There are some days, nights, or even moments, that reminds me of her in weirdess ways. One of those happened two weeks ago, when my radio show partner Leo gave me a new CD with a lot of Funk and disco classics in it. I came home to the cupula later that day and as I started listening to some of the songs, I was a little girl again, dancing with her in our living room to the same tracks! Music has been very important to me because of her, becase she filled our life with music almost 24 hours a day!
Bee Gees always remind me of our days at home and dancing! Even dad is in those memories! I remember the first movie she took me with her: we saw HAIR (the musical) at a huge 1950’s movie theater in our then-neighborhood (now that beautiful movie theater is a gas station!). I did not even know how to read and write and did not understand a thing during the movie, I just remember thinking how cool were these people who say sang and kissed and said NO! to bad soldiers! I did not know much about kissing but I knew what WAR meant: the thing Iran and Iraq were involved and it was bad. (Those days, all we heard in the news was who was going to nuke the other one and what would happen to us, Turks, who were bordering these crazy arabs! My family never made a big deal about it though, mom used to say, “nothing is going to happen to us.”)
We danced to the Age of Aquarius in the house, for a while, and when I was a year older, she took me to see Grease (which I guess resulted in me falling in love with John Travolta and my obsession with cool guys/unattachable but who also are able to fall in love deeply when they see a girl who is worth it!). After they closed the movie theater, she bought a video: first movie i remember seeing on video was Saturday Night Fever! I cried when the boy fell down from Verrazano Bridge (she said, "see, even if your friends say come lets jump together, dont do it!") That movie brought the Bee Gees era to our household. She would spin Barbara Streisand singing with Barry Gibb—lovers at the time-- “I am a woman in love and could do anything!” And me, an illiterate 6 year old punk, singing it as much as I can and knew exactly what the song said because she explained to me. She said “Don’t let anybody break your heart, and know that I will always love you, no matter what” And I knew she did, and she still does.
Sometimes, on Sundays if she did not work, she would stay home and do some home duties and wanted me to help her. She loves ironing for some reason. Instead of the lady we have at home, she does that unnerving domestic activity by herself. She tried to teach me a couple of times but I never wanted to learn so I never did. I love dry cleaning. I really never cared for house duties, except cooking which she never thought me. I liked other things we did as mother and daughter: talking, dancing, travelling, being friends, shopping together for anything really! I loved more going to her construction sites and watch it become something. Also I love watching my mother, she always has her act together, never too cold but keeps a distance. Everybody respects her, and not only as a woman but also as a hardworking architect.
I never doubted I was going to stay with her when my parents told me—my granma was the one who told me what was happening--they were getting a divorce. I dont remember anything but the conversation with Annemo; and one day to another we moved to a different apartment. Maybe I erased the painful parts of that time, who knows. I manage to keep only good memories in my head. Granma came to my room and asked me if I had to live with one of them, which one would I have chosen? I said without a doubt: mom. Because mom meant also granma, and great-granma, and their love. Dad was always absent from my life, he was never home. I only remember him from parties he threw and the Sunday brunches. He was fun to hang out with but honestly I did not know him at all. I was 7 years old.
When they got divorced, mom stayed with the LPs but the music has changed. The long plays they listened back when we were a family—and I was not allowed to touch them because everytime I tried to change a song usually when I wanted to repeat one I’d broken a needle--we did not listen too much of them. Not because of the divorce, 80's came and the music changed! Disco died and pop arised. Things were getting uglier around: the big hair, the trashy make-up tones, even the music. Thank god she listened to the Beatles. And classical music in the mornings! She would wake up almost as early as a work day and come and tickle us and wake us up, on my favorite, Sunday mornings! I did not have anything to do those days and I wanted to sleep late! I always hated waking up early! So when she would come and tickle me and say: “good morning my beautiful princess, wakey wakey!” I knew it was from pure love but could not get up as fast as she wanted me to and be yelled at from the breakfast table: “do you want to eat like servants in the kitchen or can you join the family right now?” She was not fully serious but I got the point. When I think about those years, from the late 80’s to 90’s, me becoming a Beatles loving hippy—wearing mom’s old clothes and sing with my friends all the songs we could copy from the radio stations to cassettes and then listen at the walkman I had! But the classical music gave me the chills for a long time as it reminded me of waking up early!
