Category Archives: Travels with Grandma

Darkness in the Vienna Woods

Though my mother’s family did not leave Europe until 1939, they knew for years before Nazi jackboots thundered through Vienna that they would have to leave their beloved city, and antisemitism was to blame.  Kristallnacht had not yet clarified the Jews’ position in Austria when my grandfather began to plan the family exodus.

The early warnings were sometimes subtle, sometimes overt but rarely violent.  Until a sunlit, sultry day –  July 15, 1927, when violence disrupted a family idyll and set forces in motion that impelled their emigration.

Papa had been in France on an extended business trip, and he had not been home for his birthday the day before, so the family designated the 15th a holiday, which they set out to enjoy at their favorite park overlooking the city.  Their day would celebrate Vienna as much as their patriarch.  

They boarded a tram that took them to the medieval Höhenstrasse, and from there, they transferred to a bus that carried them through the Grinzing, past the charming Heuriger taverns, into the Vienna woods, and to the top of the Kahlenberg. 

When they arrived on the mountain, a procession of mummers, along with boys and girls in costumes singing a Polish hymn, was preparing for a processional in honor of the relief army Poland’s King Jan III Sobieski sent to save Vienna from the Ottoman siege in 1683.

“See?” Said Papa, an emigree from a shtetl in Eastern Poland. “The Austrians love us Poles.”

His family laughed. Being Jewish and being Polish was not the same thing. But neither the Poles nor the Jews were popular in the post-Empire days of sprouting Austrian nationalism. The parade made them giddy.

My mother Charlotte, age three, and her sister Thea, age four,  pretended to be bunny rabbits, hop-dancing to the processional music.  Baby Ruthi cried for a bottle and tugged at the bandages covering the surgery she had had behind her ears several days before.  Herma, maturely nine, crossed her arms and waited for the silliness to subside.

When the parade passed, the family hiked together behind the remnants of the ancient Leopold Schloss and found a spot in the shade to lay out their picnic. 

They spread blankets on the grass and sat down to enjoy the grand repast Mama had prepared the night before. Then, inhaling the exquisite sunshine, Papa and Mama relaxed as the girls performed the play Herma had written to welcome Papa home.  Papa stretched out to watch his daughters and, in an unusual display of affection, laid his head in Mama’s lap.  She, gentler than usual, rubbed the top of his balding head.  When the play was over, the girls insinuated themselves into the mellow moment by resting their heads close to their parents. Sated and spent, they all sprawled on the blanket and slept.   

Mama woke first and was in such a mellow mood, she spontaneously began to hum a tune from “Die Schöne Müllerin,” which had been running through her head.  Her music woke the others, and it was Charlotte who first noticed lights bursting from the city stretched out beneath their mountain perch.

“Look, Mama, how beautiful! Is that fire?  Papa, it looks like the sun is exploding!”

Her parents didn’t share her enthusiasm. 

“That could be our house going up in flames,” Papa snapped.  His burst of anger silenced the children, who stood transfixed, watching Vienna burn. 

Mama feared that they had overstayed their time on the mountain.  It would soon be dark, and in the dark, the woods could become treacherous. “Let’s go,” she instructed. 

“Mama,” Herma cried, “Is it safe to go home when there is fire all around?”

Mama shrugged.

“Walk carefully,” she instructed.  “But quickly. “

Mechanically, they obeyed, racing the descending summer night. 

At the bottom of the park, they waited for a bus until a passer-by yelled to them, “Haven’t you heard there’s a revolution in town? No more buses today!” 

A revolution!

It had begun as a protest strike. In January of that year, in a remote border village, a group of socialists clashed with fascists over the Kaiser’s militarization policy.  In the melee that ensued, a barman and his two sons shot and killed a worker and an eight-year-old child.  At his trial on July 14, the barman pled guilty but he was acquitted. On July 15, the socialists rioted in front of the Parliament House in the Ringstrasse Plaza.  Mounted police, the nationalist Heimwehr Militia, and coworkers brandished weapons of all kinds. Long after the police were ordered to cease firing, the shooting continued.  Miraculously, though the fire brigade was unable to get through the barricaded streets, the fire remained contained in the one building, and by morning, the revolt was over. Six hundred people were severely injured, 89 were killed, and the Palace of Justice was demolished.

In the ensuing days, reports in various publications blamed the uprising on the Jews, who, because of their Eastern European roots, were said to be Communist agitators.

As the conflagration raged, the Robinsons knew only that they needed to be home.  No public transport was running, but they found a taxi with a driver who thought they looked like refugees. He drove cautiously through the fire zone as the family huddled close to the floor of the cab, seeking cover from the gunfire that echoed through the normally hushed streets now teeming with confusion and terror. 

At the Ringstrasse, soldiers stopped them with hoisted bayonets but altered their stance at seeing Ruth’s bandages.  One of the soldiers said, ‘That little girl’s been hit.  Let ‘em pass.  She’ll need medical attention.”  No one contradicted the soldier’s surmise.

The family’s home was unaffected by the fray.  No fires, no guns, no screaming citizens.  Henri drew the shutters, barricaded the doors, turned off the lights, and took the children into the master bedroom, where they all spent the night.

 The frightening events stayed far from their inner sanctum, where the sisters were protected and loved.  For them, the day was a glorious adventure marked by an outpouring of parental affection.  By their own recounting, all three were too excited to sleep yet too afraid of their parents to get up, so they lay awake holding hands and listening to the night.  In the distance, they could make out sounds – the toy-like popping of guns, wailing of racing water trucks, clomping of running boots – like background sounds in a radio play.  Eventually, they must have slept because suddenly it was over, and their little corner of the morning sun-drenched city glistened as though nothing had happened. 

