in our gardens

a bit puffy eyes

Teoman's eyes still looked bad, but they both woke up happy and ready to play.  Tuana was already playing in her crib.  She always wakes up bright eyes and smiling, with little noises escaping that show her excitement.

I changed everybody and sent the older two downstairs, carrying Tuana with me.  Zuleyha had been up, out for a walk to the beach, and back with breakfast all prepared waiting for us to come down.  Baba was outside rooting around in the garden.  Anne and Gokhan were both sleeping having been up late watching the Turkish "Survivor".  (Main difference being it's a minimum of THREE HOURS LONG every night).  They also were up at 4:22am calming Baba down who had woken up in the midst of a dream or hallucination.  Gokhan and Anne were quite dramatic about how they were up "all night" with Baba because of this - making me ever so thankful once again for Zuleyha because she takes care of bringing things out to the balcony, breakfast,  and Baba when excitement and drama keep the others from functioning.

Baba was already busy in the garden, so he was hungry.  He had come up and asked Zuleyha for his green water bottle.  We have several repurposed glass bottles in our refrigerator holding cold water and Zuleyha grabbed one and poured the cold water into a glass for Baba.  When she served it to him - he said he didn't want cold water, so she went back to fill a new glass with room temperature water.  Not wanting to waste the bottled water - she tossed the cold water into the tea pot.  (We use bottled water for everything, even cooking, because the water out here isn't clean enough for drinking or even washing food).  I was preparing oatmeal.  We have two 3 liter jugs in the freezer of frozen pomegranate that Gokhan had shucked and stored last fall.  I opened one container and scraped some out onto my cereal and Teoman's.  As I was doing so I started smelling something like fermenting fruit.  I brought it out the the table, took a few bites - unable to get the smell out of my nostrils.  I told Zuleyha, and she smelled it - but wasn't sure.  We sat down for breakfast and tea and Gokhan said the tea tasted like wine.  Now we were all suspicious of the smell.  Sniffing the tea and tasting it.  It undoubtedly had alcohol in it, so then we began trying to figure out how alcohol got into our tea.

drinking vodka tea for breakfast

Many of the repurposed glass bottles in our fridge are whiskey bottles.  One of the green bottles wasn't water - it was fruit flavored vodka.  Zuleyha's glass of cold "water" for Baba had been vodka, and when he refused it, she had dumped the vodka into the tea pot.  Baba hadn't seemed to notice, or if he did, he wasn't complaining and had drank most of his tea.  We all laughed a lot at breakfast, teasing Zuleyha for trying to get us all relaxed before noon.

watching the tractor delivering manure for Baba's planting

The summer homes in this area are mostly empty now - but people will be coming more and more throughout May.  Our neighbors arrived today, "the gypsies."  Tolga doesn't like them, and they are fighting with the community about different fees - not to mention they've encroached onto our property by a meter-and-a-half.  They had two german shepards for the longest time that I can only hope died - and now they mostly renting out their home.  Anne and Baba are gentle people and while they aren't very social, they are kind and know most everyone (and most everyone knows them).  The woman, Zeynep, came to say hello to Anne and update her on some family tragedies.

Teoman was listening carefully, and while they were talking, he asked me,
"Mom? What are they talking about?"
"Our neighbor's mother died."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure what happened."
"Are you going to die?"
"Ah.... eventually."
"But I don't want you to die," he said putting his head on my lap.
"Well, I don't want to leave you ever - but everyone dies when they get older.  But some die when their young, or my age, or Babanne's age from accidents, or sickness, or surgery.  You and I will probably live until an old age, but you never can know.
"Why do we have to die?  What happens?"
"Well, remember Adam and Eve?  Life was perfect, they were with God, but then they got greedy and wanted everything.  They made a mistake, and couldn't be with God anymore.  Because of all of our mistakes there is pain, and sickness, and many other bad things in this world.  When we die - this body will die but inside of us will go up to heaven where we will get a new body that will never get sick or hurt.

Our sweet boy thinking deep thoughts.