The wakey wakey business got serious when I started to go out and party. I was 15! It was my best friend’s birthday in a hot summer day. We asked her parents to take us to a discotheque we heard from older kids from school. They said yes, but they were going to join us as chaperones! What an horror, we both thought! Imagine if someone sees us and tells everyone in school that we “went out with Asli G.’s dad!” Anyways, we later rationalized going with them, thinking we would lose them inside and visit them every once in a while to make them happy. We were big enough—can’t believe I thought that, I thought I was an adult back then!—and do whatever we want! (another concept mom taught me: If I wanted, I could do anything in the world!”) Then we had to convince mom because according to her, those days, I was too young to go out. I should wait my 16th birthday to go out like she did! I was like, MOMMMMM, nooo. Please don’t embarrass me like that. I looked at her, and with my eyes said: you can trust me, it is going to be ok, I am a big girl. And she did. Since that outing, I have never done anything when I went out that she would be scared or ashamed of. I never took any drugs that I did not know what they were—yes, I always consciously drugged myself when I felt like it was the time to try something new!—I never got arrested, I never got pulled over, and I almost never vomited in front of her!
Just once, once, I came home thinking I am not even “buzzed”, but according to her I “stank” like alcohol, after a 7 hour dinner with my best guy friends, drinking a whole bottle of Raki by myself—can I even drink half of that bottle today? I don’t think so!-- I opened the door, she was having a party! They were listening to some Brazilian music, or caribean, I remember saying hi to many people, who were looking at me as I was a stranger. I thought, pah, I am great. I just need to go to my bed and sleep. I closed my eyes for a minute! Big mistake, I vomited the next 5 hours. That was my first time, and I hated it, I hated it so much that I swore I would never get that drunk—well, that did not happen, I vomited many times after that! Hated each one of them—The next day when I woke to opera, blasting in the house. My head felt as heavy as an acquarium, when I finally opened my eyes as much as I could with a nebula headache she said: "you are so grounded young lady! I told you not to get drunk!" And she made me run so many errands that day, I had to do it because I was, duh, guilty, and did all those things I hated back then: going to the market and help her with veggies, supermarket shopping, maybe movies or theater, something. I wanted to die with my head ache getting worst every minute of the day. I really disliked opera for a long time.
At the end of 1997, I was an unhappy teenager, who wanted to graduate from Lycee already but did not know what she wanted to study. Everybody was so sure I was going to pass the test and go to Turkey’s best university. They did not care what career I would get in, the school mattered to them. Dad told me that I could go and live with him in the US if I wanted to. I did not care for that so much. So I took the test, got into a writer’s block for 30 minutes, then did not finish the whole thing like I was supposed to and did not get into the best university. I got into third best school in the country, but for a shitty major I don’t even know why I had it marked, I did not even know what people who finished that degree did for a living—I must have been daydreaming while filling the forms I guess—It sucked. I never felt so bad in my life that day. I knew I did not do my best at the test but I had hope that I would enter into the shittiest major of the best school. And it did not happen. What a reason to be here, today, writing these lines. I am so thankful for not doing my best! Mom told me it did not matter what I did, I could shine shoes if that was my path, but I shall than be the best shoe shiner I could be.
I was listening to this band, Take That, whose only claim to fame was to re-start the boy band era and gave us Robbie Williams! She had a British boyfriend, who I adored as a person. He gave me the cd as a present for my birthday and the only song I liked was “Could this be Magic?”, and mom told me that it was a classic from the 70s, and that is why I loved it because I heard it before. Then we opened the boxes and listened a couple of those LPs together. Le Freak, Copacabana and of course Bee Gees. No shame on listening to them every once in a while in order to feel alive!( thanks to Leo I have been doing it in the luxury of my ipod these days!)
Later came my late adolescent years, first loves, first doubts about staying at the volleyball team, first vacations without her, etc. Dark and fun years at the same time. I would go out every weekend, dance until the break of the dawn with my friends, but I did not like to be taken as “fresh meat” so much. I tried to dress down and sometimes it was making me very sad, maybe because I wanted to be taken seriously as a person instead of a little girl. I listened a lot of Cure, Depeche Mode, Nirvana! She would not understand why I liked this music and would put something cheerful, and tried to dance with me as I if I was 5 years old again! She told me whatever was bothering me would be ok. Everything always happened as she told me they would.
