Everyday Treasures

The best thing about a delayed flight is that it means more time in the airport bookstore.

Last month, on my way up to Istanbul to meet my newborn niece, I spent almost four hours waiting for what would be just over an hour-long flight.  And so, naturally, off to D&R I went.  

I’d already made a gift for Baby Nil - a pair of tiny onesies on which I’d doodled her name and “Cutest girl in Istanbul.”  And I couldn’t resist a few extras I’d found at the pazar:  “My auntie loves me” and “My mom is super, but my auntie is something else!”  (It’s convenient that my “Turkish sister”, Didem, is an only child like me - I have no other auntie-competition!”)  I’d also been thinking about getting Didem a book - something along the lines of “What to Expect the First Year”, so I headed up to the cashier and, guessing at the translation of the title, asked if they had anything along those lines. 

Bookshop Girl quickly located the one I was looking for, but one glance at its 800+ pages told me this wasn’t a book Didem would have the patience for.  I paused, wondering if it was silly to even be looking for a book for her - she’s much more the “ask Uncle Google” type anyway.  But no, I decided, she has grown up and is a mom now and wants to do the best job possible.  Surely a resource like this would be helpful.  Maybe just one with more pictures and less pages...  

We pulled a couple of others off the shelf - less daunting, more visual ones along the same lines as “What to Expect”, as well as a couple of those “Baby’s First Year” journals and photo books.  But would Didem actually sit and write about the day they brought Nil home from the hospital, what Aunt Dilek bought for a baby gift, and about their first attempt at solid food?  Doubtful.  Pretty sure this kid’s life is going to be more of a Facebook documentary.  

I finally settled on a visual-but-informative hardcover book called “Motherhood and Baby Care.”  It had all the standard fare of baby food recipes, sleeping positions and what to do with diaper rashes.  Same price as “What to Expect” but less daunting and, equally important, way less bulk to have to squeeze into my backpack.  I paid for the book (and maybe one more for myself....) and had it gift-wrapped, satisfied with my contribution to my little niece’s upbringing.

It was after two in the morning when I finally arrived at Didem and Bülent’s.  “It’s okay,” my sweet sister whispered as I kissed her hello. “These days, we’re always up at this hour anyway.”  

I tiptoed into the living room where a perfect little three-week-old peanut lay swaddled in a hammock, eyes glazed but still awake.  I planted an awestruck kiss on her forehead and then sat and just stared at her while Didem spread sheets and a pillow on the couch for me.  

“I hope your ear is plugged up tonight,” Didem whispered.  “She doesn’t stay this cute all night long.”

Between exhaustion from the journey and the earplugs I’d been wise to pack, I slept straight through til ten.  When I woke up, I could hear female voices coming from the bedroom.  Groggy and contact-less, I padded down the hall to see who the visitor was, and smiled when I made out the kind face and silvery-blond hair of Bahriye Abla, Didem’s mother-in-law.  The two of them were bent over Nil, changing her diaper together.

“I’ll just wash my face and then I’ll come kiss you,” I whispered.  She smiled.  I’ve always liked her.

When I emerged, Bahriye Abla was at the kitchen window with a cigarette.  I chatted with her while she finished it and then we joined Didem in the living room where she had Nil laid out on a receiving blanket on the couch.

“Can you show me again how to swaddle her?” Didem asked with a pout.  “When you do it, she stays in there, but when I do it, half an hour later, her arms are all over the place.”

“I’ll tell you, but you’re going to do it yourself,” said the older woman quietly, smiling down at her grand-daughter.  “Put her a little further to the right, and then grab that corner and pull it across her.”  Didem did as she was told, pinning the baby’s left arm against her body.  “Good, now roll her up a bit and tuck it under.  Yes, like that.”   

Nil scrunched up her face and made a fist with her free hand, clearly not happy about all the rolling and pinning.  

Following Bahriye Abla’s instructions, Didem grabbed the bottom of the blanket and folded it upwards, then took the left side and tucked Nil’s other arm down along her side, and then brought the blanket across her body, tucking it under her left side.  And voila!  A snug little bundle.  With her white cap on her tiny head, she reminded me of the Glow Worm I had as a kid - the one that lit up when you squeezed it but was actually not cuddly at all, thanks to the battery pack in its belly.  

“See how calm she is now?” said Bahriye Abla.  “Think about how she was in your womb - all tightly curled up in there, feeling you on every side.  Now she’s out and doesn’t know what to do with all the freedom, with her arms flailing everywhere.  You need to make her feel safe, like she was inside.”

