ShamimSarif's blog

Hello Shamim’s fans and happy 2013.

It has become a tradition that once a year I take over Shamim’s blog to do a guest blog. But I did not do so last year as my lovely wife has not been blogging. I sympathise just a little bit, as I have not stopped loading her with even more things to do. So my Renaissance Wife and Superwoman Shamim could not make time to write many blogs last year. She promises that this will change (though her workload will not!) and I hope she does, for all of our sakes, as it is a waste of her amazing talent not to write. Anyone can do all the other things in life that we all do but few are blessed to have the creativity and poetry to write and direct as beautifully and elegantly as Shamim does.

I’ve also been accused in the past (and rightly so, if I may add) of my very long lists of To Dos.

So, instead, I decided to summarise my thoughts – the things we’ve learned along the way, ideas and things we aspire to be – and yes – to do this ALL in one single chart. On a plane last summer, it all came to me suddenly and I started drawing and writing ferociously, while Shamim stared at me, worried I had lost my sanity.

And then, voila, I gave Shamim the “Sarif-Kattan Life Mastery” to give me her input and feedback and to share it with our boys. Thankfully one of our lovely interns was able to re-create it for me on her computer and when I presented it to the boys, Ethan looked at it and immediately declared that it did not make much sense and that it did not flow as it should!

As she is always thinking of her fans, my lovely wife then decided it would be a lovely gift to share with her fans in case it inspires – or confuses!

Regardless of the outcome, I can’t now be accused of being long-winded with long spread sheets and a list of to dos. I managed to summarise our philosophy and what we aspire to be, do and have into one page, which is not as simple as it looks. So I congratulate myself for this achievement. Shamim still can’t get over how I managed to turn one simple sheet into one that is so complex.  Luckily for me, and after all the teasing, she really appreciates it; or at least, I think she does!

So Happy New Year and I hope my very simple, easy to understand and definitely not confusing Sarif-Kattan Life Mastery chart will inspire you even through the confusion! Enjoy and feel free to share.

Today is our eldest son Ethan’s 14th birthday. It’s an enchanting age. If you find listening to dubstep remixes on the way to school and eating spaghetti by sucking up one strand at a time enchanting, that is. It is also somewhat bizarre to tell off someone who is quite a bit taller than you and it’s also the first time in a lot of years that I’ve kissed someone and was left with a moustache burn. I’m just not that sort of lesbian. But I digress.

Back to Ethan. This morning, he wanted to know exactly what time he was born.

’9.45 am’ I replied without hesitation. He was impressed with the sharpness of my recollection especially since I am prone to wander around the house most mornings looking for car keys that are in my hand. But that was an easy question, to be fair, because nothing can erase from my mind the memory of Hanan’s organisational skills around our son’s birth – organisation that, in fact, began years before conception.

Not long after we had fallen in love, she turned to me with a toss of her curly head and declared that she would be having a child when she turned 36. I may have missed that part in ‘I Can’t Think Straight’.

‘That’s three years away,’ I said, puzzled.

‘I just wanted you to be aware. Because it’s happening, with or without you.’

And they say romance is dead.

Refusing to bow to dismay, I made a decision to take this as a vote of confidence in my potential as a partner and a parent. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure she actually meant it.

Three years later, on the day after Hanan’s 36th birthday, we were on a train somewhere when an electronic ping broke the hushed silence of the carriage. You can possibly imagine that fifteen years ago, Hanan was one of only 20 people on the planet who used an electronic organiser. Everyone looked up as she whipped out her Palm Pilot (remember those?)

‘Oh, I almost forgot!’ she said, reading the calendar with relief.

Forgot what? I wondered to myself. To book dinner? To get a haircut? To buy me flowers, perchance?

‘To have a baby,’ she announced. You would have heard a pin drop in the carriage, if I hadn’t been hyperventilating.

And the rest is history, I thought, as we sat next to our two strapping sons as they inhaled popcorn all the way through Les Miserables in the cinema, thoughtfully waiting for Anne Hathaway to pause in lip-quivering tears to tip the last remains of their snacks crunchily into their mouths. Ah, romance. I’m sure it is alive and well. I guess I just need to look harder to find out where…

The Sarif-Kattan family celebrate a birthday shortly before the cake disappears by inhalation.

C’est magnifique! I was privileged to have my birthday in Paris this year. We came. We saw. We ate. And we made a vlog. Enjoy!

If you ever wondered how Hanan would look in an elf hat playing guitar, your journey ends here. This is a fun ecard we got from a couple of fans in the UK. A big thank you to them (not sure if I can name them!) for making us all laugh in the Sarif-Kattan household!

Thank you to all of you who voted for I Can’t Think Straight as AfterEllen’s Best Lesbian/Bi movie. Out of a hundred titles and more, we made it to number 2 (after ‘Imagine Me & You’, a great movie too). The World Unseen came in 17th, a good showing, but it tells me that a lot more people need to get to know Amina and Miriam

Thanks for your support and have a great evening.