Gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough,and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ Melody Beattie

morning yearning...

Waking up with the sun and my two favorite people...sassiness and silliness...



Listen to Ben Harper's Morning Yearning

p.s. seriously why is youtube still banned in this country?

The light, Our light...

I love how photography allows you to capture and play with light so beautifully!



Maybe it's clique but she has been our light, our families have been through alot alot alot this past year. Her little presence helps us all remember that life goes on, is beautiful and there is so much to be curious about...

My sister-in-law's sister is relaying racing for cancer if you have a few dollars to spare...

Baby girl dipped her toes in the sea for the first time on her 8 month birthday...

Hanies...

This post is for my mama, grandma, who has been morel mushroom hunting in the woods all week. Tracking her prey:)- morel mushrooms that grow in a big circle around dying trees. Feeding of the trees nutrients it releases back into the soil as it dies. Really cool stuff! I miss her terribly not being able to talk but will be able to today!

















Wow, baby girl will be eight months tomorrow! She is learning so quickly and so very curious! I think she is going to walk as soon as her fat little legs will let her! I love taking our walks together and am excited for when we can pick flowers and beach rocks together!

Such a special, beautiful little child! Maşallah!

There is just something about those hanies! right mom?

...because one loves what one knows...

This is my first wild flower bouquet of the season. I am happy to see I picked it on Earth day, April 22nd but didn't realize it as it is not celebrated here but I plan to spread the love next year!

I particularly love the sort of hops looking grass that looks too heavy for it's thin stem as dangles wildly in the wind...

I have recently stumbled across a blog, Resurrection Fern. She posts photos of her wonderful crocheted stones and the beauty that surrounds her. She recently posted about getting to know your local patch of earth.

"What can turn us from this deserted future, back into the sphere of our being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other and to other creatures, to the dead and unborn? I think it is love. I am perforce aware how baldly and embarrassingly that word now lies on the page—for we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean any kind of abstract love (adolescent, romantic, or "religious"), which is probably a contradiction in terms, but particular love for particular things, places, creatures, and people, requiring stands, acts, showing its successes and failures in practical or tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity. I think that this sort of love defines the effective range of human intelligence, the range within its works can be dependably beneficent. Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows."
— Wendell Berry

...BECAUSE ONE LOVES ONLY WHAT ONE KNOWS...

must read more of that man?

tired...enough...many more thoughts but enough for today...

good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite:)

Happy birthday Dad...

It was yesterday...

I wish it went like this...

Me calling my dad on skype. I can hear it play in my head, his voice, how his glasses would be all funny on his face around his neck with that silly string. He would probably be looking at some stats or news at the same time talking to us.

He would answer and say, "hi doll(maybe dolls plural now, what would he call our baby girl?)"

me:"Hi dad, Happy birthday!"

dad: "oh thanks sweetie."

me: "what are you guys going to do today?"

Then he would stop "computing", take off his glasses, lean back in the chair, stretch, then cross his arms turning his attention to us...

dad: " oh probably just go down to the Muni for a burger with everybody. Mom made me a chocolate cake. Kids are coming over later. Nothing too special. How are you guys? How is Mavisu?"

me: "We are good. Mavisu is growing so big and beautiful...here look..."
dad: "(here is new territory? I am not sure what exactly he would say because we never got to talk about his grandbaby, the cancer had already made him so weak when we came home from the hospital with her. I know though that he would love her. He loved her. It would make him smile a BIG smile. He would love her!")

We would go on to talk about projects each other are doing. I would get the down low on each sibling and mom as she would be working on a Wednesday. I would ask his opinion about something or other. He would have an opinion. He always did:)

The conversation would take a lull or two and we knew we were done for that session.

I would wish him Happy birthday again and tell him I love him. He would say thanks and say he loves us too.

I would email him a card with a picture of baby girl or have sent something he would get late...of course:)

This is what I wish happened yesterday...

But instead the sharp knife of reality sliced deep. He is gone never too return. It fucking sucks.

Now he lives on in beautiful memories. I hope I can always remember his funny mannerisms and know what he would do in certain situations.

Love you forever father dear...

The above photo is of a gorgeous oil painting of my father's portrait given as a huge, beautiful surprise to my mother. Truly it has a life of it's own and is the second thing to have my father reborn. It is there with my mother and it makes her smile which is the most important! The painting was done by the very kind and ridiculously talented painter, Jeffrey T. Larson.

It takes a village to raise a child...

OK...I get it now...

It takes a village to raise a child...
-African proverb

I miss our villages, we are lucky enough to have two, Wayzata and Didim.

But we are doing it just us...we are strong...just tired...and the house is messy...a trail of stuff...

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and I didn't even remember until 5 o'clock p.m...

Baby girl woke up at 4:30 A.M. that day and hubby and I went back in forth fighting about who gets less sleep then the other...I cried...I do not do well with out sleep or food..

fortunately then we laughed...

Today is our three year anniversary of the first day we met. I will always remember him looking stunning in his Kermit the frog green hooded sweatshirt, black hair and dark eyes...always looking...magnetic...his sexy confidence about him...my frog prince charming...

Made something yummy tonight for dinner from my HUGE "How to cook everything" cookbook by Mark Bitman:

Wheat berries cooked in separate pot
saute an onion in olive oil
add thyme and chopped walnuts
add wheat berries when cooked through
heat together and yummy!
Good combo

We ate it fast and cold such is our new life but together and still was good...

