saturday

We have not had a lot of weekends at home, as of late. We moved to Europe to travel on the cheap, and we have been making the most of it in the last couple of months. It's fun, and hard work, and worth it. But it was so nice a couple of weekends ago to wake up and look at each other and realize we had no plans for the morning and beautiful spring weather outside. We hopped onto our bikes and off we went to enjoy our own neighborhood.

Two kindly Dutch ladies gave us a brunch of homemade quiche and pannenkoeken at MAF (Mad About Food) and we looked at the pretty church across the way. Afterward, Steve chased the kids around the playground while I perched on a nearby bench and enjoyed the rare pleasure of having my nose in a book, and then we cycled out to the twin lighthouses on the seashore. 

Everyone was out enjoying the weather, even if the sun worshipers lying on the beach were clad in black hats, coats, and boots. Back at home, the kids settled down to read and we napped and cooked, and later snuck off to the M.C. Escher museum while our kids played with our friend Ksenija. Steve had Metamorphosis on his wall when we were dating, which I now realize might have been vanity, he looks so like the artist. 

We got home just in time for family movie night, with popcorn and lots of cuddling.

It was perfect.

(Funny, right?)

too fleeting

When he is a hairy, smelly boy of fifteen or a working man of thirty, will I still remember the way he patted my neck when he pressed his soft cheek into mine?  Will I remember the squint of his eyes while he shimmied his chubby little shoulders in a dance?  The way he would boldly declare, "I love flowers. And butterflies!" Will I still think it is cute when he wants to sleep in his bathing suit because he is so excited that tomorrow's hotel will have a swimming pool?  Will I remember the tiny voice that said, "In Cinderella, I am the prince!" after playing pretend with his sister, or "Funny face!" whenever he thought anything was amusing (whether it had a face or not).  

Will I think of the way he said "Hold you!" and lifted his arms to be taken up the stairs, immediately followed by his grunting and saying, "I too heavy!"?  Will I still find him lying around with a book on the floor of his sister's bedroom or on the marble before the front door?  Will I retain the sound of his humming his own little made-up tunes?  Will I still be able to see the way he looked deep into my eyes when he said, "Mommy, I love you so, so much!" or, "I'm so sorry, Mommy" as we together pick up one of his two-year-old disasters? Will I recall how funny it was when he would shout, "Never...Again!!!" instead of a simple, "No, thank you"?  Will I see him in front of me in the bakfiets, calling out, "I love that blue car! I love that purple car! That black car is so pretty!" as we spin along? Will I still be able to see those squeezable, roly-poly little thighs in a black and white striped onesie?

Will I remember the way he would growl something that sounded vaguely like French and then plow into us, and how we later realized he was quoting The Muppet Movie:  "That's my trigger word too!"?  That he would grin and wrap his strong, squishy arms around our necks to pull our heads together into a forced family cuddle? The satirically romantic smile with closed eyes as he cuddled me, or his train, or a treat, to show love? Will my ears still hear the screams and laughter bouncing off the walls as he and his sister had their nightly wrestle with their daddy? If I remember nothing else, if I forget every book I have ever read or every place I have ever visited, even my own name, please, please, let me remember these babies that were mine for such a short time, and what it felt like to be their mother. Nothing will ever be this sweet again.

istanbul

Our aircraft descended from the sunny skies through which we had been flying since we left Greece, and as we passed through a dense layer of clouds, Istanbul appeared.  The clouds stayed throughout our entire visit, low and heavy, making the contrast between that massive city and sunny Athens all the more stark, in spite of their proximity.

It was my first visit to a predominantly Muslim country, albeit a secular one, and the farthest east I have gone, aside from a visit to Russia a few years ago. Istanbul scrambles up either side of the Bosphorus, with one side in Europe and the other in Asia, and technically belongs to both continents. But it is not part of the E.U., and it feels very different from Europe. Actually, it felt quite like New York City. The first neighborhood we stayed in (for three hours before moving to another) was close to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, and Topkapi Palace, and reminded me for all the world of a cross between Canal Street and just west of Times Square. However, Istanbul is twice the size of New York City, and because of its age and potential for earthquakes the buildings are low, so it goes on as far as the eye can see.  The original urban/suburban sprawl.

 

As is likely true for many women who visit that part of the world, the moment we landed I suddenly became aware of my gender as a disadvantage.  Even though I knew, in theory, that it might be that way, it was different to feel it. In Greece, while Townsend, who is at that charmingly mischievous age of two, had definitely been a favorite with everyone, Violette had been treated with equal attention and affection. In Istanbul, though, Townes was constantly doted upon by all, and Violette, standing right next to him, seemed to be invisible. There were a couple of shopkeepers who made very sweet exceptions, but not many. 

