My junior year in boarding school, I complained to my mother, “The other mothers send their girls care packages.”
My mother asked what they put inside these packages. I thought her inquiry was encouraging, and I replied, “Oh all kinds of things. Homemade cookies, maybe a pair of socks, a letter with news from home.”
The Stoner Drive house was only twenty minutes away from the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, so it probably seemed absurd to her that I would want her to send me news from home. And my mother did not bake cookies.
“Go down to the Cheese Shoppe in West Hartford Center and order yourself a monthly care package and have it delivered,” she said matter-of-factly. So I did.
She didn’t give me a budget so I chose quite a few things. An entire David Glass flourless chocolate cake, an assortment of cookies and chocolates, cheese biscuits, and other specialty items. My friends and I would eagerly await my “care package” which would arrive like clock work on the 10th of every month.
We looked something like this in our school uniforms.
Here’s a photo from the Ethel Walker years. The Diet Coke can dates the photo. Before I arranged for the care package from the Cheese Shoppe, we would snack on Milk Duds.
During these years, my parents would travel back and forth to Pakistan with some regularity. So a few months later when my mother left for Pakistan, I suggested that she might consider sending me a letter regularly. “The other mothers write to their girls.”
By now my father had hired a secretary to handle his business affairs from the Connecticut house. Puchi and I were in school, and while my parents had many chores for us when we were kids, they also valued a good education. My mother asked my father’s secretary, Mrs. Murphy, to purchase several hallmark cards which she wrote out in advance of leaving for Pakistan. She then asked Mrs. Murphy to mail me one per month, in no particular order.
I appreciated the gesture, but I think she missed my point. I would get these random cards every month, without any context of her current environment. They would say things like, “Hope your studies are going well. Thinking of you kiddo.” Or “Some mail for your box. Hope all is well at school.”
A few years later, my mother took me to College. I went to Newcomb College at Tulane University for my first year. Before she left New Orleans, she wrote me a post card. “Mail for your box before I leave.” It’s postmarked August 22, 1985. “Hope you have a happy time. It’s going to be difficult for me going home alone, but that’s how it goes. Thank God for everybody there and I know we will miss you although we are being blasé and brave. Have a good time kid and come through happy, healthy, and proud.”
Leaving Pakistan 