The city had gone quiet.  A general workers’ strike persisted for a few days, but there was no more violence. Except for the charred carcass of the Palace of Justice, all evidence of Friday’s melée seemed to have faded. 

Later in the week, returning from a piano lesson, Herma brandished a leaflet being handed out on the street. “This is about the riot,” she reported. “They’re saying it was just a demonstration. A blowup by the Communist workers. The Heimwehr militia was doing its job, protecting the city.”

 “Fascists,” Papa muttered.

“They’re saying the Communists are taking over the country. They plan to make puppets of us all.”

Papa scowled.  “If they’re saying Communists,” he said, “We better start packing our bags.  ‘Communists’ is just another word for Jews.”

Oskaar Kokoshka, Anschluss 1942

Summertime Daddy

Summer is my season of Daddy.

Most of the time, he was a restless man, my father, with a permanent expression of perplexity on his face. Relaxation was beyond his ken.  He was in constant motion every waking minute of every day.  Stress seeped from his pores and put us all on edge. A milk spill could create a firestorm of screamed recriminations.  He never used bad language, and yet his anger was obscene.  

However, on rarified sun-gilded summer days, he was transformed, and I in turn was freed to be myself.  At the beach, we could love each other unconditionally.

I attributed his passion for sun and surf to his having been a summer baby. Born the end of July in 1911, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Father grew up as far from the ocean as an American boy could be. The year he was twelve, right after his father died, he stole the family car and drove it to New York, where his Uncle Milton owned a shipping company.  “Let me go to sea,” he pleaded. Uncle Milton summarily sent him home, which only fueled his desire.  

Whenever he could sate his thirst for proximity to the ocean, Daddy was a happy man.

Every summer until I was four, we vacationed with my mother’s family in New London, CT.  Mom’s older sister Herma was married to Borislav, a Serbian painter of some renown, and he had a patron who loaned him a cottage on the beach, a glorious venue for a family holiday.

My memory of the house – undoubtedly flawed by time and distance —  is of a single-story expanse with multiple tall windows standing upright in every room. Their diaphanous, white curtains fluttered and danced in the omnipresent breezes.  No matter how hot the air was wherever we had been, the briny, vanilla-scented cool of the beach enveloped us when we entered. Daddy, however, had no interest in the house.

As soon as we arrived and parked our car, my staid, reticent, subdued father would emerge from behind the wheel of the car, shed his grumpy silence, and turn giddy. Suddenly he was playful, happy. He reminded me of those sea creatures we used to order from the bubble gum cards.  As soon as we added the salt sea air of the tantalizing water, Daddy would animate. He’d bound into the house, embrace each of the assembled relatives, and rush to any corner that afforded him enough privacy to change into his swim trunks. He could not wait to get into the ocean.

We children – the first three of eleven cousins-to-be – knew what was coming next. “I’m off to the water,” he’d announce. “Who’s with me?”

Cousin Peter, eight years older than I, remained aloof. He was too mature for such childish exuberance. Johnny, eight months younger than I, only went where his mother took him. He would stay behind.  I got to have Daddy all to myself.

Stripped down to my crisp white drawers, I would ask my mother to secure my towhead mop into tight braids, and I’d follow him into the gently undulating water. He walked slowly, watching my every move, coaching me to tiptoe carefully over rocks and shells, beckoning me to stop and marvel at the jelly fish and crabs that tickled my shins and scraped my toes.  Once, a crab mistook part of my foot for a tasty morsel and chomped down hard.  I screamed, more afraid than injured, and my father laughed.  “Too bad for that little guy. You’re way too big a prey for him.” 

In the afternoons, Daddy, who never rested at home, took a blanket down to the edge of the Sound. He would wrap himself up, put a hat on his head, and coo, “Nothing like the sound of the ocean to sing me to sleep.”

He would nap for what seemed like hours, while Peter, dressed in his cowboy chaps and holster,  pointed his toy pistol and chased Johnny and me all about the beach.  Our mothers would watch us, laughing and applauding, as though we were brilliant actors in a spellbinding film.

Nowhere else, at no other time were we as insouciant as we were then. Uncle Borislav would join us on our beach blanket when he took a break from his easel, and if there were no Yankee game on the radio, Uncle Fred would be there as well. Borislav performed magic tricks, and Fred told silly jokes. My father, cocooned nearby, smiled in his sleep.  We ate dinner on the patio and told silly jokes,  then slept with the windows open so the sea could sing us its lullaby.

 Daddy would wake me before dawn to watch the tide come in.  We would stroll along the waterline, giggling at the horseshoe crabs scuttling away, peering strenuously into the half-light for a glimpse of a ship or a dolphin. We would wade in and let the deepening water lap at our legs. 

Whenever the tide was lowest, he would invite me to a grand adventure.

“Come on,” he’d chortle. “Let’s walk to China.”

“No, not China,” I’d laugh. “Paris!”

“Sure!  But you have to hold my hand.  It’s a very long walk.”

We would splash in, the water level unchanged for what seemed like miles. When we were finally far enough out that I became buoyant, he’d hold me while I half walked, half swam among the sailboats lazing in the summer sunshine.

“Maybe we won’t get all the way to Paris today,” Daddy would sigh at last.  “Let’s come back tomorrow.”

Shoe Fever

It was 2003, and my sweet baby cousin Adriana was getting married in San Francisco.