Didem looked up at Bahriye Abla with a half-smile.  “Well, we’ll see if I can do it again when you’re not here every day...”

“You can and you will,” she said reassuringly.  I was enjoying watching the exchange between these two.  It was so unlike so many “my daughter-in-law will never be as good as me at _______ (making lentil soup, washing windows, loving my son) ” scenarios I’ve seen here in Turkey.  The more I got to know her, the more Bahriye Abla was proving to be an unusual treasure.

“Now she’s all set for you to put her to sleep.  Get the pillow.”  Bahriye Abla picked up the little glow worm while Didem got situated on the couch.  She arranged the pillows behind her back (those patterned pillows on that blue-grey L-shaped couch that we - along with both sets of parents - spent a million hours picking out in the furniture store before the wedding two years ago), stretched out her legs and put a little blue flowered pillow just above her feet.  Bahriye Able carefully set Nil down in the crook between Didem’s legs, the pillow cushioning the upper half of her body.  

“Your feet are a little too open - put them together a bit.”  Didem obeyed.  “Okay, now you can rock her.”

I glanced around the living room.  The baby hammock sat in one corner, a little foam anti-reflux incline bed laid across it.  Behind the couch, a musical baby swing was stashed.  But here, with a motion I’ve seen in a hundred living rooms all over Turkey, Didem started rocking her feet back and forth, Nil’s head snug in the pillow, her body swaying gently from side to side.  Village or city, conservative or secular, the foolproof tradition passed down through generations prevailed over modern contraptions, it would seem.

I thought back a few months to the time I was on a plane that sat queued on the tarmac for a good half hour, a young mom in the back trying hopelessly to get her baby boy to stop wailing.  The flight attendants took turns bouncing him up and down the aisle and blankets and toys were passed back from other passengers with kids, but the infant kept screaming.  The mom was amazingly calm, considering her child was the unmutable soundtrack for a whole plane full of people.  I was trying to read, distracted by the baby’s crying, praying for peace for him - and the rest of us - from ten rows up.  

Then all of a sudden, as if someone had flipped the “off” switch, he stopped crying.  Wondering what had finally been the magic trick that calmed him, I turned around in my seat and looked up the aisle.  And laughed in wonder.  There was the mom, sitting on the floor in the back of the plane, rocking her baby on her outstretched legs.  Just like that, no more crying.  Wanting to make sure he was out for good, she began to sing a lullaby, and her voice, like an angel’s, mesmerized the entire plane into a hush.  The flight attendants let her stay down there as we started to taxi, right up until the moment she had to put her seatbelt on for takeoff.  But the Magic Turkish Leg Cradle had done the trick, and we didn’t hear a whimper for the rest of the flight.

Nil wasn’t quite as easily pacified and started to fuss a bit. 

“Remember,” Bahriye Abla whispered, “she has to feel safe.  Put your hand on her belly if she starts to cry - it will calm her down.”  

Didem did as she was told, and within a few minutes, Nil went from fussy to drowsy to conked out.  She slowed her rocking down, letting the baby fall into a deep sleep.  

“Great ab workout, huh?” I said.  

“It really is,” she agreed.  “I’ll lose this baby weight in no time!”

When Nil had been transferred to her hammock, I grabbed my phone and snapped a couple of pictures of her angel face.  

“Just don’t put them on Facebook or anything,” Didem said.  “We’re waiting until her fortieth day.  You know, the evil eye...”

I nodded.  And then stifled a laugh when she asked me to iMessage her the pictures so she could Whatsapp them to her mom, her aunts and her best friend.  Apparently the media ban only applied to those who hadn’t already seen Nil in person.**

The rest of the afternoon passed in a stream of conversation between mother and daughter-in-law about everything from how to use the little snot-sucking gizmo to clean Nil’s stuffy nose to rubbing salt water on her eyes to clean out the goop in the corners to why cotton balls in water are better than baby wipes.  And I marveled as my normally headstrong, independent little sister took in all the wisdom she could, making a few notes on her phone, with a strong peppering of “I’m so glad you live so close” and “I couldn’t do this without you’s” mixed in.

That night at supper, I glanced up and noticed a book on the bookshelf:  “Pregnancy and Motherhood.”  I thought of the neatly gift-wrapped book in my suitcase.

“Hey, did you read that book?” I asked Didem, pointing to the shelf.  

“I read most of it,” she said.  “But it wasn’t super helpful.  You could tell it was a foreign book translated into Turkish, but it didn’t fit with our culture at all. What Turk is going to follow a feeding chart?” 

She had a point.

