I started fasting in my teens. As I approach seventy, I have experienced fasting during exams, raising children, working full-time, and now in retirement. This has to be the easiest phase of my fasting career. A lot changes when one is no longer on active duty.
What hasn’t changed—be it when Mommying-during-Ramadan, Empty-nest-Ramadan—is the pre-dawn wake-up call at 3:30 a.m. Drag yourself out of bed, hurry to the kitchen, get the food ready, eat, and then curl up with the Qura’n and a cup of coffee. Watch the clock: 30 minutes to daybreak; 10 minutes—hurry and finish that coffee; 5 minutes: drink water; 1 minute: more water; 0, and the call to prayer sounds from the adhan clock. Stop eating, stop drinking. Fast begins. Say your fajr morning prayers.
What has changed is what happens next.
Decades ago, when I was raising two boys with a full-time job, if I tried to go to bed after fajr prayer, say around 5:30 a.m., by the time I fell asleep, it would be time to wake up, leaving me groggy and grumpy. I’d feed the boys their breakfast, get them off to school, and then make the one-hour drive to work while trying to stay awake. Today, unemployed, and in my empty nest, I just drop into bed and fall into the most blissful sleep. I could sleep the entire morning, but alas, good habits are hard to break. I was born a morning person. Or maybe it was my mother drilling in me: Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Healthy, okay. Wealthy? As to ‘wise,’ don’t look at me. Anyway, there I am, wide awake at 8:00 a.m. What a wasted opportunity! Despite having absolutely nothing on my calendar in the morning—other than writing my blog—I rise. No rest for the rested.
When I was a ‘working woman’, I never got to read the newspaper. I’d catch the news on the car radio, and that was it. Now, I luxuriate in reading the morning paper, as in real paper, the one made out of wood. Surprisingly, I don’t miss my morning coffee. I don’t miss rushing off to work either. I don’t miss ‘work,’ period.
In those years of working 9-to-5, by the middle of the day, during Ramadan, I would—like all ‘fasters’— start feeling hypoglycemic and sleepy. I would make runs to the bathroom to splash cool water over my face to keep myself up. Now, I have the luxury of an afternoon power nap. Or sometimes, a powerful nap. Back then, often a whiff of pizza from a colleague’s desk would beckon my dormant taste buds; now the kitchen stays closed for the day keeping all tempting aromas behind the refrigerator’s closed door.
In the winter months, sundown would occur right in the middle of my commute home. I would end up breaking my fast while driving. We must break our fast at the moment of sundown. One hand on the steering wheel, I’d be fumbling for a date in my pouch and sip of water. The Brooklyn Queens Expressway did not have a shoulder I could pull on to take a five-minute date-break. Besides, who wants to have to explain to a cop when he pulls alongside and asks, “Lady, is everything alright.”
“Yes. I just breaking my fast.”
“You broke what?”
Or maybe he—sorry, could be a she—would say:
“You braked too fast?”
Not the place for an interfaith dialogue.
If you are a cop reading this, I apologize.
Now, in retirement, it doesn’t matter what time the sun sets. I am always in the right place.
What hasn’t changed is the joy of iftars. Pre-pandemic, our evenings were filled with communal gatherings where we would break fast together at sundown, sometimes in the homes, sometimes at the mosque. Always so much food, always the sounds of children squealing, women chatting, pots and pans clanking, and then all quiet when the adhan was called, and people picked up a date to break their fast, with a cool sip of rose-flavored drink. Then everyone would line up for maghrib prayer, and finally, the moment everyone had been waiting for: dinner. The room would fill up with the sounds of forks clinking against china, and laughter. Even COVID couldn’t get in the way of iftars. We found a work-around: virtual iftars, where Zoom has opened up a whole new community to us.
What has changed is how much more I am getting out of Ramadan. Pre-retirement, my fasting was limited to rituals. I believed I was too busy to afford myself the luxury of reflection and seek the spiritual benefits of Ramadan. I missed out on the purpose of fasting: to attain God consciousness. The closest I came to was knowing that I cannot reach for that cookie jar because God has advised me against it. Now I have no excuse. Besides, technology has brought all the resources into my palm: online sermons on the Quran and spirituality by some of the most renowned scholars. A couple of hours a day of listening, and within a week, I feel a shift. Gratitude, humility and a desire to seek God consciousness. That is as far as I have gotten: a desire. If I could just hold onto that.
As I indulge in the luxury of reflection, I think of my fellow Muslims, like the roadside Halal food vendor, who must continue to serve aroma-filled spicy kebabs tempting his tastebuds; my son—a surgeon—who has to be on his feet in the O.R. for hours, no matter the time, even at sundown; or the Uber Eats delivery boy on the bicycle in the heat of the mid-day, perspiring and thirsty. They are the heroes of Ramadan.
I have it easy.
****************************
Order from:
A bookstore near you
and
Amazon (hardcover) Amazon (Kindle) Bookshop.org Barnes & Noble Indiebound
Books-A-Million Target.com Walmart.com
Order here on Amazon for your:
Paperback
Kindle
Hardcover
Audio, narrated by Yours Truly
Or look for it on the shelf of your neighborhood bookstore.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases
**********************************