The wedding was a big deal. Though a small destination wedding, it was a momentous occasion. Our entire extended family – including our celebrity cousin – would converge, and friends of Adriana’s from all over the world would join us. I had to look good.

Which is why, in preparation for the upcoming nuptials, I was not thinking about Adriana.  I was thinking about my clothes.  I was consumed actually.  And contemplating shoplifting. 

I envisioned the kind of escapade one imagines as a teenager, not as the nearly senior citizen of 56 that I was at the time, possessed by a midlife crisis: I needed new shoes.

I had found the perfect pair. They were elegant: low-heeled, round-toed, and comfortable for dancing yet black velvet and impractical for winter walking in New Haven, where I lived and worked. They were exactly the kind of shoes my money-obsessed husband would never let me buy.  

I must interject that while we were never poor – he was a well-remunerated engineer, and I was a classroom teacher, who took on multiple extra-curricular activities that paid me nicely – he regarded money much as an anorexic regards food.  So long as he had complete control, so long as he treated our finances as though we were destitute, he could breathe.  The minute we began allowing ourselves luxury items like more than one pair of shoes or a color television – anything beyond the necessities – his anxiety flared, and he became angry, verbally abusive, impossible to be around.  These shoes were unthinkable.

Yet I saw them as my emancipation proclamation.  I had spent thirty-three years believing, like the naïf Nora in A Doll’s House, that if I acquiesced perfectly enough and long enough, eventually the “most wonderful thing” would happen, and I’d be rewarded by his performing an act of magnificent self-sacrifice. Then he, my benevolent beloved, and I would live happily ever after.  However, by the time of this particular crisis, I knew that my miracle was never going to happen. Stealing those shoes would be a way of saying to my husband, “Hey you get off-‘o’ my cloud,”  a way to affect my liberation from the oppression of hope as much as of him. 

I tried them on.  Pure podiatric bliss.  I furtively surveyed the store.  No one was near.  If I just walked out, who would see me?  I headed toward the exit. A sales clerk stopped rearranging the handbags on the periphery of the shoe department and stared at me.  I turned around, pretending I was merely giving the shoes a trial walk around the store.  She went back to her work, and I took off the shoes. I waited a few moments before opening my backpack and sliding them inside. I hadn’t seen a beeper tag.  Surely, I could pull this off.  Again, I headed toward the exit, but as I rounded the corner near the checkout line, I saw myself standing in handcuffs, an army of my students past and present staring at me in disbelief, looking betrayed but pointing and laughing at the same time.  I couldn’t do it. 

The shoes went back to the shelf, and I left the store dejected but resolved.  If I were going to be held captive in this life for the duration, I should at least maintain my integrity. 

  Down By the San Francisco Bay

“Well!”  

My friend Nick stood in front of his boss’s Ferrari, glaring at me.  Then he laughed. 

“Okay.  You’re going.  But you gotta wear flowers in your hair.” 

He leaned over to the little garden in front of my apartment building, plucked a hydrangea stem, and stuck it awkwardly into the space between my glasses and my ear.

“There,” he said.  “You’re ready.”

An hour later, I was on the plane, headed across the country.  Nick’s voice ringing in my ears.

“You know this is ridiculous, right?” Nick had counseled as he sat next to me at the gate waiting for me to board.  “He’s never going to change.  He can’t, Carla. For God’s sake, girl, he’s gay.”

I knew he was right.  But San Francisco!  Everyone wanted to go to San Francisco. And I had a reason. Well, sort of a reason.

I was going to patch things up with my sort-of-a husband Mickey.  

“Listen,” Mickey had said on the phone a week ago .  “I think you should come out here.  I want you to see my place, meet my roommates.  You’ll love it. . . it’s so much cleaner and cooler than New York . . . a place where we can make a great life together.“

We talked for an hour, and naturally, to my 19-year-old’s sense of wisdom, I was all in. I told myself that we never gave ourselves a chance, and we owed each other that much. We were pals first and foremost.  How could we fail? 

I mean.  That night in Albuquerque, the night we ran away together, when I got a bit teary-eyed listening to Simon and Garfunkle on the jukebox singing “Homeward Bound,” he got it right away.  “You wanna go home, don’t you.” 

“Wow,” I thought.  “Not only is he the best-looking guy in my class at UNM.  He’s deep.  Sensitive.”

“Let’s do it,” he said. And the next thing I knew we had dropped out of school and were on our way to New York City.  Somewhere over Arkansas or Oklahoma, I remembered that we might be in trouble.

“It’s against the law for an unmarried couple to cohabitate in the city.  We might not be able to find a place to live.”

He answered instantly. “So why don’t we get married?  After all, I like you, and you like me. . . . “

“Yes!” I was jubilant.

“Only thing,” he might have stammered a little here. “You know I’m gay, right?  I can’t –”’

“No problem,” I effused. “I’m frigid. I can handle a platonic relationship.” 

He believed me.

“Good,” he said. “And I promise I’ll be careful.”   

I believed him. 

That was in October.  By December, I had fallen in love with him, and he had contracted deadly hepatitis from his profligate lifestyle.  He left me to return to his native San Francisco, and though I cried myself to sleep for six months, by the time he called at the end of June, I was past the pain.  

I  should have known better. But San Francisco!

The ground agent announced we were boarding, and Nick put a little pill into my palm.

“Take this as soon as you get into your seat,” he counseled.  “By the time you finish the meal they bring you, you’ll be fast asleep.”