Once Bülent was home, I pulled a package wrapped in Winnie the Pooh paper out of my suitcase and presented it to my sister and brother-in-law.  

“Winnie the Pooh was my favourite as a kid!” Didem giggled.  “I loved Piglet the most. And sometimes I call Nil ‘Piglet' for fun.”  She held the paper up closer and squinted at it.  “What kind of an animal is Piglet, anyway?”

I told her.  And watched her chocolate-brown Muslim eyes grow wide.  She dissolved into embarrassed laughter as Bülent glared at her in mock disapproval.  

“Shall we?”  She held up the package, changing the subject.

Together they tore into the present.  After the appropriate oohing and aahing over Nil’s personalized onesies, Didem immediately set about snapping a photo collage and posting it on Facebook.

The other present stayed in my suitcase the whole weekend.  

Cousin Filiz came over the next night and, upon declaring that the house felt like a hamam, told the new parents that they should turn the radiators down because, contrary to popular Turkish belief, you really can overheat a baby.  The next hour was spent discussing how she’d gotten little Atakan to finally sleep through the night, and showing Didem how to tear off Nil’s tiny fingernails without having to use the clippers.  The night after that, Aunt Nazlı and her daughter Özlem arrived, cookies and presents in tow, and expounded on the secret to preventing baby acne - washing the baby’s face in her mother’s milk - and listing the things Didem needed to arrange in preparation for Nil’s fortieth day Qu’ran reading.

Now I was even more certain I’d made the right choice about the book.  Turns out, around here, even if you live in a fancy apartment with a doorman and order take-out on the internet and Facetime your best friend to show her how much your daughter has already grown in three weeks, it still takes a village.  Not a bookstore.  Not even Uncle Google.

I was grateful for the D&R gift receipt tucked away in my wallet.  And I bet that mommy book would be right around the same price as the new Orhan Pamuk novel they just translated into English....

**Nil is now two months old and the online photo frenzy is well underway!  Just in case you thought I was breaking the rules... :)

If the severity of a winter can be predicted by the number of autumn days in which one can comfortably sit out on the balcony in bare feet and a t-shirt, as I am now, I’d say we’re in for a treat.

It’s 4:10 PM and the sun’s going to set in half an hour, or so I’m told.  This whole darkness-before-five thing makes it feel like winter’s come all of a sudden, even though it hasn’t come at all.  We were spoiled with an extra few weeks of an extra golden hour when our government decided, for some mystifying reason, to delay Daylight Savings Time by two weeks in order to “not cause confusion” on Election Day last Sunday.  (With the confusion inflicted on smartphone users and airport goers nationwide, I’m not sure they achieved their goal.  To quote my Turkish dad’s Facebook post the day his phone automatically flipped over along with the rest of Europe:  “For the love of God, can someone please tell me what time it is in Turkey?!?”)

In my previous life as a west coast Canadian, this would be the perfect summer evening.  It was a 25 degree day of the windows-wide-open, brunch on the balcony, laundry-dries-in-two-hours variety.  I’ve been outside enjoying the last bit of sunlight, my impending move inside prompted not by the need for a hoodie so much as the fact that smoke from my neighbour’s barbecue is wafting my direction and I’m starting to smell like grilled fish.  

Living in southern Turkey, where summer pretty much lasts until winter, this autumn-lover has had to enforce my own seasonal boundaries based on the calendar and not the thermometer.  It may still be sunburn weather outside, but come December I’ll be wanting to put up my Christmas tree, so if I don’t carve out my own fall haven in November - crisp, chilly air or not - I’ll just plain miss my favourite season altogether.  And that would be a crying shame.

I’ve written before about my habit of “summoning autumn” by starting to wear jeans in September, even though it’s still hotter than a hamam outside.  And how I take my cues from my internal cultural calendar and my online world instead of the world outside my window.  (Pumpkin patch pictures on Facebook?  Caramel apple everything on the food blogs?  I’m in.)  Before the last figs and peaches have faded from the pazar, my fall mug is out, my Caramel Pumpkin Latte candle is burning, and I’m well onto my second or third apple crisp.  You’ve got to seize the season (and at least pretend it exists) or those sneaky gingerbread men will appear before the leaves have even turned.

