My mother never baked cookies when we were growing up. She baked sweetened ricotta dumplings, soaked in a thickened, sweet milk and garnished with slivered almonds and pistachios.

Ras malai, a creamy, milky South Asian dessert, is now widely available at Indian restaurants and in the freezer section of Indo-Pak grocers. But in the '80s and '90s, I savored it straight from my mom's kitchen.

Not only is she an extraordinary home cook, she is a master at making the homemade Pakistani desserts of her childhood: gulab jamun -- fried balls of dough in a sweet, rose-tinted syrup; jalebi -- bright orange sticky spirals of fried batter; zarda -- sweet yellow rice with saffron, raisins and nuts; kheer -- a rich rice pudding; and kulfi -- a dense, frozen sweet cream.

My father, from whom I must have inherited my sweet tooth, used to say that dinner didn’t feel complete without dessert. We were equal-opportunity sugarholics: There was always a tub (or two) of Blue Bell ice cream and a Sara Lee pound cake in our freezer.

While I embraced every American dessert I encountered, none provoked the pure ecstasy of my mom’s ras malai.

Then, one day, someone brought tres leches into our home. The airy sponge cake was drenched in three types of milk and topped with whipped cream and fruit. It had a similar mouthfeel to ras malai, but its own distinct flavor palate.

I marveled at this newfound confection.

Tres leches became an important part of our Pakistani family’s traditions. If I was visiting my family in Texas for a celebration or holiday, I knew there would be tres leches. In the years before it landed on the bougie shelves of Whole Foods, we would get it from Fiesta -- a loud, eclectic Mexican grocery store chain in Houston.

Imagine my shock when I recently discovered the Ras Malai Tres Leches at Sweet Reserve Bakery in Lombard, Illinois. It’s described as a "super-moist sponge cake infused with cardamom and soaked in saffron three milks, topped with a cardamom-based whipped cream." They also have a gulab jamun cheesecake.

This is American ingenuity at its finest.

On Instagram, I saw someone making chicken tikka mac and cheese for Thanksgiving. A friend posted on Facebook that he was eating lunch at a ramen restaurant in D.C. that was owned by Mexicans, who were playing hip-hop music.

This blending and blurring and borrowing of cultures is a big part of what makes America great. We have more international migrants than any other country. By and large, we’re happy to embrace foods, festivals and cultures that are different from our own.

I saw this recently when I attended Dia de los Muertos celebrations in San Antonio. Some were on the same day as the city’s spectacular Diwali festival. I saw women with painted skeleton faces wearing floral crowns walking among the spectators in saris cheering the bhangra dancers.

I took in these scenes in joy -- we don’t just coexist, we co-celebrate, I thought.

Of course, this is the rosy side of the American story I like to tell myself and share with others. We’re also the same country that elects leaders who say immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country. We want our diversity contained to sparkly festivals and tasty foods -- not introduced into our boardrooms or our classrooms.

We will tolerate -- even admire -- culture differences until it’s more convenient to scapegoat those who carry those cultures.

We’re in a profoundly dichotomous American moment of both rising cultural fusion and growing xenophobia. It’s not as simple as one being a reaction to the other. There’s an unwillingness to connect a thing we enjoy to the humanity of the person behind it. That’s why some may love my mom’s homemade ras malai while also calling her a terrorist raghead.

But you can never truly appreciate a food, a style, a music or a culture without valuing its people.

My mom’s desserts made an indelible impression on my childhood not just because they tasted delicious. I could tell she made them with pride and love.

The ras malai was a way to share a part of her immigrant self with her American children.

Brad M. Edwards did not know much about childbirth when his partner got pregnant in 2017.

He was excited -- and nervous -- when he learned they were expecting twins. He figured they would go to the hospital, have the babies and bring them home.

“It was a normal pregnancy -- until it wasn’t,” he said.

Her water broke prematurely. She went to the hospital. She delivered their son stillborn. A week later, she was back in the hospital.

They lost their other son, as well.

“I wasn’t prepared at all,” Edwards, now 38, said.

The loss opened his eyes to the risks of maternal and infant mortality, which affect Black women at a much higher rate than others. (Edwards and his partner are Black.) Black women in Missouri die at 2.5 times the rate as white women during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum.

From 2017 to 2021, 349 women in Missouri died within a year of giving birth. Of those deaths, 4 out of 5 were deemed preventable, according to a multiyear review on maternal mortality by Missouri's Department of Health and Senior Services. Black infants born in Missouri are more than twice as likely to die as white infants, according to DHSS.

When his partner got pregnant again in 2019, Edwards did his homework. He went to the doctor’s appointments and asked questions. One of his friends, Kyra Betts, is an experienced doula who had put together a symposium on childbirth and postpartum issues, so Edwards reached out to her for information and guidance.

He learned about potential risk factors, from preeclampsia to dangerous oxygen levels to placental abruption -- “so I would never be helpless in the delivery room,” he said.

The couple's daughter was born in 2020. A year later, they had a son, using a doula as part of the delivery.

