Maman
My mother has a look on her face when she walks by herself in the park. I know cause I spy on her sometimes. I watch her watch TV. I watch her do things her way, like pouring palmfuls of water on the handle of the faucet, one palm after the other, a splash to a last soapy spot. In the past eight months I had more occasion to observe my mother than the first eighteen years of my life when I lived with her lastly.
She picks flowers, always. She's a kleptomaniac of pretty things that grow on soil. No stroll ends empty handed. Lilacs now in Istanbul and before I left the house there was a tea glass on the coffee table with a sprig in it. A baby tulip on the kitchen table. Dried twigs in vases. The only time she visited me in Montreal last May she scouted for species she may not know. Together we stole from chez les neighbours if the precious was irresistible. We left a bulb with Masoud as we drove to the airport.
Maman walks in tiny Chinese lady steps. She has sway. Swing. Undulation. Something about the way she moves is too familiar, too in contrast with my own. My hasty, determined steps reap through crowds. When I walk there are patches of grey and green, pools of movement all in one blurry fast forward.
I escape. I am a serial fugitive.
"I cannot commit to anything, anywhere, anyone!" I sob in the living room. It is true. My heart is always on the move. I am already late, too late to catch up with the moment I am in.
It is always my turn to blame her. The more I stick around her, her apartment, her way of being herself, the more I am sinking into the soft clay that is her love. I know her, I feel her, I am connected to her like a desperate Borg in a Star Trek à la Turca.
"What is it that you fear so much?" I ask her. She's distracted. Always. She goes and brings a box of chocolate. I don't like chocolate. I don't like eating when I cry. She really wants to soothe my worries but most of all she just wants this moment to disappear. My mother, she wishes some things never happened, she questions how two things fall together at the wrong time. "Sırası mıydı şimdi?" (This isn't a good time).
She is disarmed. Her only daughter is glass shards glistening black against this lovely spring day in Istanbul. My mother tells me about the probable origin of her fears. I listen. We do have a family secret after all. How could it be, how impossible it looks that for years we never talked about this. How did I overlook this? My mother has lived in hushes and ignores. My mother has learned to pretend what is actually isn't. My mother has played along at the expense of truth.
But maman is truth embodied. Maman is a giant spider in whose web I am entangled, always. My mother sat me down when I was a little girl and drew for me fallopian tubes and the ovary to explain to me how and why women menstruate. My mother scolded my father for discouraging the nascent driver in me and got off the car on a highway, making me drive for the very first time between Mugla and Izmir when I was 18. As I sobbed in the living room my mother held my hands and told me there are arteries and varicose veins and I know in my heart what to let go of and in which direction to flow. "I want you to be happy." she said. "My happiness may be scandalous to you, your values, friends, relatives…" I said. "Perhaps." she said. "Despite us, be happy."
She picks flowers, always. She's a kleptomaniac of pretty things that grow on soil. No stroll ends empty handed. Lilacs now in Istanbul and before I left the house there was a tea glass on the coffee table with a sprig in it. A baby tulip on the kitchen table. Dried twigs in vases. The only time she visited me in Montreal last May she scouted for species she may not know. Together we stole from chez les neighbours if the precious was irresistible. We left a bulb with Masoud as we drove to the airport.
Maman walks in tiny Chinese lady steps. She has sway. Swing. Undulation. Something about the way she moves is too familiar, too in contrast with my own. My hasty, determined steps reap through crowds. When I walk there are patches of grey and green, pools of movement all in one blurry fast forward.
I escape. I am a serial fugitive.
"I cannot commit to anything, anywhere, anyone!" I sob in the living room. It is true. My heart is always on the move. I am already late, too late to catch up with the moment I am in.
It is always my turn to blame her. The more I stick around her, her apartment, her way of being herself, the more I am sinking into the soft clay that is her love. I know her, I feel her, I am connected to her like a desperate Borg in a Star Trek à la Turca.
"What is it that you fear so much?" I ask her. She's distracted. Always. She goes and brings a box of chocolate. I don't like chocolate. I don't like eating when I cry. She really wants to soothe my worries but most of all she just wants this moment to disappear. My mother, she wishes some things never happened, she questions how two things fall together at the wrong time. "Sırası mıydı şimdi?" (This isn't a good time).
She is disarmed. Her only daughter is glass shards glistening black against this lovely spring day in Istanbul. My mother tells me about the probable origin of her fears. I listen. We do have a family secret after all. How could it be, how impossible it looks that for years we never talked about this. How did I overlook this? My mother has lived in hushes and ignores. My mother has learned to pretend what is actually isn't. My mother has played along at the expense of truth.
But maman is truth embodied. Maman is a giant spider in whose web I am entangled, always. My mother sat me down when I was a little girl and drew for me fallopian tubes and the ovary to explain to me how and why women menstruate. My mother scolded my father for discouraging the nascent driver in me and got off the car on a highway, making me drive for the very first time between Mugla and Izmir when I was 18. As I sobbed in the living room my mother held my hands and told me there are arteries and varicose veins and I know in my heart what to let go of and in which direction to flow. "I want you to be happy." she said. "My happiness may be scandalous to you, your values, friends, relatives…" I said. "Perhaps." she said. "Despite us, be happy."
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