Love in a Global Village: A Celebration of Intercultural Families in the Midwest

I Spin Around You: Karen & Aria

I spin around you karen& aria Karen and Aria. Photo by Lauren Smith. ne of the first things we notice about Karen Holmberg and Aria Minu-Sepehr is how easily they tell us their stories. When they describe how they met, for example, we are interested not only in the exactness of the details they offer but in the collaborative way that they relate those facts to us: if it is Karen who supplies the year they met, then Aria knows the month, the day; if Karen knows the time of day, then it is Aria who pins down the exact hour and offers details of what each was wearing. Karen Holmberg and Aria Minu-Sepehr met, as it happens, on January 18, 1994, in a student trailer park in Irvine, California. Late that Friday afternoon, Karen (lot b 13) was looking for a neighbor who had promised to fix her bike tire; in his absence, Aria (lot a 37) offered, in impeccable, slightly formal English, to help her. “Fixing the bike took hours,” Karen says, smiling. “Now I know it takes hours for Aria to do anything, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so flattered, but he kept making these small changes, having me ride in a circle around him so he could inspect the angle of my hips, make sure the bike seat was adjusted properly.” Karen, who says she was wearing a short black skirt at the time, estimates that she must have ridden a hundred times around Aria on that first meeting. “Really, the tire just needed some air,” Aria remarks mildly. At first glance Karen, who was a graduate student in the m.f.a. program at uc–Irvine, assumed that Aria was an exchange student — guessed that he was young, didn’t speak English well, wouldn’t be in the country much longer. This may be one reason that she, by her own account, flirted with him so boldly on that first encounter. He was a handsome and temporary part of the 2 { I Spin Around You } O landscape, their flirtation an afternoon’s diversion. However, it wasn’t long before she discovered her mistake — that this attractive man was articulate, close to her own age, and a native of Iran but a long-term resident of the United States. Karen also explains that her audacity was connected to a mysterious understanding that arose between them right away. “He seemed very familiar to me on one level, as if I was meeting him again after a long time, but at the same time he was totally alien. He belonged to this other culture, had an accent. He was dark; I was fair. He wasn’t like anybody I’d ever met, yet I felt immediately that I recognized him.” She pauses to think about those old feelings. “That was confusing, powerfully confusing. But it all got decided very quickly.” How quickly? we ask. “That was Friday,” Karen says. “He went away for the weekend , and on Monday we went for a walk. We were sitting on a rock behind our trailers and he put his hand on my hand. ‘Well, I guess it’s settled then,’ he said. ‘I guess it is,’ I said.” What did you mean? we ask Aria. “That we had the same sense of purpose,” he replies. “The purpose was to be together,” Karen adds, meaning that they were both interested in each other, that they both wanted to have a relationship, give it a try; but in retrospect that simple statement takes on a deeper meaning. Even to us, who have known the couple only a short while, and mostly through e-mail correspondence , their meeting seems fated. Karen is almost apologetic for describing her relationship in what she perceives as sentimental terms, but she doesn’t need to be. We are astonished by how much these two people know about each other. They tell their stories about their childhoods together, { Karen & Aria } 3 as though they had lived those childhoods together, sometimes turning to address each other rather than us. Much of what they recount, they tell us with relish, in graceful, almost scripted, dialogue . It is great fun to listen to them talk — Aria with dark expressive eyes and smile lines that arc down the sides of his face, always cheerfully ironic, ready for an adventure or a laugh; Karen awake to all the particulars of every...