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
-Elizabeth Stone

Melt my heart...

I love sleep. I am just a person that requires a full 8 hours to function. My father could get by on 4 and I always was amazed by that.

Being a new mom who is breast feeding you do not get that straight 8 hours. You wake up every 3 or so hours a night to feed your child. Sometimes I hear here start to fuss at 3AM. I think just five more minutes please...but then I awake and look down at my adorable little girl that is so dependent on me and I wake right up.

She recently started smiling...and that is what really melts my heart! I am yet to capture it on film but oh my goodness...melt my heart!

"If only simply for not what we have but what we don't"

Minnesota is a very special place! The above is a quote from a local Minnesota hip hop artist, Atmosphere. The song is called Shhh! I love the chorus to the song...

So if the people laugh and giggle when you tell em where you live
Say shhh, say shhh
And if you know this is where you wanna raise your kids
Say shhh, say shhh
If you're from the Midwest and it doesn't matter where
Say shhh, say shhh
If you can drink tap water and breathe the air
Say shhh, say shhh

But we do have alot!!! It's clean, green, and refreshing!
I love all the green everywhere even in the cities, I miss the season changes, the open spaces, air too breath, and how uncrowded it is, and yes the tap water...but of course mainly my family and friends!!! They are my roots and my strength so thank you and I miss you everyday!

So very many things have been happening in my life hence the hiatus from my blogging. Recently my branches have grown, to use tree metaphors I guess. I married my kind, thoughtful, wonderful Turkish partner in June. I went back to MN for two months without him though(he had work and a physics class to finish). I spent lots of time with my family! My beautiful sister married a kind man in July. My husband flew out to surprise me so I wouldn't be 'alone' for the wedding. Which helps me understand we can make this distance of Turkey and America work. I was bittersweet about coming back to Turkey. I missed my husband but I enjoyed speaking English, being able to speak to those around me, closeness of family and friends. I had been in California for many years before that and feel a drive to come back home but now is not the time...

I came back to Turkey and am now in the arms of my husband and his kind family. His father has cancer right now and this is where we need to be! Pray for Ali!

I love you Minnesota(my family really)!

I will always be connected now to Ohhh sweet Turkey...

Olympos two...

I love him.

seviyorum ve nefret ediyorum...

So I started taking Turkish language classes. Turkish and English sentence structure basically flips, the -um translates to 'I' etc. The above translates into I love and I hate. I love that I am learning Turkish so I can better communicate in and understand the culture which I am living in but it is tough. I love that I when I walk up the gigantic hill from the Marmara sea to my house I see at least ten fig trees getting ready to burst with plump delicious figs. I have visions of harvesting around my Istanbul neighborhood like I used to harvest lilacs and violets in Minnesota. I had the whole neighborhood scoped out different varieties and colors plotted in my head. The figs are coming...
















I love this stained glass work from the train station, Haydarpaşa, on the Asia side of Istanbul.
















I love that riding the ferry across the sea is a form of public transportation in this city and that there are seats outside.




















I hate that I have had so many electrical problems here, my new computer got zapped. Does anyone know a cheap way to ship to the U.S. and why shipping a broken computer might be a problem through customs?

Also I hate trash. The trash build up in Naples is amazing. What if everywhere the garbage men went on strike and we were unable to get rid of the trash, out of site out of mind? It just kept piling up and piling up. Would we change our consumption habits? Would we reuse more? Here in Turkey it seems to be culturally acceptable to litter. All the time throwing things out the windows and off the ferry into the sea. They reuse a good amount but their consumption levels are rising and there aren't recycling systems. The plastic water bottles around the world what do we do? So much water everywhere but none to drink. Also plastic bags, I try to say 'pakette yok'-no bag- because every little item is automatically put into a plastic bag. When I was young my reoccurring nightmare was that tons and tons of stuff was falling on me, suffocating me with stuff and I would wake up crying.(sounds funny but I am serious)

random rant for the day...
What do you love/hate?

COME-GO...STAY-LEAVE...

Some of my friends were joking before I came to Turkey, "Don't fall in love." But I did fall...Hard! What do WE do now? Change our everything...life, country, culture, language, goals, ideas for the future and what we thought our lives should be like...Or do we forget it ever happened and know we will always have a friend in a far away place? Many tears will be shed...many, many smiles too...

Now it's time to say goodbye...

Where did the time go? There we all are,(Kloe and other exchange students) dancing at one of our favorite clubs. I feel like I just came to Turkey. Everything new, meeting all the other yobanci orenci(foreigner students) for the first time and now I am saying good bye. Exchanging emails and wondering who you will really keep in touch with. All my friends from U.S. are writing me "see you soon". I am in love with a Turk...what do I do about that? Wow life flies by! I guess just live in the now and enjoy as much as you can! I will always have a special place in my heart for Turkey and I know this isn't the end. I am excited though to see friends and family(of course). I miss food variety, sushi, blue water seafood, my mama's cooking, big fat Mexican burrito!!!!!! In my Turkish city variety is lacking for sure! I also miss Yoga and people to run with! Paths to run on and not getting stared at like a freak when you run by! OK that is it for now...I still have a month and a half.