I woke up as the plane bounced onto the SFO tarmac.  It took at least ten minutes before I figured out where I was and why. I disembarked.  Mickey was not there to meet me. I wandered around the airport, hoping he’d show up. He did not.  I found a bus, rode to the city, and got off at Haight and Ashbury.  Where else would a 19-year-old New Yorker want to be in 1967?  Even though I didn’t know it then, it was the summer of love, and Haight Ashbury was where it was at.

On a pay phone, I called Mickey’s house.  His roommate said he told her to tell me he’d meet me at 5 PM by Buena Vista Park. Why had I thought he’d be excited to see me?

No matter. I was dazzled.  San Francisco seemed to me a vast mescalin dream, a rainbow of color, a cacophony of sounds, and a panoply of personalities and smells.  Beautiful half-naked people my own age floated by on their hallucinogenic clouds, couples let it all hang out between them, and everywhere there were people dancing in the streets. 

I wandered around, stopping to watch street theater, jumping away from a pickpocket, laughing at a puppet show, then ducked into a Tad’s Steak House and had some chicken and fries, before I sauntered back onto the street.  It was only 2 PM.  As I stood in front of the Tad’s deciding where to go next, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

“What’re you doin’ here, missy?” The question emanated from the very gruff voice of a very big policeman. 

“Waiting.”

“Yeah, sure y’are.  How much money you carryin’?”

“What? Money? A few cents, actually. I just spent my last three dollars on—”

“Okay, missy, you’re comin’ with me.”

“Why? What’d I do, Officer?”  I stammered.  I smiled at him.  He did not smile back.  Cops in New York were so much friendlier.  I liked NY cops. This guy was menacing.

“No back talk, lady.  Just keep your mouth quiet and come with me.”

I followed him, and he put me in the back of a wagon with several women in various pieces of quasi-garb.  A light flashed in my brain.  When the officer pulled me out of the van to escort me into the station house, I stopped and forced him to look right at me.

“If I were doing what arresting me implies I am doing, wouldn’t I have more than a few cents on me?  You don’t think I can do business?”

He did not respond.  Just yanked my arm and pulled me inside.  They didn’t formally arrest me, I guess, because they didn’t stand me in front of a wall and take my photo or roll my fingers in ink to get prints.  The clerk did ask me for a local address and phone number – I gave them Mickey’s info – before someone else pushed me into a cage, where I sat for I don’t know how long.  

I think I dozed off, and when I woke up, Mickey was standing outside the cage shaking his head.  

“Well,” he muttered, disgust dripping from his tone.  “I guess I was wrong.  First thing tomorrow, I’m throwing you back on the plane.  You’re going home.”

 I should have known.

Travels With Grandma . . . Winter 2019-20 Edition

New Normal

In 2003, I left my home, my marriage, my comfortable suburban life and set out to work hard, to experience setbacks, and to carve out a modicum of comfort that included the freedom to roam the world. Predictably, it took a while for me to achieve mobility. For the first seven years, I did all my roaming in the city of New York, guiding bus tours around the city I loved. The job nearly killed me.

I daydreamed my escape.

I’d envision myself venturing out to places I knew from my mother’s childhood stories – her birthplace in Austria and home in Croatia, her parents’ hometowns in Ukraine – and those I’d imagined my father’s people left behind in the 1600s.  Places like Utrecht, The Netherlands, Somerset, UK, Scotland.

But when my daughter relocated abroad, she coopted my travel plans.

In 2012, I reached the age my generation had targeted for retirement, and my child invited me to visit her world. At the time she was living in Thailand, a place I had never even considered for my bucket list. But it’s where she was, and I was keen to see what it was that held her there.  So off I went. First to Bangkok, a side trip to Bali, and then to Samui, the Edenic island where she lived and worked. In the intervening years since then, I have visited her three times in Thailand, once in Hong Kong, twice in Taiwan, and most recently twice in Turkey.

None of these were places I’d have sought. But each has mesmerized me in one way or another. Each has equally repelled me.

The people of Thailand are the gentlest, most personable people I’ve ever met, and the scenery in most of the places I’ve been is breathtaking. But the climate is far too hot far too much of the time for my taste. Poisonous snakes and soi dogs are never far from my consciousness. And the cities are antithetical to my desire to walk in that they have obstructed or nonexistent sidewalks and street vendors that impede all movement.

 

Hong Kong is – and I speak here as a New Yorker! – far too crowded, too overrun with teeming flesh and filthy refuse. Conversely, I find Taiwan too orderly, too polluted, too rules-driven; finding food there is a challenge, as it is expensive as well as often inedible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Turkey, well Turkey . . .

Is a confusing assortment of dichotomies and paradoxes.  I find myself excited to go there and aching to leave the minute I arrive. The people are warm, friendly. Or they are aggressive, willing to shove your car off the road in order to gain a few seconds of driving time or to avoid braking.  The food is delicious, but the spices can be shockingly voracious. Islam is the primary religion of the country, but stores, especially pharmacies, are closed on Sundays, and the liquor is as destructive to weekend calm as it is anywhere else. Gorgeous landscapes abound, punctuated by spectacular sunrises and sunsets. But they lie in the omnipresent, foreboding shadow of Musa Dagh.

Since my daughter and her family live in Turkey much of the year, and because I am absolutely addicted to the pleasure of my grandson’s company, I shall continue to return often.  I’ll learn to love being there.  Especially if I can learn more of the language.

Does it matter that I doubt I will ever feel entirely at home?