After High school came the hardest time. My best friend left for the US. It hit me hard, as I was the one who stayed in Turkey, for being confused. I was supposedly going to school: I was not going to school full time, because I was hired as a writer/assistant editor for the Turkish edition of Cosmopolitan. I could not believe my luck! Even though the office was not fabulous, and my editor and co workers did not look like Helen Hurley and her team in NYC, and most of the time we were translating articles from the US edition into Turkish, only changing names, but at the end of the day I liked doing what I was doing. Especially when I actually wrote something! I hated the magazine when I started seeing that it did not matter to the editor or even to the lector what we did, as long as they bought what we sold. I never read Cosmopolitan or similar magazines with respect—Vogue and Elle are out of this because they don’t give women advice in life, they only give advice for clothes and they do a great job—I was shocked when I was assigned to write a piece about “how to make my men happy in bed”, me, a 19 year old virgin! They told me to make it up and/or look it up from other editions! Mom helped me a lot, telling me how things were! I kept having fun with my friends aside from working, but really I was burning with the guilt of not knowing what I needed to do.
That was the last year I listened to her music, and she mine. We went to visit the US together, she decided “a trip would heal” me and organized it. When we were coming back, I was convinced I was going to study the US, in a good school, instead of that shit back in Istanbul where the teacher’s were idiots, students did not care, it was a total joke! I could not insult my own intelligence and stay there, I told her that I, too, needed to go somewhere where I can learn new things. She looked so sad, but did not say a word. She asked me why I wanted that, and I gave her my reasons. She listened, questioned a couple of things and then said: ok, we shall prepare for you to leave by july!
Summer vacation! I did not get to go to the US in July like I should have. Mom told me to research the entry process and I did and realized that it was already too late for me to start university in September, I was going to lose a semester no matter what. So I went to Bodrum with my friends, spend my “last summer” shaking to awesome house music from Europe, drinking Sex on the Beach, skinny dipping when the sun rises after hours of dancing—without any drugs! It was an amazing vacation and I still listen to the songs from back then and feel that happiness and the summer’s heat.
The summer soon was over. She helped me pack, and told me if I did not like it, I shall come back without a shame. She did not show any emotions until the airport. I was crying, I was scared shitless of going to an unknown land where the only person I knew was my dad. I went through the passport check, crying, she was still holding up. As I turned one last time before walking to my gate, and I saw her from a distance, hugging granma while sobbing like a baby. Granma told me later that she felt sad when my brother left for US a year ago, but when I told her that I was going to leave, she really felt bad because I was like a friend to her, not only a daughter. I felt so proud that day.
We have been living apart for 10 years now. First years were difficult, we spoke every Friday for an hour though, it was our ritual to keep in touch. I did not care what time it was in the morning, I was happy to hear her voice and her love. Every summer I would visit them and sometimes she would make surprise visits to New York! We would go and see Saturday Night Fever, in Broadway! We would swap music each time, we believed that if we listened the same music maybe we would not feel so apart? I don’t know if she shares this with me: everytime I listen to a song that I remember from our times, I though of her, and visualize what she was doing when I heard the song! Sometimes I put the songs we would listen together when I miss her.
It has been a couple of years we are not communicating as promptly as we used to. That is very difficult for me because even though I am a big girl now, I get heart broken or sad, and I need her love and consolation and it is becoming harder and harder. This makes me stronger, and thought me a lot about myself, I even know she is doing it because she knows now it is time to do that! She is also different, she is less conventional now as she used to be when I was younger. She used to be more rigid, and I think I also taught her something: being less rigid about life! She still would not get stoned or get drunk but at least now she drinks until she gets a good buzz and dances with me! Even now, this past summer, we were home listening to the radio and we heard Phil Collins’s “you cant hurry love” and run towards each other and lipsang the song! She would sing that to me every time I was getting anxious with love or lovers!
Here in the Cupula I am all by myself, but I am closer to her than I could ever be if we lived together in a sense. Me loving plants, my knitting, my critical thinking, me going to the the market and hand pick fruits and vegetables, the music I listen, my being independent—as much as I can—me being me. I still hate ironing and cleaning though!
I know if she was here she would tell me what to do. And that would be probably, “do what your heart says." I know what my heart says but now that I am almost as logical as she is, and recently being hurt so much that I am scared. Maybe I even think I should not call him. Maybe this one last time I would do wrong for the best to happen to me in the future. Maybe it is the brasilian music I am listening thinking of mom and dad at Club Med in the late 70s and think to myself, “i want to call him because he is the only person i have ever met that makes me think he can do that with me," but I am not hundred percent sure if he wants to. What would mom tell me? “you can do whatever you think you can, darling!” Maria Callas in the background.
So I called; while listening to song by Paulinho Moska, a song that I have no idea what it says. It sounded to me like mom’s words.
We spend a great night together, listening to no music but each other's words. I am glad I did call, as my heart wanted--which is what mom would tell me anyways, to listen to my heart.
Since that night, I have been listening my heart and classical music, opera especially.
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