A doula is trained to provide emotional and physical support and information to families during major life events, such as pregnancy, childbirth, the postpartum period, miscarriage or abortion. There are many different types of doulas, including those supporting and advocating for women during birth or after birth, during bed rest for high-risk pregnancies, after an infant loss, during abortion procedures or helping to connect people in a community to health care resources.

Given how much a doula helped Edwards’ family, he started working on a way to make this training available to more Black men.

“I want men to understand: This isn’t just a woman thing,” he said. “This is about the family unit as a whole.”

He asked Betts, who is a policy doula working on maternal and infant policy for Generate Health STL, if she could design doula training specifically for men. She was initially surprised by the request. Less than 6% of certified doulas in America are men, according to employment statistics.

But as they discussed the idea, Betts realized that it made perfect sense. Her mission is improving maternal and infant outcomes: “What better space to start than right at the beginning?” she said.

She and a colleague started building a curriculum for a six-week training program that would cover fertility, pregnancy, infant care and postpartum issues.

The Dads to Doulas program began on Oct. 1. The courses, a mix of in-person and virtual sessions, are free to the public.

Similar programs are taking roots in other cities, as well. A Kansas City-based nonprofit, Fathers Assisting Mothers, offers a four-week Dad Doula Bootcamp that covers everything from conception to postpartum care for fathers to support their partners.

Betts said there are some embedded beliefs in the Black community about childbirth that her program tries to address.

One such misconception is that childbirth isn't dangerous; she relies on statistics to illustrate the risks. Another is that postpartum depression is a “new-age thing” -- people will tell her that for generations, mothers had babies and never suffered from PPD. Betts asks them to consider the things they may not have witnessed.

“They may not have had the language to call it postpartum depression, but they still experienced it,” she said.

In some cases, she hears misinformed beliefs regarding the health care system. Some people take a doctor’s word as gospel; others won’t believe anything a doctor tells them.

She believes the healthiest place to be is “somewhere in the middle” of that spectrum.

Edwards said connecting with other engaged fathers has been a life-changing experience. During the process of creating the Dads to Doulas program, he discovered that he had never dealt with the infant loss he'd experienced years ago. He was so focused on being strong for his partner and his parents that he didn’t take the time to grieve.

Working on the program has given him that opportunity to process.

“It’s been my way of healing from my loss,” Edwards said.

The mother of an 11-year-old girl, upset in the aftermath of the recent election, told me how hard it had been to explain the outcome to her anxious young child.

“You’re lucky your children are older,” she said.

The last time Donald J. Trump was elected, my son was 11 years old. He was scared that the country’s newly elected leader might try to deport his father, who was a British citizen at the time. (Shortly thereafter, I convinced my husband it was time to become an American.)

Our older child was 13. Both were old enough to be aware that something significant had shifted in the country’s political landscape, and to be worried about what it meant.

That shift would lead to the mishandling of a pandemic -- and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths -- along with the loss of women’s bodily autonomy and the rise of vulgarity and bigotry in the public discourse.

Eight years ago, I felt like I had to be strong and hopeful for my children. I wanted to be a voice of hope and encouragement for my readers and my community. Some of the things I wrote during that administration provoked plenty of racist vitriol. But it felt important to speak out against harmful policies and to say that we were better than the ugly, divisive rhetoric of the times.

This time, I have no such illusions.

A convicted felon, whom a jury found liable for sexual abuse and who promised mass deportations of people he has called “animals,” will soon lead this country. Those of us who were appalled by this candidate’s character, past behavior and vision for the country have a few immediate decisions to make: How does this election shake out in our personal relationships? How does this influence where we want to live and the work we do? How do we plan to fight for the things we care deeply about -- whether it’s democracy, human rights, health care, education or even simple decency?

For me, it’s striking how different this time around feels. On our last go-around on this chaos train, I felt compelled to defend what I thought were the ideals and values of this country. But with this election, a majority of voters revealed what their values actually are.

For those of us used to looking for silver linings and seeing the good in everyone, we need to be prepared to see and accept another truth: You can’t make people care about others.

I admire the people who have redoubled their commitment to activism in the dark times ahead. I also understand those who feel the need to disengage, draw their circle closer and focus on their own safety.

I know that hope is vital to surviving difficult times, but I’ve struggled to find it. Based on the conversations I’ve had (and witnessed) this past year, I believe that the distrust between those on opposite sides of the political spectrum will continue to grow even greater over the next several years.

My biggest fear is living in a society where the majority of people can no longer tell the difference between truth and lies. History is filled with dark lessons about what can happen. I’ve thought a lot about what this political moment means for my profession -- for those of us who believe in sharing truth in a post-truth world.

I have found some comfort in connecting with communities and people who share my concerns and values. And I think writing stories and columns that give people a chance to feel seen, especially when the world refuses to recognize their humanity, matters.

Maybe it matters now more than it ever did before.

I worry about the country and world my children are inheriting.

That frightened 11-year-old in 2016 is now a 19-year-old sophomore in college. He was more concerned about my feelings on election night this time around.

He sent me a text when the outcome became pretty clear: “I love you. Inshallah everything will turn out well in the future.”