Our hotel was full of women who wore, at the very least, headscarves, and many the full burka with veiled face, while their husbands wore jogging suits or jeans and shirts unbuttoned halfway to expose an appalling amount of chest hair.  On our day visiting mosques, I wore an ankle-length skirt and loose turtleneck out of respect, and yet found that this degree of modesty was irrelevant until my hair was covered, which I did any time we entered a mosque. It reminded me of my least favorite aspects of my own religion, that feeling of sometimes being without a voice or invisible, and, conversely, of the most vulgar aspects of our secular society, which so often views a woman solely in terms of her sexuality. I couldn't help feeling that being so insistent on covering any hint of a woman's form in such an extreme way, with the assumption that men are unable control themselves otherwise, is equivalent to Jay-Z's standing in a tuxedo next to his nearly nude wife onstage at the Grammys. Both present women as no more than the sum of their parts.  I realize that those of you who have lived or traveled more extensively than I in Muslim countries may see it differently, and I swear that I tried to see the burka as a symbol of those women's faith and devotion to God and not as something that was being imposed upon them, but I couldn't get rid of the pit in my stomach at their inability to interact with the world around them, and at being viewed as so far less than equal myself.

We did some shopping, mostly for hamam towels, which I can never get enough of and usually have to buy for twice the price on Etsy or at West Elm, and for clothing--Istanbul is fashion heaven for a modest Mormon girl on a budget. We had great food, most memorably sitting on the floor surrounded by cushions as we ate a sort of crepe stuffed with spinach and cheese, made right in front of us on enormous cast iron stoves by women wearing white robes and headscarves.  We also drank fresh pomegranate juice and ate way, way too much lokum (turkish delight), the local treat. As in Greece, there seemed to be a lot of protests going on--the disadvantage of not reading the language is that we had no idea what the banners were saying--and we saw the usual tourist sites.

When I look back on Istanbul years from now, I think it will be the sounds that will stay with me: the calls for prayer singing out from the minarets of the thousands of mosques throughout the city, and the evocative regional music that played in taxis and shops everywhere we went. I am also glad to have discovered the work of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel Prize-winning novelist, who writes so poetically, even in translation. Otherwise, for all the interesting history of the region and the beauty of the mosques and palaces, I'm embarrassed to say that Istanbul didn't capture me in the way that I had hoped it would. Is it just that I am so deeply entrenched in my own cultural or religious bias that I can't truly internalize something beyond it? I loved Moscow and St. Petersburg; the Moorish Alhambra in Spain ravished my artistic soul more than any other building I have ever seen, and I cried at the Parthenon. So why did I walk through Istanbul's significant sites and feel...meh? Why did they not make me pause in awe? Was I so unable to get beyond my own gender discomfort? Have I been irrevocably brainwashed into insisting that everything aesthetically conform to the golden mean? I think it's going to take a lot more travel to find the answers.

athens

It was during the two minutes that I walked alone, regarding the last few remnants of the Parthenon frieze and sculptures in the new Acropolis museum while Steve packed up the kids, that the tears started. I looked at those old, beautiful reliefs that I knew so well, though I had never before seen them outside of a book, heroes and maidens of the ancient Greeks, and felt such awe that I could be there, that I could introduce my daughter to them at the tender age of six. Later that afternoon, we stood at the Acropolis itself.  Our doubts at the no stroller sign quickly dissipated as we watched Townes scramble up the old stone steps in the mountainside, happy for the freedom.  At the top, in the shade of magnificent columns and pediments, I feasted for a long while on the sight of the caryatids of the porch on the Erechtheion, beautiful ladies that I had studied so often as a student of the humanities at university, while Townes collected rocks and asked his daddy about the huge crane that was enabling restoration work on the Parthenon, and Violette gathered flowers. I looked at them and all around us, and again, tears. An afternoon could not be more idyllic.

Athens treated us so well, with big breakfasts at the hotel and homey Greek dinners out, strangers asking the children's names (Thomas and Violetta, they were soon responding loudly to any question, whether or not that was the answer) and spoiling them with treats and attention. We found the Athenians to be well-educated and very chic, though we laughed at the down coats and layers of sweaters they wore on what, to us, felt like warm spring days. We shopped and went to the cafe for baclava and deep, rich hot chocolate. We had sandals made and swam in the salt water pool in the hotel next door to ours. We marveled at the marble everywhere we looked, dictating a beautiful blue, grey, beige, and pink palette for the city. It was a lovely holiday.

After a few days, though, signs of unrest amongst poor Athenians due to the ongoing economic crisis became more obvious to us: the demonstration of a few hundred, perhaps thousand, unemployed men marching past our hotel on Syntagma Square, the blockade of buses in front of the Parliamentary building and dozens of swat teams during a meeting regarding the EU, the angry--though very cool--graffiti that covered every wall and most buildings, from Sephora to the townhouses abutting the Acropolis. Stray dogs lay about town squares and sometimes in the middle of busy streets, and there were kittens in every bush and alley, much to the delight of our children. Menus and boutique windows offered new, lower prices. Great for tourists, but so sad to see a place with such dignity and history struggling. Oh, Athens.