter was home for the summer, working. We enjoyed each other’s company. We laughed about the emotional wreck I was in Morocco, even about the time I cursed at her in the taxi. She wants to go back to Morocco and teach, to learn Arabic, to… well, I’m choosing not to think about it. It’s called denial; or, living in the moment.

Working for my multifaith chaplaincy organization doesn’t cost me much. In contrast, if my daughter were to marry a Muslim, she would be waging peace with her own body. I don’t want her to do this. No more than parents want their soldier children sent to Iraq. But can her father and I do anything less than let her go with our blessing?

When the Royal Air Maroc plane lifted up above the Atlantic, I felt release from my savage emotions. The plane was filled with people in traditional Moroccan/Muslim dress, with mothers, fathers, babies. I sat down next to a young American man who was engaged to a woman from Fez. Everything seemed possible, and possibly okay. Sometimes I’m scared and sad, anticipating loss. I crave ice cream, cigarettes, sleep, a good cry. Last year, before she went to Morocco, my daughter wrote an anti-war song called “Peacekeeping War.” It’s on a CD with eight other of her songs. I close my eyes and listen to her sweet voice. I think, “You go, girl!” But I also think, “Oh stay with me, live in my neighborhood, oh, sing to us, there is so much peacekeeping you can do right here at home.”

Melody Takken Meeter is an ordained pastor in the Reformed Church in America (Protestant) and staff chaplain at Lenox Hill Hospital. She has worked as a chaplain in various settings in New York and in Michigan. Her special interests are in hospice/palliative care, medical ethics and end-of-life issues, and spirituality for mental health. She enjoys teaching, preaching, and facilitating small groups. She has led retreats on prayer and is currently developing modules that combine meditation with ancient and contemporary poetry.

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