——————————————–

Fear Displacement

I get a real kick out of watching people’s faces when I say I’m off to Turkey. Again. Brows wrinkle, cheeks migrate upward, eyes show their pain by squinting.

“Well, then,” they’ll say in husky tones of genuine concern, “You be safe now.  Be careful.”

It’s never clear to me of what they feel the need to warn me. The same people, should I bid farewell and head to the subway or embark on a cross-park sojourn, would smile and wave without a moment’s dismay. Yet multiple dangers like armed druggies, hungry coyotes, angry raccoons lurk in the city’s parks and construction sites. These same folk would simply wish me a lovely good time were I to tell them I was heading for Walmart or the movies or, say, Houston or Orlando. Is it not true that mass murderers lie in wait in such hinterlands?

I have no fear of Turkey. I do admit to holding a bit of a grudge – I want the country to own up to the Armenian genocide. And there are cultural norms that I don’t understand. Yet I feel far safer in greater Istanbul or in the coastal villages near Izmir or Antalya I have visited than I do anywhere in America these days.

Well-armed, vigilant police patrol the cities, parks, public places. I’m a savvy city kid, and I know enough to be conscious of my surroundings to keep my valuables close. At least in Turkey, it is unlikely that suddenly, without warning, some enraged young man will jump from the shadows and aim an AK-47 at those of us unlucky enough to be in his line of fire.  Turkish roads are scary because drivers are impatient, reckless. But the kind of violent road rage I see on the streets and roadways of my country every day doesn’t exist in Turkey.  No guns sit on racks over windshields there. The military and the police are the only ones who can get away with packing.

When I go to the Istanbul Airport, I know that everyone who enters the huge open space must go through a metal detector, must withstand the scrutiny of a no-nonsense security check before they enter. When I’m at JFK or LaGuardia or Newark, I am always struck by how vastly unprotected the areas are, how easily the myriad people wandering in and out could get away with annihilations.

Ironically, the officials maintaining my safety in Turkey are far less intimidating than those at the gates in the US.  My prosthetic hip inevitably sets off the alarms, and the TSA folk at JFK and Newark too often treat me as though I purposely require that they pat me down, and they pat me down with a vengeance. It’s humiliating and often painful. I have never once been assaulted by a security person in Turkey. They apologize. They treat me respectfully. They are gentle.

A friend recently marveled at my willingness to travel to Turkey.  “It’s so far,” he said. “So foreign.”

“You’re going on an equally distant journey,” I posited. “I mean, Alaska . . . it’s far, and it can be pretty creepy, no?” I was thinking about the high crime rate in Anchorage, the recent shootings in Seattle, where my friend must catch a connecting flight. I envisioned airports open and vulnerable.

“Nah,” he said.  “It’s in the US.”

My point exactly.

 

——————————————-

Yemek (Eat)!               

In December, when I had booked my flight, I told my students that I would be flying to Istanbul the day after our final exam.  I expected them to be shocked or fearful. College freshmen are singularly self-concerned, and I thought they would worry that I might not get their grades in on time. Instead, they surprised me.

“That’s so rad,” said one boy.

“Lucky,” said another.

“Omigod.  You’re gonna get fat,” exclaimed a girl in the back row who had not spoken once all semester.  Everyone stared at her,  “I mean,” she stammered, “The Food.  It’s so incredible. You’ll be eating nonstop.”

Her mother, it turned out, is Turkish, and she visits her babaanne (grandmother) every year.

I smiled. Having summered there already, I was well familiar. The food is exceptionally delicious. At the same time, it can be a culinary adventure.

In the first place, the food is ipso-facto organic. Turkey is one of the few remaining countries in the world that is entirely self-sufficient when it comes to food production – if Turkey allows a foreign label to distribute food in Turkey, the product must be grown and processed in Turkey; farming is a major occupation country-wide, the life’s blood in more ways than one.

Industrial farming does not exist. Farms are owned, operated, maintained by close-knit extended families, who share clusters of multi-story living quarters at the farms. They eschew the use of pesticides and appearance enhancers, and they are opposed to genetic engineering.

As a longtime vegetarian –a vegan but for the use of honey and an occasional eggwhite – I especially appreciate the multivarious textures of flavor in the vegetables, flavors that titillate my taste buds. The distinctiveness in every bite is singularly unmistakable. Cucumbers are melony, tomatoes have a robust richness I remember from my mother’s long-ago garden. At the same time, however, I am constantly aware that there is likely to be a kick delivered from some sector of any given dish. Spices insist on surprising the palate. Eating is like riding in a car behind a seemingly mild-mannered hanim (woman) in a delicate hijab. Watch out lest she suddenly swerve or stop or make a turn in front of you. Likewise, peppercorns or a dried biber (pepper) show up on the tongue without warning to remind you not to be fooled by the prevailing air of relative calm.

While no restaurant has any dearth of vegetarian options in Turkey, it is clear that the people here love their meats, and I am told their meats are delicious. Like the vegetables, the animal protein sources are nurtured and maintained with loving pride. Farmers take care to provide humane and uncrowded conditions for the animals that sacrifice their lives. No chemical enhancements or antibiotics spoil the purity of the flesh or the integrity of the dairy products.

What saves me from the fate of which my student forewarned is that I am essentially not a sweets lover. If I were, then Turkey would indeed be dangerous. Especially at the sumptuous buffets that are laid out for brunches every weekend.  So many desserts, so little room to spread them out. Puddings and pies, Baklava, Tavuk gögsü (chicken breast pudding, which is often made without the chicken breast), cakes and sugary fruits, chocolate pistachios, Turkish delight (enormously popular rose- or orange-infused jellied candies),and the one thing I can be a sucker for: halvah(a thick, honeyed sesame paste), et al., present themselves for over-indulgence.

