Celine Salloum

I’ve spent the past week traveling through time, revisiting six years through the portal of memoir. October 20, 2013, the day I walked into my parents’ house to find a small puppy, one week old, crawling around the corners of the house, mom and my brother chasing him; a scene that hits me awkwardly, making me laugh but at the same time glad to see how happy we all were to have a new pet in the house. Since my brother and I were born, dad used to raise dogs, as hunting was his favorite hobby, and he introduced it to my brother, who never looked back to become a member of the Lebanese Shooting and Hunting Federation for several years. He even turned out to be more addicted than dad was. We spent the first month with our dog “Max” just trying to clean after his mess at home, up until he was ready to be left outside in the garden where he has his own house and space for moving around as much as he wants. Dad made it a routine to take care of his needs and feed him once every day in

Back in 2011, I wrote a story about my relationship with my mother, about how this global phenomenon is important in every woman’s life; and being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in all fields, since the payment is pure love. Why does love always seem to require sacrifice? Was sacrifice a necessary component of love? Were the words actually synonymous? Today, and after years passed by, after graduating from university, starting a job and after getting married, my mother is still the same mother I know since day one, except that I now see her in a different perspective. Different doesn’t mean a bad thing, but a more mature perception. For me, the creation of any novel or story or even an article is a bit like I visualize childbirth to be: a process of anticipation, fear, unending exhaustion, and eventually, exhilaration…an experience that will be engraved in us till forever. There are stories that are discovered, and others that rise from mysterious, un