I Thought It Was Lost - Tia O'Brien

My mother had a knack for losing things. Like her clothes. Once, while sunbathing semi-naked by a pool, the wind picked up her bikini top drying next to her and plunked it down in the basket of a Mexican woman passing by. She also lost keys. When boarding the ship that would take my 18-year-old, college bound mother from Istanbul to New York City, her grandmother tied a red ribbon around her neck. “I’ve put all the keys to your trunks on this ribbon, Sevim. Do not take it off until you arrive,” she instructed her granddaughter, while gently kissing her cheeks. “You know how you lose things.” And there was the incident of the lost Green Card—the one that certified she was married to my American father and allowed her to live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C and raise three kids. Bureaucrats are very fussy about lost green cards and in spite of the pain of replacing it, she lost her card several times.

Somewhere along the way, my mother almost lost her country. After 60 years in America, people mistakenly believed she was content. But no amount of Americanizing could wash away the Turkish-ness that infused her being. My first memories of a map are of my mother pointing to Istanbul. “This is where I grew up,” she’d say, an idea so foreign that it wrapped her childhood in storybook-like wonder. By six, I could find the Bosporus on that map and describe how the waterway divided Istanbul into Europe and Asia, making it the gateway to the East. I also could describe how, as a child, my mother loved swimming like a fish in the Bosporus and Sea of Marmora, which lapped against Istanbul’s other coastline.

Our bedtime stories chronicled night her adventures-- and misadventures—growing up in the ancient metropolis. By the end of each tale, I wanted a pet lamb like the one she had while vacationing in a Black Sea fishing village. And I’d fall asleep imagining myself riding ferryboats across the Bosporus to school, along with the peasants, chickens and goats. Or being bold enough to befriend a peasant boy although my uncle sternly forbid it. Some tales were favorites that she had to tell over and over like the one about the runaway donkey. While vacationing on an island off the coast of Istanbul, she and a pack of cousins set off on a donkey ride. And of course, it was her donkey that took off on a wild ride of its own, with our petite mama clinging tight as he headed up the mountain, into a forest of sweet-smelling pines.

These tales brought to life what it was like to live through the birth of a new country-- modern, secular Turkey. She proudly explained that her class was the last one taught how to write Turkish in Arabic script and the first to learn the Western alphabet. Revolution brewed in her living room as intellectuals and literary figures gathered to debate change. Her parents were outspoken journalists, who’d advocated for the end of Ottoman rule and then helped form the young republic. When their feisty activism periodically landed her father in prison, her mother would step in and run their periodical until he was released. Years later, they were forced into exile. But my mom never mentioned details like prison stints or exile in our nightly stories. She had a way of sprinkling her own brand of fairy dust on life and turning tragedies into comedies.

Like the fact that my father, a foreign correspondent, had vowed that they’d live in Istanbul. But when World War II ended, she landed in an antiseptic American suburb, surrounded by the Betty Crockers of the 1950s.. My mischievous mother needed a bold spirit to transform this world into her own personal Turkish bazaar. Trust me. We were the only house flying the Turkish flag on the republic’s Independence Day. And the only kids who strutted across the stage during a school assembly in Turkish costumes, with odd scarves wrapped around our heads. Every couple of years, our house was re-incarnated into a miniature Kapalacharca, the grand bazaar in Istanbul. For weeks, women from the country club set would stroll through our dining and living room, inspecting items that my mother rounded up from friends’ basements and attics. When it came time to bargain over price, these women were dismayed to discover that they were no match for the diminutive lady with the warm smile. With the ease of a bazaar rug salesman, she had them handing over double the asking price.

Even after six decades in America, my mother couldn’t bring herself to become a US citizen. No amount of vacations swimming in the Sea of Marmara cured the homesickness. When she died at 86, she left no instructions about what was to be done. They weren’t necessary.

It’s not easy to get a body flown half way around the world. I worried that she’d miss her connection in Heathrow as she’d done so often. Which would mean missing the motorboat that we’d arranged to transport her casket to Buyukada, one of those islands off Istanbul that she’d loved as a child. But on this last trip, she was punctual, arriving on time even for her burial service in the courtyard of the tiny island mosque. (The daughter of atheists, she qualified for burial only if prayed over by an imam.) Here in the courtyard, my 12-year old daughter met all her Turkish relatives for the first time. And like I had as a child, she delighted in riding a horse-drawn carriage up to the top of Buyukada, the only way to get around on this car-free island. The carriage stopped at the cemetery gates, leaving my husband, daughter and I walking the winding paths until we reached a hillside. Here, my mother was tucked in the to earth under those sweet-smelling pines. And her view—a sweeping panorama of the sea, with Istanbul in the distance. What stunned me was that I felt no sadness as we left, just relief. It was as though I could feel my mother relaxing into the warm earth--Turkish earth, which meant that she’d found her way home.