Luckily for me, I’m not easily seduced.  Even halvah repels when I remember the discomfort of the sugar rush it inevitably delivers. I am not fooled by the melt-in-my-mouth sweetness.  I know it will never really like me.

Then, too, too much of a good thing can be disenchanting. One week during my stay in Turkey, we went to a resort in Antalya, a hotel that operates like a giant, stationary cruise ship. Once checked in, a visitor need not want for anything.  Snacks and light foods are served 24/7 at various stations about the massive place. Drinks of all kinds flow endlessly. And three times a day, double doors swing open to a ballroom bursting with tables laden with food.

There are stations for every kind of culinary experience.  Hot foods – stews, casseroles, roasts, fried foods, side dishes – sequestered from the cold foods such as bean pastes, salads, myriad pickle options, olives, dolma, a panoply of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the endless tables of colorful desserts.  The first day we arrived, we marveled. We ate. We enjoyed. But the array never changed. And we found that the food was likely to be recycled, reused the next day; there was a staleness about it that made even the fresh rocket seem dull and tasteless by the time we’d been there a while.

It was a relief to get back to Istanbul, to the fresh produce in the markets, to our own home cooking, to the brunch buffets in the restaurants along the shore.

 

——————–

 

Toddler in Ephesus

Late December

My little grandson cannot wait to go to Kusadasi. He’s not terribly impressed by the fact that it’s the closest I’ll ever get to experiencing ancient Greece or with the notion of seeing the Aegean Sea or remnants of archaic worlds.  He loves to fly.  Airport? We’re going to the airport? “Let’s go!”

And a taxi.  We’ll ride to the airport in a taxi. “C’mon, Mommy.  Are you ready?  Hurry up, Gran’maw.”

In the taxi, he watches the road. His father is a pilot, and he has flown more often in his three years than most people fly in a fifty. Traveling to an airport in a taxi is as natural as breathing.

“Look out,” he warns our non-English speaking driver, who is blissfully unaware. “Red light.  You have to S T O P. . . . Oh, no, do you go that way, or that way?”

I remind him that the driver knows what he’s doing and deserves to be trusted.  He settles back and contents himself with counting buses, assessing cranes, watching for airplanes in the sky.  Then he falls asleep.  It’s an hour-long ride. His nap will serve us well.

At the airport, he climbs dutifully into his stroller.  “I can have a squeezie (a squeezable fruit treat he favors over candy) while we check in?”

At the gate, he counts the airplanes taking off, landing.  When our plane arrives at our gate, he jumps up and down.  “That’s our airplane.  We can get on.”

The flight reaches Izmir in forty-five minutes flat, and another cab takes us the remaining 80 km to our hotel, a lovely inn nestled in a tightly knit complex of shops, restaurants, hotels, fish markets, and bazaars on the Aegean Sea. The windmills and trucks, stoplights and birds along the way have kept the boy busy, and when we arrive at the hotel, he proclaims, “Here’s my home.”

The name Kusadasi means Pidgeon Island in English, and it’s not clear whether the name derives from the shape of the island on which its protective fortress lies or from the flocks of foraging birds that dominate the sandy beaches.  It hardly matters.

The town sits on a sandy lip of a beach that smiles wanly at the lapping waves shimmering teal-to-turquoise as the sun ambles along.  Fishing boats and yachts, kayaks and sailboats bob about beyond the breakers, and tourists meander the streets with no apparent imperative except soak in the warmth. It’s a peaceful place. Like a fantasy. For me, the perfect respite from current events that perseverate.  For my little buddy, it’s the perfect place to explore.

Each morning we set out on a mini-constitutional. Glee overcomes him the minute he sees a slide in one of the several playgrounds that dot the sea walk, and he dashes up the stairs chanting “Up the stairs. Down the slide” and makes himself giggle as his tush hits the ground.

Sailing insouciantly through the air in a swing, he makes up songs about flying and sailing that he combines with those he’s learned.  “Sing a song of sixpence pocket full of rye, I zoom to Bangkok (or Singapore or Timbuktu) on a bicycle built for two. . . “

Innumerable feral cats amuse him endlessly as they strut about the streets.  He crouches to touch each one that comes close enough, and he squeals with delight at the softness of their fur, the strength in their tails. The cats are remarkably well fed, with shiny, fluffy, healthy-looking coats. He offers the possibility of affection with the back of his unopened hand, and they oblige him by purring contentedly as he strokes the tops of their heads, tickles them beneath their lower jaws.

At an amphitheater on the main street, we watch as a bevy of homeless felines cavorts about, eating the food local people have left them, napping in the make-shift shelters someone’s built them. My boy is delighted but refuses to walk with me when I say we must back to the hotel. He wants to stay and watch his “friends.”

“Remember?” I prod him. “We saw a few cats living at the Chinese restaurant.  Let’s go say hello to them.”

“Stop for a muffin?” He asks.

“Of course.”

At Starbuck’s (Yes, Starbucks.  Sorry!) I lift him so his head is higher than the counter, and he tells the barrista that he’d like a chocolate muffin.  We sit while he eats it, and we discuss our plans for the day.

“First the cats at the Chinese Restaurant! Second my home!”