This year I’ve paid extra close attention to all the little “season-markers” as we’ve moved from sweltering summer to this pretender of a Mediterranean autumn.  The first week of October saw me making my first oatmeal, despite the fact that a cold smoothie would have been far more appropriate.  The week after that, I started sleeping with my windows closed, and a few days later, with socks on.  But only at night.  Socks for reals didn’t come for a good two more weeks, and then only because I was going to Istanbul (where they have an actual autumn) and needed something to wear with all the closed-toed shoes I pulled out of storage.  In preparation for that same trip, I dragged out my “winter clothes suitcase”, did my annual “short sleeves for long sleeves” closet switch, and packed a few sweaters for Istanbul, even though the thought of actually wearing one made me sweat.  The weekend of October 23rd, we had three house guests and, wouldn’t you know it, it poured down (delicious) rain for days, meaning we had to turn on the little doohickey that heats our water for showers cuz the solar panels weren’t going to do the trick.  (We haven’t turned it on again since.)  That was the same weekend I finally put an actual blanket on my bed cuz sheets weren’t enough anymore.  And today (again, more because “we had the time to do it” and less out of necessity, the plastic house slippers got washed and put away, and now the fuzzy winter ones are in the basket.  (But don’t think that doesn’t mean I’m still wearing flip-flops when I pop up to the store!)

Istanbul the last week of October warmed my chilly-weather loving heart.  The wind off the Bosphorus was enough to make me want to sit inside on the ferry, and to drink hot tea out of necessity instead of just stubborn nostalgia.  I got to wear my fall jacket and my scarves (which haven’t come down from their hooks again - it’s been back up in the high 20s ever since I got home) and collect chestnuts and crunch leaves and hum ‘İstanbul’da Sonbahar’ (‘Autumn in Istanbul’) everywhere I went.  Pure happiness.

Starting when I got home from Istanbul, I have two and a half whole weeks stretching ahead of me where I won’t be traveling or hosting guests or working like a maniac on projects with deadlines.  So, naturally, I’ve gone into crazy cooking mode.  You know I’ve been busy and stressed when the freezer is empty and we’re eating quesadillas for lunch and breakfast burritos for dinner.  Time in the kitchen makes me feel settled, normal, like I have my sanity again.  I bought kilos and kilos of pumpkin from the pazar on Thursday and got to work chopping, roasting, pureeing, freezing.  I started stocking ZipLocs full of soup for the coming months.  Every guest was an excuse for an apple crisp.  

This is the time of year when pomegranates hang like jewels from every roadside tree, so I’ve been looking for every excuse to use them while they’re in their prime.  They’re going on my granola every morning and on top of every bowl of aşure a neighbour brings to the door.  (‘Tis the season for passing out “Noah’s pudding”...)  I made dark chocolate pomegranate clusters for when our friends came to play cards last night, and they kindly brought a whole crate of big, bright pomegranates as a present from their garden.  So, naturally, I made pomegranate pumpkin pancakes for brunch this morning.  And then pumpkin mac n’ cheese for lunch.  And pumpkin spice creamer for my afternoon coffee....  (I’m just so grateful to have the time to actually make my autumn edibles, cuz come the end of November, the schedule fills up and it’s going to be breakfast burritos again all the way until Christmas dinner...)

So, I’d been going along in my merry little week, celebrating autumn as if my life were a Gilmore Girls episode.  And then came Friday.  A friend and I met for coffee at the mall - a happy reunion after two months apart.  We went upstairs to Starbucks and she ordered her coffee.  Then the barista asked what I wanted, and I told him I’d have a Pumpkin Spice Latte.  “Sorry,” he said, pointing at the artsy pumpkin drawing on the blackboard behind him, the word “tükenmiştir” written in cruel white letters across it.  “We’re all out.”

“What?!?” I responded, super disappointed.  “But it’s barely even autumn!”

“Maybe not here,” he said, “but over there (I took “there” to mean “in your country where Christmas starts the day after Halloween”) it’s almost time for the Red Cups.  But look on the bright side - you can have a Gingerbread Latte soon!”

Those words were not the music to my ears I think he intended them to be.

I settled (not TOO sulkily, I am proud to say) for a regular filter coffee, and my friend and I had a nice chat.  After an hour or so, she had to leave for class.  As we headed for the door, we passed Bath and Body Works, and she decided she had time to pop in “just for a sniff.”  Preparing myself for an olfactory feast of Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin and Warm Harvest Apple, and maybe a squirt of Cozy Autumn Vanilla lotion to go, I walked in and was greeted with a huge display sporting Twisted Peppermint, Winter Candy Apple, and Vanilla Bean Noel.  Now, sure, Vanilla Bean Noel is pretty much my all time favourite scent.  In December.  

It’s the first week of November, people!  In Turkey, no less!  For a country that doesn’t even celebrate Christmas, we sure do market it well.  I thought that when I moved here, the “no Christmas music before American Thanksgiving” rule would be a non-issue.  Now it looks like we’re well on our way to “candy canes coming out alongside the (non-existent...for now) Halloween candy.”  

