It's the holidays and I'm lonely. The last time I traveled during this family focused season, I stayed with Nina and Freddy Maenchen in Copenhagen. I was with dear friends and nearly drowning in love and support, so my homesickness was greatly mitigated. I was able to experience Christmas in a different country with different traditions in my Danish family made me a part of their festivities. I felt fierce pangs of heartache when I thought about my brothers preparing dinner without me and my father handing out presents to my pint sized sisters gathered around the pine tree that I didn't help chop down -- but I still experienced the excitement and warmth of Christmas. Copenhagen is glorious this time of year, with all its lights, spiced wine, rice pudding and crackling.
But Turkey has no Christmas. I see the occasional Santa Claus and glimpse the rare strand of twinkling colored lights, but nothing more. Istanbul is simply cold, grey and sullen.
Istanbul seems like a sulky child who got only coal in his stocking, so has decided to go off the holiday altogether.
Perhaps it's just me who's cold, grey and sullen. Or perhaps it's me who's the sulky child. Loneliness turns everything cold, grey and sullen and brings out the sulky child within us all.
I miss my family. Tradition binds people together, and this is one tradition that calls my heart home. This is one tradition that makes me think, "Home... home isn't on the road. Home is in Colorado. Home is with Jason and Chelsea and Jared and Jaime and Anna and my parents and little baby Cosette (whom I have yet to meet)."
It's December 17th. I know it's based on childish nostalgia, but I feel such intense longing to be with my family for this week. For the next week. Christmas dinner was my forté and I'm experiencing the unsettling feeling of someone MIA. Like those theatre nightmares wherein I got the phone call from a crazed stage manager (Bri Slater was generally the choice of my delirious subconscious) screaming, "Where the hell are you? Your call was half an hour ago!"
"I'm sorry, Bri!" dreaming Aimee shouts in a mad panic. "I slept through my alarm! I never sleep through my alarm. I don't know what --"
"Remember what Ivanov said -- "If you're sick, you're on time. If you're dying, you're on time. If you're dead, you get a late call." Are you telling me that you're dead, Bourget?"
Now my nightmares include family members and droopy eyed golden retrievers gathered around a Christmas tree, looking at me with expressions full of confusion, sadness and betrayal.
"Where are you? Don't you know it's Christmas?"
"I'm sorry..." dreaming Aimee murmurs feebly. "I'm in Istanbul... and plane tickets are just so expensive, and..."
"Mimi," my dad looks hurt. "It's Christmas."
"I know."
As I alluded to earlier, dinner is my favorite part and I'm the type of lady (surprise!) to plan months in advance. I wrap the homemade fruitcake (filled with fruit and peels I've candied myself) in wine-soaked cheesecloths and create a bulging folder of recipes and an enormous checklist of ingredients.
- Fresh rosemary
- Fresh thyme
- Honey
- Balsamic vinegar
- Dried figs
- Leg of lamb
- ...
"If the lamb takes three hours to cook and the pie takes ninety minutes, we should put the turkey in before --"
It's like a strategy game (and yes, there was a Christmas when the Bourget family consumed an entire leg of lamb and a turkey. Don't judge, it was a dinner to die for as well as from). I've never been good at strategy games, but I love working with Jason on Christmas dinner.
I'm sitting in the guest room/laundry room of the Dimen family home. Princess cries in the background and Ayse patiently tries to soothe her to sleep. The TV waxes on in the living room, wrought with melodramatic music and pauses in which I could shove the entire Unabridged Works of William Shakespeare (and still have room for a spare sonnet or two) and traffic continues to reverberate from the road below.
I want to be gathered around the Christmas tree, hanging old, broken ornaments with Anna. She'd hand them to me as I'd stand on the chair, because my sassy munchkin sister is only five feet tall (you google what that is in meters) and even a chair doesn't do her much good. Jaime would be in the kitchen, figuring out what gluten-free goodies she could make for Christmas snacks and my mom would busily putter around, sampling Jaime's almond flour, organic cacao cookies from yesterday.
"Jaime, these are the best cookies I've ever had."
Most cookies are the best cookies my mom has ever had. Just like,
"Jaime, these are the best pancakes I've ever had."
and --
"Jaime, this is the best salad I've ever had."
We all poke fun at her for the unbroken use of "ever had", but I secretly think she's just brilliantly sneaky. If she's always using the superlatives for our cooking, we feel like we belong in the kitchen more than she does and her cooking load lessens.
Dad could come home from work early. He'd smell like sawdust and bits of wood would be stuck in his grey whiskers as shavings and in his hardened hands as slivers. He would find Jaime's cookies and eat three or four.
"How are the cookies?" my mother would ask, Jaime being too shy to ask herself.
"They're good," my dad would compliment as he reached for his fourth.
"Aren't they the best you've ever had?"
Jared would come upstairs from studying Latin just in time to hear this comment and to insert a timely chuckle and a, "Mom, if you say it so much, it doesn't mean anything!" Jason would glance up from improvising on the piano in the fireplace room, shake his head in exasperation, and return to creating his melody.
Chelsea would love on Jason, love on the neglected golden retrievers, love on my sisters and jump my mother's defense (after she'd loved on Jared).
"They are really nice!"
"Yeah, but they're not the best," Jared (always argumentative) would counter.
"I think my ones last week were better," Jaime's quiet voice would finally chime in. "I used too much coconut flour this time."
Christmas Eve would be our beautifully orchestrated dinner. Christmas day would be a decadent breakfast, shoddily wrapped presents and an afternoon out in the snow with cheap sleds, thick winter gloves and floppy hats I'd knit from years past.
New Year's Eve would be the family around the dining room table, playing Cranium and eating homemade ice cream intermittently with my pecan, caramel popcorn until we all chanted "10, 9, 8, 7..."
They don't even count down in Turkey.
I want to make my home smell like Christmas the way I made Billie's farmhouse smell like breakfast. I would wake up before my father and brew us a pot of coffee to share. I'd teach him the magic of mixing cardamom in the grounds the way Hanne revealed to me in Doolin. He'd talk about workflow at his shop and I'd get starry-eyed and talk about my dreams. I'd give my tired mother a thai massage and help my little sisters finish wrapping their presents. Anna would show me the horse she rides and perhaps I'd get to watch Jaime dance in the Nutcracker. I'd con Chelsea into practicing acro yoga, Jared into experimenting with a seductive, greasy bacon dish and Jason into learning a new duet on the piano.
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| My plucky horsegirl sister. Don't you dare grow out of it. |
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| My father and horsegirl sister in Kentucky for the derby. |
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| Our Christmas photo from last year. |
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| The beautiful niece I haven't met. |
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| Elegant, graceful, talented Jaime. You amaze and inspire me, lady. |
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| Only Jared loves bacon as much as I do. |
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| Jason and Chelsea. Can't wait to meet your precious new baby. |
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| Only my mom can hike Liberty Cap in UGG boots. |
I miss my surrogate family, the Kellehers (and Millers). You've consistently been ready to offer help before I even knew I needed it. I've loved every moment spent with you -- from my university, eggplant thieving years to the moment before I left on this adventure. I hope that there's a day I can be there for you the way you've been there for me.
Happy holidays from Istanbul. Know that I'm thinking of you, missing you, wishing that I could be with you and sending you all loads of love (and perhaps a postcard or two) from across the Atlantic.
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