At first, he is testy. Why is the promised land not right ahead of us. I tell him to be patient, and he slyly invents a game. At every building, at every street sign his eyes dance with mischief. “Is this the Chinese Restaurant?” He laughs at his own cleverness, sufficiently amused until we reach the restaurant. It does not disappoint. Several large cats and a trio of kittens are there to entertain him, and he breaks into a symphony of laughter that takes us all the way “home”

After we return to Istanbul, he insists on visiting and revisiting the photographs. “Look at me – I following a duck. Hear me, Gran’maw? ‘Quack, quack.’” The video of at him riding a carousel dolphin in the indoor playground makes him thoughtful after his fifth viewing. “It was raining. Remember, Gran’maw?”

And then, “Oh, and look at this, Grandmaw. . . The cannon!” He is standing guard at the Kusadasi fortress. “ Look at me. A pirate – Hear me? ‘Ahoy, mateys, fire in the hole!’“ Gales of guffaws telegraph his pleasure.

His favorite photos are the ones we took the day we walked through centuries-old ruins. “Look ‘t grandmaw. ‘s Ephesus,” he crows. I wonder if he’ll remember that day when he’s my age. How we climbed stairways built by the Greeks in the 10th Century BC. How delighted he was to sit, giggling,  on a stone toilet in a communal outhouse dug first by the Romans and then modernized by the Roman Christians. As I marveled at the thought that Constantine might have defecated there, my grandson exclaimed, “Look!! People made poopie here!!!”

As though for his personal pleasure, regal cats adorn the remains of the 2nd C Library of Celsus. In the photos, they perch on pedestals like Egyptian gods, silky felines deigning to allow human contact. Power resides in their graciousness.

Clearly, that little boy in the photos is aware of his own potency as they respond to his touch by gently pressing their heads against his hand.”Haha. That tickles, gran’maw.”

In the photos, I am clearly breathless in the great amphitheater.

Imagining Dionysian competitions, Plautus comedies, Roman Olympic games. My grandboy cares only that I hold his hand so he can use the narrow stone walls as his balance beam. In my head there’s a joke about finding a seat – nearly 40,000 await here – but he distracts me, so enthralled he is by the colors in the masonry. Someday perhaps he’ll be impressed that he visited a theater that drew audiences from all over Europe and Asia for over 2,000 years. But at this moment he has his sights set on a hillside nearby, where a herd of sheep descends. Their collar bells clang in unison with their guide dogs’ barking. “I can barely see them,” he says, mimicking a phrase he’s heard far too often in his favorite video. “I hear them.  Hear them, Gran’maw?”

Just before he falls asleep in the taxi headed back to Kusadasi, he snuggles close and exclaims, “I like Ephesus. We have fun there!”

————————

Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained

Do people in the States go to private doctors these days? I mean, do the majority of the population, who are minimally insured at best, have a personal pediatrician on speed dial or a family GP at beck and call? I wonder if people more often look to Urgent Care facilities and HMO Clinics for sage advice.

I was fortunate as a young mom. I raised my little ones in two very different communities, and in each I relied on a wise pediatrician for counsel and guidance.  Each of those physicians was level-headed. Neither proclaimed a diagnosis without asking my opinion, and both were thorough and sensitive to the children’s concerns and fears. We all endured some harrowing health moments, through which these gentle heroes held my trembling hands and steered us out of danger.

In Turkey last month, I found myself wondering what most Turkish parents do when their children are ill  As outsiders, my daughter and I found ourselves in a position to wish either one or both those medical angels was alive. We most assuredly would have called him the second night we were in Antalya.

Let me backtrack and say that going to Antalya turned out to be a great choice.  But not for the reasons we expected it would be.  My daughter had booked a week in a luxury hotel, a kind of stationary cruise ship on the Mediterranean coast.  Though their massive water park and beach activities were shut down for the winter, the hotel offered a week of total relaxation, replete with three meals a day and a perpetually stocked minibar, for less than I might have paid for a room in the Tulsa, OK, Motel 6.

From our balcony, we had a spectacular view of the dormant water slides and the graygreenroyalblue Mediterranean just beyond them. If we looked left, beyond the hotel flanking ours, we could watch the snow accumulate on the tops of the several the Taurus Mountain peaks that tower over the region. On the first floor of the hotel, there was a children’s playroom with a small garden of colorful balls and a fast wooden slide designed to entertain a child if there should be rain. At the bar, wine, beer, and whiskey flowed freely . . . and at no extra charge.  An on-site spa with Thai masseuses stood at the ready from early morning till well after the dinner rush, and a footbath stocked with flesh-eating, skin smoothing garra rufa fish required no reservation. There were even family films screened nightly in the hotel cinema. Theoretically, a heavenly place for a true vacation.

What it turned out to be was the perfect place to wait out the flu.

On our second day in Antalya, my grandson seemed listless.  He wasn’t hungry.  The multiple tables spread with enticing confections that he’d found irresistible the day before were entirely uninteresting. All he wanted to do was lie in his mother’s or grandmother’s protective arms and watch videos or sleep.  Clearly not himself.

Overnight, he spiked a fever.  I knew it was not a dangerous fever, but it was high enough to send a clear signal that he was ill. The hotel, aware of its responsibility to be the compleat home away from home, advertised a doctor on board, in an office that opened at 9AM. We called at 9:01.

There was no doctor.  There was, however, a matronly nurse, who arrived in our room with the English-speaking guest relations representative(a person to whom we owe enormous gratitude). The “nurse” was very sweet, but I doubted immediately that she had any real medical training.  She took his temperature and immediately told us through our interpreter not to panic. She would, she assured us, prevent his having convulsions by wrapping him in cold, wet towels to reduce his temperature.  His temperature was not quite 103. He was in no danger. We eschewed the towel treatment and asked to be directed to a doctor.

