What is it like to be a mother in Turkey?
Generally, the Turks love children, and they teach their children to love children. When we walk down the street with the kids, we can hear the sound of hearts breaking in our wake. There is a constant shower of mahşallahs (“God willed it!” – used to show joy and praise). The people even bring their own children close and say “Look at the sweet baby! Blow the baby a kiss.” I mean, even I’m-so-cool Turkish teenagers and twenty-somethings go gaga. I almost always get seated right away on the buses and ferries, which is a welcome bonus.
On the other hand, particularly on the busy “Rodeo Drive” street we live on, people walk straight into you rather than swerve to miss. I was even smacked on the back of the legs with a cane while I was strapping Princess into the stroller because a lady wanted me to move out of her way. Sometimes, it’s an I’m-the-most-important-person kind of attitude.
As a pregnant mother, I find the prenatal here care very safe, if a bit “hands-off.” The doctors here are trained using all the newest equipment, and the hospitals are all outfitted to the teeth. So our doctor wants to give me an ultrasound at every single appointment. She never touches me, not even to help me wipe the goop off my belly after the few ultrasounds I have agreed to let her perform. She never feels for the position of the baby and only tested my legs for swelling once. Thankfully, she is open to foreign ideas and we have made other arrangements. We both make compromises and she has agreed to follow our firm birthing plan. We walked in to our first appointment and made it very clear that we were not going to have a C-section unless it was a last resort. I have a good track record, after all, and there should be no reason for surgery. In Turkey, it is very popular to have C-sections, even for women with the lowest risk. I asked another teacher who is pregnant with her first, and she told me she wants a C-section because she is afraid of the pain of natural labor. No comment was made about the pain of recovery! Even the doctor here who most expat women go to because she is sympathetic to natural labor birthing plans, even she had a C-section, presumably because her husband couldn’t bear to see her in pain.
Mother’s Day was interesting because, as we were walking down the street, we saw every woman holding a single Gerber daisy, and most eating chocolate pudding samples. They were handing out all sorts of free treats. But when we got on the bus to head home, we were faced with a man and woman engaged in a screaming fight. The woman, with a bawling toddler in her arms, tried to get off the bus quickly, and the man followed her. Just as the doors closed and the bus pulled away, we saw him slap her across the face, narrowly missing the toddler. Lord Herndon was furious and it was a good thing that we were on the bus pulling away. We didn’t see anyone help her, despite the sounds of disapproval everyone was making (a tut-tut noise with the tongue). We can only hope that there is some kind of protection agency set up in Turkey where she can go for help.
My own personal experience of Mother’s Day is as follows:
Despite plans to attend the services in the morning (especially because Lord Herndon was playing for the worship team), we woke up to both kids snotty and coughing. We think it was some kind of allergy rather than an illness, but they certainly were in no shape to play with other kids. So I stayed home with them and we played, painted, and slept until Daddy came back. He surprised me with my own bouquet of Gerber daisies and we spent some time chasing the kids through the apartment, laughing and screaming and tickling. Then it was off to the beach to enjoy the sunshine again. We decided that the signs of a good day are: 1) Paint under the fingernails, 2) Sidewalk chalk on the knees, and 3) Grass stains on the feet.
On Friday, Prince brought home my other Mother’s Day gift: a handmade card. On the inside was a poem and a set of his painted handprints.
The poem says:
Because I am so small
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls.
But every day I’m growing –
I’ll be grown some day
And all those tiny handprints
Will surely fade away.
So here’s a little handprint
Just so you can recall
Exactly how my fingers looked
When I was very small.
In my childhood photo album in the States, there is a pink paper given to my own mother with my Kindergarten handprints inked on either side of the very same poem.
Mother’s Day has come full circle.