Turns out the Grinch found his way across the pond and stole autumn, too.

(But, just to spite him, I think I'll go make myself a cup of pumpkin spice tea...)  :)

“The artist must be obedient to the work...  Each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am.  Enflesh me.  Give birth to me.’  And the artist either says, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,’ and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses.”

- Madeline L’Engel

This summer, I went through a workbook entitled “The Creative Call:  An Artist’s Response to the Way of the Spirit.”  It challenged me to see the making of art as a holy calling - to attend to the work of writing an article or crafting a photograph or preparing a lavish meal with the same zeal and sense of purpose as the craftsmen who were “filled with the Spirit” to produce articles of gold and stonework and beautifully designed curtains and carvings for the tabernacle.  It pushed me to recognize the lies and the distractions that suck the creative life out of me and keep me from rising up and stewarding the creative gifts I’ve been given.  And it spoke to me of connecting with the Creator Himself and allowing Him to inspire me and live His life through me as I bring to form the things I see in my mind’s eye.

During the course of my season of going through this book (which I highly recommend, by the way) I had the chance to get glimpses into the creative lives of two artists who are also good friends of mine:  Mike, who is a painter, and Brooke, who is a potter.  My time with each of them sparked a whole host of things in my heart as I watched them pursue their individual crafts.  Both are courageously prioritizing their art in the midst of busy work and family lives.  Both came alive as they talked of their current projects - the ones they’ve been commissioned to do as well as the ones they are working on for the pure joy of putting brush to canvas and fingers to clay.  And both spoke of that incomparable feeling of co-operating with their Creator as He created something beautiful through them.  With them.  In them.

Mike is my best friend’s husband, and I’ve loved seeing the way his talent adds colour to his world, be it purposeful paint “splatters” on the tablecloths at their wedding or the fantastic sketches he’s done of their baby girl.   I’ve seen plenty of his professional airbrush work (it used to form a border three canvases deep around their living room...) and have watched his eyes light up as he flips through pictures on his phone of sculptures and murals he’s been doing for water parks and climbing gyms.  (The guy can take you all the way to the bottom of a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee explaining the nuances of shading and palette brush definition.  He’s passionate about his stuff!)  This summer, I got to see him in action at the Painters’ Circle in Stanley Park as well as at the Grand Prix of Art in Ladner and was amazed at the way he can bring a scene to life with a brush.  

Brooke and his wife Dana are friends from my days as a Tennesseean, and when I made the rounds down South this summer, I had the pleasure of sharing a meal with their family in their dining-room-cum-pottery-studio.  On Facebook during the previous months, I’d been watching their pottery business come back to life after a long hiatus, and it had stirred something in my heart.  Here was a man with six kids and a whole lot of work responsibilities making time and space in his life to do what he loved:  create.  Over supper, Brooke (and his faithful firer/glazer Dana) talked about their passion for making something out of nothing, and the communion they experience with their own Potter in the process.  They’re rearranging their lives to incorporate an art form that will be a source of income but also, and more importantly, a source of life.  They’ve got a workshop in the dining room and a kiln in the backyard and a “Gehman Pottery Works” sign out back to make it official.  And I respect them so much for it.

After the meal, Brooke sat there at the table and spun a lump of clay that soon took shape as a deep dish.  I watched him coax it from nothing into something, and then painstakingly add two tiny holes on one side and a little groove on the other -  a resting place for a pair of chopsticks.  The perfect noodle bowl.  And I marveled at this reflection of the One who dreamed up humans and then made us out of dirt.  That feeling of breathing life into something that, just an hour before, only existed in your imagination - an incomparable taste of what it means to partake of the Divine nature alive inside of us, to co-create with our Creator.

I bought a mug from the Gehmans that night, carefully selected from the dozens of earthen masterpieces on their dining room rack.  Brown and teal with the faintest streak of glitter.  I wanted to take home a piece of the magic, I guess.  To hold something in my hands that says, “Art is worth your time.  Don’t neglect the gifts within you.  Make space for them, take time for them, fight for them.”  To have something to remind me my creative pursuits - whether for profit or for play - are about so much more than making money or entertaining myself or even bringing joy to others.  They’re about connecting with the One in whom creativity itself originated.  

Check out these talented guys and their work online:

Mike the Painter:

Michael Moser Art

Moser Creative 

Brooke the Potter:

gehmanpottery.com

Gehman Pottery Works Etsy Shop