They gave us the address of a private hospital that would accept my daughter’s ex-pat insurance plan, and we called a cab to take us there.  The hospital was nearly a half-hour away, and much to our relief, the cab driver waited to take us back.  A valiant gesture that turned out to be!

In the hospital, we waited endlessly in an open area, where coughing, vomiting  and the injured hordes came and waited or were directed to the triage room.  It was a cold day, and there was no heat in the building; attendants, nurses, doctors, and maintenance people were indistinguishable from one another as they all wore their outdoor street clothes.

When we were finally taken into a treatment room, our little boy was prodded and poked by several people, none of whom washed their hands or wore gloves.  I was embarrassed by my inability to speak Turkish and worried that we would know nothing about what ailed him.

Fortunately, the Attending Physician, who came to have a look, spoke English. She suggested we admit him for an overnight stay. In his room, she told us, they would strap him down, take his blood, and take him to a lab for a series of x-rays.

I know that, as adults, my kids are invariably embarrassed by my forthrightness, my unwillingness to do as I am told, my reluctance to accept advice I do not trust. But I wasn’t about to worry about whether I’d make my daughter blush.  I was unconvinced. “Why not do a culture first?” I inquired.

The doctor moved closer to examine my face before she replied. “Oh, yes, we could do a swab. But blood and x-ray would tell us more.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Let’s find out whether he’s got something bacterial or viral, and then you can prescribe medication. If, after a day or two he is no better, we’ll think about blood tests and x-rays and overnight stays in hospital.”

She agreed.  Reluctantly.  She wrote of my impudence in her report. Then we waited.

And waited. While we waited, we defended our screaming child from an attendant intent on forcing alcohol rubs on him. His fever was already responding to the ibuprofen we’d administered earlier and had dipped to below 101. There was no possible reason for any such treatment.

Another doctor entered. She repeated every step of the exam performed earlier. She, too, suggested a hospital stay, x-rays, blood.  Again I opened my NY Jewish mouth and said no, explained our agreement with the previous doctor. This doctor, a very young woman, was less skeptical. She smiled and nodded.

And sent us back to the outer corridor to the reception desk to pay for the swab. Then we waited and waited until a teenager – well, he looked like a teenager – wearing hat, coat, and mucklucks suddenly materialized in front of us.

Before we could ask who he was or what he wanted, the youngster timidly and awkwardly thrust a q-tip into the baby’s nose, pulled it out and smeared the wet cotton across a petri dish.  Then, in a scene that seemed ripped from my own 1960s childhood, he closed the dish, placed it in a plastic bag, put the culture into a glass cylinder, and popped it into a pneumatic tube. Off it went to some diagnostic lab in the sky, and off we went to find a warmer, less exposed place to wait.

Again we waited. An hour passed while we sat on a narrow bench in another wing of the hospital that was no less public but was slightly less crowded. We saw the doctor returning from her lunch break and asked her if she had the results yet. She promised to get them and, good to her word, brought them to us almost immediately.

“It’s flu,” she said.  “Influenza A.  I’ll prescribe an anti-viral. If he does not improve or if he has trouble breathing or if he does not get his appetite back in 48 hours, please bring him back.”

“Thank you,” my daughter said. “We’ll be sure to have him see a doctor if he’s not better by then.” She is very tactful. She never said what we were both thinking, that we would NEVER bring him back here.

We thanked the doctor, and then she warned that we still had a problem.  It was Sunday. The pharmacies – eczanes – were closed. Nationwide, in this predominantly Muslim country, for reasons we were unable to ascertain, pharmacies are closed on Sundays, even though most businesses operate as usual. “The receptionist will give you a list of those that are open,” our resident explained. “There you might fill the prescription.”

“You mean,” I asked, well aware that anti-virals only work if they are ingested in the earliest stages of the virus. “That there is no pharmacy here at the hospital, no dispensary where we might get a day’s supply to tide us over?”

“Unfortunately, no. Only in the stores on our list.”

The list lied. Not one was open. We returned to the hotel, and because our guest relations Godsend-of-a-staff-member was still there, she was able to pinpoint two eczanes that were possibilities. She called them. Only one was actually open, and they did not have the anti-viral in stock. Another pharmacy, closer to our hotel, opened early the next morning, and there we found the magical elixir.

Shortly after taking his first dose, our little patient was fever-free and hungry albeit still listless and weak. That’s when his mommy fell ill.

The rest of our week in Antalya was all about convalescence for everyone but me. I had a flu shot back in NYC.

[I later learned that people don’t tend to get flu shots in Turkey. Doctors don’t prescribe them. To have a vaccination, it is necessary to buy the inoculation from a pharmacist – not on a Sunday! – and take it back to a hospital, where a doctor administers it.  The H1N1 virus has made a decided comeback in Turkey, and there are myriad strains of flu circulating the country, but prevention seems undesirable.]

As the designated well person, I was truly able to appreciate our Antalya retreat. Being in that hotel made life easy for all of us.  The minibar attendant delivered water, juice, and seltzer every morning. The wait staff carried trays of food to our room three times a day. The maids kept our sheets clean, our towels fresh, our room spotless. The sunrises and sunsets enthralled us, relieved us of any reluctance to stay put in the room. Each day we opened the balcony door, and in rushed the wintergorgeous smell of the sea, the delicious reminder that we were on vacation.

On the Seventh Day, renewed and re-energized, we flew back to Istanbul.